Not much to write about lately

Not much has really happened in the gaming industry. I wish I had started this blog last year, when 50 million things happened in the gaming world. I've been working on one huge blog post, which is part of the reason I haven't been updating as often. Once I'm finished with it, I'll publish it, but don't expect that to be for a bit. The other thing that has been keeping me busy is Rainbow Six Vegas 2. It's going to be hard to put into words how I feel about the game, but I'll try.

The game is fun, very fun. But the fun is buried under a mound of problems. The first being the framerate. The story mode walks the line of being completely unplayable at times. I'm talking prolonged periods of about five frames per second. It seems like almost every time there are more than two or three guys on screen at a time, the game begins to chug. Seeing as the average firefight is usually between you and your two partners, and five to ten terrorists, the game slows to a haul quite a bit. However, oddly enough, I've had occurrances where it's been an all out war between my team and ten or more terrorists, and the game has run completely fine. Framerate drops just seem to be very random, but very often.

What is interesting, however, is that none of these problems seem to be anywhere else in the game. I haven't played a lot of online play, but the little I did play ran fine. I've played a bit of terrorist hunt, and even with bodies stacking up, the framerate never dropped to an unreasonable level. It seems like just the story mode could have used a serious bit of refinement.

The other major problem I have with the game is that it just feels stuck in the past. Call of Duty 4 refined and perfect multiplayer gaming with it's clever level system and engaging gameplay. The level system in Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is interesting, but just isn't as interesting or as flashed out. The main reason being that you tend to get some of the best weapons and armor pretty early on. "Elite" is the highest rank you can achieve, but there's no real incentive to work for it. All you get for even becoming Elite are some camos. Nothing major. Also, an even bigger problem is a lack of a melee button. It seems like at this day and age, having some form of physical attack in a first-person shooter is pretty expected. It didn't dawn on me how essential of an addition it is to the gameplay until I played a game without it. I took for granted the amount of times I quickly knifed someone in Call of Duty 4 if they tried to attack me while reloading, or the times I knifed someone in the back so that I could remain stealthed. Without any physical attack in RSV2, you're often left pretty open when reloading, or turning around corners. It's a small addition to the game that makes a huge addition to the gameplay.

Despite all my negativity, the game is still pretty damn great. The cover mechanics work extremely well, and the game has a constant feeling of epicness. In my opinion, it's like what a Die Hard game would be like. It has it's problems, but it's still pretty awesome. However, with some polish and updates, the franchise has potential to be the next greatest thing to happen to first person shooters.