Eperience Points!-

In my view the big draw to this game is a full and well rounded leveling system, that makes people work for theirs weapons, gadgets and gear. It’s spread nicely through every mode you play in. So if you love multiplayer, and hate the idea of playing story mode, starting with lame equipment, just play multiplayer till you properly trick out your stuff and you are good to go. Points you receive to upgrade yourself are good in every mode. On top of that, the game specializes the point gains a bit. In theory this allows you to play in your own special play style to unlock the things you are most interested in getting more quickly. Neat stuff right! It works reasonably well, but the maps and levels you play will most likely force your playstyle to adapt instead of allowing you to shine in your own special way.

Equipping Up-

Yet another place where this games shines is customization. I can’t think of any FPS that comes close to the level of tinkering a tweaking this game allows. Unlockable guns, unlockable gadgets, unlockable camo, unlockable armour. There is more unlockable stuff to keep you busy than you can shake a stick at. Go get a stick. Try it. I’ll wait. Guns all handle differently, and are equally usefull with some tweaks in your gaming style. Gadgets allow you to scan battlefields, bust down door, or get a warning when people are trying to sneak up on your backside. Camo… is neat. There is lots of it and it can be applied to damnear everything you can put on your tricked-out self. Armour is location specific and affects your speed and stamina according to how many hundreds of pounds of it you wear. And best of all- every bit of it is usefull somehow. Nothing is purely bling for bling sake, and whatever you do to your body will affect how you fare in the game. Its the type of customization that is usually only seen in RPGs and so on.

It is fun-

If you have the nasty habit of taking shotgun fire to the face while doing multiplayer on people’s games that have no respawns, you might disagree with this heading. In that case you will have to patiently wait 2-5 minutes to get a chance to play again, but i assure you there are places for you in this scary multiplay world. I know. I had to find them to get anything approching a grasp on multiplayer games myself. Its not hard to find games that are accessable for people of all skill levels, its just harder than i’m used to. I know this sounds like i am starting to bitch about the game again, but honestly its a strength and weakness. The cusomizability of the game extends to multiplayer games, allowing a host to tweak everything you can imagine. The problem is this is the only good way to multiplay. You cant just tell the game that you want to jump into a Deathmatch server. You need to look for one, then check if its worth connecting to, then check if it has settings that won’t have you scaring small children with your blatant cursing. It seems like we should be past that level of hassle for online gaming, but its also nice to be able to say “I hate shotguns so much i’m starting a game without them.” Hopefully you can understand how i am torn.

The annoying-

Ok. Since the last one was borderline bitching, so, i’ll make this one all out bitching. Its sorta like a segue. Now im not sure if its my own special level of noobishness that creates most of these situations, but i thought they were pretty lame. Grenades. They are really great, and useful and explodey, but they have so much of a tendancy to catch every object they shouldn’t it annoys me to shreds. For instance- I am looking down from a second story balcony in a map called Villa. I see a guy i want to blow up, so i chuck a grenade at him. The grenade ends up neatly nestled in the foliage of a tree in front of me, and promptly explodes in my face. I quickly learn: grenades plus trees equals mishaps. More instance- I am taking cover next to a fence. Its low, so i can see over it, and even through it effectively. I angle up to toss the grenade at the person i am hiding from. The grenade bounces off the top of the fence neatly in my lap. It looked like a tasty striped apple meant just for me until it proved itself less than friendly. I could bitch about little things like this for hours, but i won’t subject you to that. The main problem though is that this is the second game in the series. I just expected everything to just work fluidly. There should’t be much of a learning curve on what types of foliage bounce grenades back and what types allow grenades to pass cleanly through. It seems like it should be pretty obvious.

All in all-

As much as all the little oddities annoy me, the fact is Vegas2 is a very solid and fun game. Glitches are easily overshadowed by the satisfaction of a particularly ingenious or lucky kill or a character dressed just the way you want em. I like the game. I just wish it was a little better. I went in expecting just a little too much and i was a little disappointed. All of the things i like about the game existed in some form in the original. There were some upgrades, but this is little more than a 60 dollar map pack for the original from what i can tell. It is a very good map pack though.

Singleplay: B-

Multiplay: A-

Overall: B

Audacity: A+

~The j suN