Having never played the original Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas I entered the sequel without any preconceptions. That is not to say that I am unfamiliar with the series as I have played all other iterations on both PC and Xbox to date.

Even though the series has evolved since its inception, I can honestly say that Vegas 2 still ‘feels' like playing a Rainbow Six game. The campaign which occurs before, during and after the timeline of the original Rainbow Six: Vegas, is a cracker albeit somewhat spoilt in my eyes by an utterly ridiculous ending. Nothing feels more like Rainbow Six than the coordinated domination of terrorists that Vegas 2 offers the player. Time and time again you will quickly assess the situation, allocate targets to your team members and execute. Often rappelling through a window or skylight or explosively breaching a door. It feels great to clear a room in just seconds and never gets old.

What makes Vegas 2 stand out for its competitors is that your terrorist opponents are not exactly useless. They are more than likely to rappel through a few windows and skylights of their own in an attempt to get the drop on you and your team. The aggressiveness of the enemy AI gives the campaign of Vegas 2 a level of intensity lacking from a lot of the other first person shooters to be found on the Xbox 360. As a credit to the games developer, the heightened intensity is primarily due to well designed gameplay not just from heavily scripted dramatic events. The enemy don't just blindly rush towards you either and are more than capable of using coordinated tactics of their own such as fire-and-movement, flanking and ambushes.

The graphics in Vegas 2 will perhaps be a point of contention with fussy gamers. The graphics are by no means bad as they are highly detailed, clear and in a word ‘functional'. You wouldn't expect the graphics to suck when the awesome Unreal 3 graphics engine is used to create them, however unlike other games based on the same engine, such as Gears of War, Vegas 2 seems to be missing something. The only way I can describe it is that it seems to be lacking a final ‘awesomeness filter'. By that I mean Gears of War has a look of ‘awesomeness' that Vegas 2 just doesn't. The graphics are great but you can't help but feel that it is missing a final filter pass or something that would really seal the deal graphically and while the frame rate was generally solid there were some rare moments of significant slow down in certain areas.

In addition to the brilliant single player campaign, Vegas 2 offers multiplayer options in the form of cooperative campaign and Terrorist Hunt modes as well as a series of versus modes. Two players can complete the entire campaign cooperatively but only the host can control the two AI team mates. The second player becomes a new character who exists independently to the host players' team. Four player cooperative play would have been better, but at least the option is offered and the campaign experience is otherwise unchanged from single player and complete with all the cut-scenes and everything intact, unlike being a selection of a levels in the last game.

Terrorist Hunt is a surprisingly fun cooperative mode where up to four players team up to clear a map of AI controlled enemies. It sounds a little boring in theory but the aggressive enemy (particularly on the "realistic” setting) AI keeps this mode exciting and I found it more fun than the versus modes on offer. Versus game types include Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Total Conquest, Team Leader and three Attack and Defend modes called Item Extraction, Hostage Rescue and Demolition. These modes are mainly self explanatory for seasoned FPS gamers and are simply variations of multiplayer game types we've seen many times before. The Attack and Defend game types are variations of Capture the Flag and Assault while Total Conquest is a variation of Territories. Finally Team Leader is similar to Protect the VIP game types where teams must keep their leader alive. Overall though, there is no real stand out multiplayer mode but there is plenty of choice to satisfy most gamers.

The matchmaking system offered in Vegas 2 is not the best I have seen and would have benefited from a region filter at the very least. Finding a local game can be difficult and trying to join active undersubscribed games only to be told they were full quickly became tedious. As with most online games, the best strategy is to build up a good group of friends and invite each other to organised games. Loner gamers are not well catered for.

This time around, Vegas 2 is all about customisation. Players begin the game by creating their own avatar choosing sex, appearance, clothing, body armour and equipment. Your characters' face can even be made in your own image through the use of the Xbox 360 Live Vision camera accessory (which unlocks an easy achievement). The more you play the game the more items and equipment are unlocked allowing you to further customise or tailor your character to your own style of play.

New to Vegas 2 is the A.C.E.S. (Advanced Combat Enhancement Specialisation) system which rewards gamers with experience points and weapons specific to the style of the player. For example, if you are the type of player who hangs back and snipes enemies from a distance, your head shots and long distance kills will be rewarded with marksman type weapons. Likewise different gameplay styles will be rewarded with close quarters weapons such as shotguns or assault weapons such as assault rifles and machine guns. This system works great but is easily exploited by those wishing to quickly max out their characters by replaying easier levels over and over, and over again. In addition to the A.C.E.S. system you also earn promotions over time, which unlock additional armour and clothing as well as affecting your online ranking. The cool feature about the A.C.E.S. system is that the experience points you earn, and therefore the unlocked items are shared between single and multiplayer in your profile and while Call of Duty 4 had a more addictive system (especially with the challenges) this new system is pretty cool and it will be interesting to see how Ubisoft expand on it in future games.

The damage model in Vegas 2 is not cumulative which makes it more forgiving of mistakes than other Tom Clancy games. There is no visual health gauge other than the screen darkening when you are hit and after a very short time you are completely back to normal. There is no ‘green, yellow, red or dead' system such as that found in the Ghost Recon games. Likewise, if your team mates go down all it takes is a hypodermic shot and they are back on their feet at full capacity. This may make the game a little easier but at least you don't have to worry about completing most of a level half-dead and on your own because of a disastrous beginning. Trust me, the intensity of the fire fights well and truly compensates.

The sound design in Vegas 2 is brilliant, and has always been a highlight of the series. All of the weapons sound great and the localisation is spot on. With a decent surround setup you can locate enemies from the sound of their gunfire and the same effect sound appropriately diffused when occurring in areas away from the player. Loud explosions leave your characters' ears literally ringing and take some time to return to normal. This really serves to plant the player firmly in the action of the game and for that, Vegas 2 scores top marks in the sound department.

The game isn't without its problems however and a few bugs raised their ugly heads during play. Firstly, there is a minor audio bug where a persistent machine gun sound plays for a few seconds before righting itself. This didn't happen often but it did happen more than once during my time with the game. Secondly and perhaps more annoyingly is the games tendency to orientate the player in the wrong direction after reloading a saved checkpoint in campaign play. For example, it was very common on loading a saved checkpoint to find my team stacked up against a door that if opened, would lead back in the direction I have already played through. I don't know why this occurs but it was a pain to jump back into the action only to realise a few seconds latter that I was moving in the wrong direction.

There is also an annoying issue with enemy spawn locations. Primarily during Terrorist Hunt games, enemies will spawn or just ‘pop in' whilst clearly visible to players or in rooms just cleared by players catching them by surprise. In Terrorist Hunt games it is a common sight to see enemies spawn right in front of you and I even had this happen to me once during the single player campaign. Additionally, the amount of enemies that spawn during the campaign is dependent on the players' progress. If you advance through a map quickly, the number of enemies will be much less than if you sit back and wait. This encourages aggressive play but may aggravate the cautious player. This spawning system may have been designed for the benefit of gameplay, but it can certainly be annoying when the AI scores a sneaky kill because of it.