Life as a special-ops guy must be pretty sweet - chopper in, take out the bad guys, and then brag to the ladies back home about how you kept your cool throughout the whole mission. Except there's one flaw in my new plan to become a terrorist-cappin' Navy Seal archetype – I might get shot at.

You see, I've always had this thought that if I were ever forced to actually go into combat in some capacity I'd be the first guy to get killed. You know the guy who's on the boat coming into the beach and then a bullet goes straight through his helmet before they've even reached the shore? Or the Star Trek dude in the red uniform on his first away mission... That'd be me – I'd suck as a soldier. So luckily, game developers realise that I suck and make games like Rainbow Six Las Vegas (from now on R6Vegas).

Stepping into the (no doubt armoured) shoes of new ‘hero' Logan Keller, it's all down to you to stop terrorists from blowing the crap out of Las Vegas. Now, while most of us probably wouldn't bat an eyelid if Vegas were to disappear from the face of the earth and allow most third world countries to finally have enough energy to boil a kettle, it does represent all that's lovely about America; namely money, booze, women and fat rich pricks losing millions of their ill-gotten dollars on each hand. So, you know, if people are getting killed and all, we guess it's a pretty good reason to send some hard soldiers in to nail their ‘asses' (said in an awesome American accent).

From the moment you get thrown into some dingy backstreets at the start of the game, the similarities between Vegas and GRAW are immediate. However, while that game also had you in control of a squad, negotiating lots of blind corners and flanking situations, Vegas steps up the tactical element a few notches. GRAW was all about open, messy gunfights; Vegas is more about clean, methodical infiltration and for my money is the better of the two. It's more satisfying to spy an enemy, tag him, set up the breach and then act out the entry with dance-like grace and precision. Kinda like a good Saturday night out.

Did I mention tagging? Yep this aspect of the game rocks hard. Mosey on up to a closed door and the option will contextually appear to snake cam it. It's then simply a matter of choosing a primary and secondary target and a press of the Back button tags them for your squad. Then point at the door, press A (which acts as an intuitive ‘command button' for the entire game) and decide which entry option to enact. Will you lob in a grenade, set a breeching charge, or just go in guns blazing? All of these options are mapped to the D-Pad and you have complete control over the timing of entry.

This is particularly important because nearly all rooms in R6Vegas exhibit multiple entry points. So it's entirely possible – and advisable – for you to move to an alternate entrance, scope it out and then time your entry to coincide with that of your squad – including the rappel option which is possibly the coolest entry possible. Pulling this off flawlessly is a beautiful thing – almost as exciting as a coquettish wink from a hot girl (which, of course, won't happen if you're playing this game all the time – but who cares eh?). Of course, out to stymie you at every turn is the achingly difficult AI of the enemy terrorists. Taking a page out of F.E.A.R's book, they'll flank you mercilessly and will take you down with a headshot quicker than you can say "Hey terrorist guy, take me down with a headshot”. But really, that's the beauty of the game. It's bloody hard but it's also incredibly random so that even if you do find yourself playing through the same section multiple times there's always an alternative action to take in order to come out of it alive – unless you play it on Realistic difficulty, in which case we'll hold the funeral on Thursday, BYO AK-47.

The game's environments are spectacular. One that stood out for me was a casino lobby that looked a lot like a shopping centre. You need to work your way up multiple floors whilst constantly checking balconies for enemies and covering your arse for inevitable flankers. It's open, massive and incredibly detailed and you really do feel like you're working through a real environment. Most, if not all, of the levels are similarly realistic – with the only negative thing being that most of the time you're so busy worrying about incoming tangos that you won't have time to admire the scenery.

As a result of the varied and populated levels, cover is always nearby, and boy will you need to use it. Holding down the Left Trigger makes Logan mosey on up to whatever's closest and brings you out into a third-person view – to better survey the situation and choose when to pop out and fire a few rounds. The system is intuitive and smooth and I personally like it much more than the Gears of War ‘A' button system, which often saw me barrel diving into the waiting jaws of the Locust Horde.

And now to multiplayer – which gets more options than a take-away menu. First up, there's the very cool feature of being able to use the Live Vision camera to put your own ugly mug into the game. My own face ended up looking like a cross between myself and Michael Jackson, but nevertheless it's pretty awesome to see your own face on your avatar's body as he (or she) enters the fray. And if you play with close mates I'm guessing that the feeling of a real life posse would result from this feature. But for those of you who wish to remain anonymous, there's still a lot of multiplayer action to be had. And to further suck you in, Ubisoft have included a ranking system that sees you level up to receive nice bonuses such as extra weapons, camouflage types and armour options. You'll need to stick with it though – to reach the rank of elite will require 675 000 points, cripes!

The main adversarial modes include Attack & Defend, where you either defend an objective or are on the team to attack and gain said objective; Sharpshooter, where two teams duke it out for kills; Survival, last man standing wins; and of course Sharpshooter, where it's every man for himself and the winner is the person with the most kills. A personal favourite is Retrieval, where you need to locate and grab a biohazard container and then deposit it to score points. It's a lot of fun waiting for the other team to grab the canister and then shoot the carrier to nab it for your own team and score the points.

Co-op is also fully supported and in many ways makes the single player campaign a lot more fun. Entries become even more clinical when you can communicate with real people and coordinate your attack. Then, if you're sick of the main story missions, there's Terrorist Hunt, which sees you dumped into a map full of spawning terrorists and you must kill them all. Some of these are damn hard but it is possible to change the terrorist density if you're getting pwned or want to complete a map solo.

While there's plenty of online options, and some solid netcode that gives reasonably lag-free games, it's unfortunate to see that R6Vegas as its fair share of bugs. Even with the recent patch there is still frequent repeating sound glitches and other bugs that do get annoying. Ubisoft worked hard on the first patch that fixed up well over 30 issues so lets hope that they're aware that there's still a few more things that need looking at. We only point this out though so you'll be aware of it and in no way is the single player, or multiplayer side of R6Vegas ruined. It's a top game with a great single player story, crap loads of action and a fantastic multiplayer mode to keep you coming back.