R6 Map Pack - 800 MS Points, Give or Take

There's a rumour printed in the March issue of the Official Xbox Magazine about a map pack for Rainbow Six: Vegas headed for Marketplace. This would be a collection of 10 new maps and 2 additional multiplayer modes, Assassination and Conquest.

This map pack is supposed to cost 800 Microsoft Points. As someone who's held out on buying any MS points thus far, I really hope that's not the case. Gears of War impressed fans with their free map pack release last month, although to be fair, they were only giving away 2 maps, not 10.

Oh well, unless I totally fall out of love with R6, looks like I'll be caught in a bind. There's obviously enough players out there who'd shell out the cash for the map pack and I'm sure a lot of them would be on my friends list, thereby forcing me to step up or step down.

Damn you, micro-transactions!

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Crack of Dawn

I suppose it doesn't bode well for new blog when half the entries posted have been about one game. Does it matter that the game happens to be Crackdown, one of my most anticipated titles of '07? Truth be told, my knowledge of this game, along with Gears of War, played a large role in locking down my decision to buy a 360 in the first place. I've been enamoured with anti-social "sandbox" games since the early sprite-based incarnations of Grand Theft Auto. Back when I was enrolled in my easy-as-pie Multimedia Studies program, I even wrote a treatment for a sandbox-styled game for my Interaction Design class (don't worry, it's not nearly as Digipen-cool as it sounds). It was a pretty sweet concept. My gameplay document wasn't terribly fleshed out, but the potential was there. Think game journalism a la Dead Rising, mixed with GTA and Bad Day L.A. sans gang-banging, mass murder and ho-slapping.

But I digress. So there I was, suckered into playing another late weeknight session of Rainbow Six: Vegas. I had finally passed that maddening sequence in the slipway dam; you know, the one involving Jung strutting his computer hacking skills in the shed while half the world's terrorist population descends upon you. I must have played that section 20 times. It took my first attempt to realize Jung gets flanked by 2 sneaky enemies in a garage and the next 19 tries to get a lucky break and not: a) catch an errant grenade, b) not have Michael die on me too early, c) not have Jung catch an errant grenade or bullet or d) all of the frickin' above.

So I finally passed that bloody sequence. I was too relieved and exhausted to celebrate when I saw the magical "Saving Progress" notification on my screen. Thankfully, for the next twenty minutes it was a smooth succession of checkpoint completions, not dieing again until later in the scientist-rescue portion of the mission.

I figured it was time to stop. I had enjoyed a couple beers with a friend earlier and the buzz was still lingering, making me rather sleepy. I checked the clock and saw that it was already 1:35am. Wait a minute, doesn't the Crackdown demo drop at 2:00am? Indeed.

By 2:05, I had the demo streaming down the pipes and crawled into bed, happily thinking about the game and secure in the knowledge it would be waiting for me when I awoke. Waking up today was a bit like waking up on Christmas morning. Bleary-eyed but excited, I fired up the Box and there it was, my precious, my Crackdown demo. It was a hefty file, weighing in at 1.24GB. I was surprised it finished downloading overnight. The Marketplace servers will probably get slammed later this afternoon when all the kiddies get home from school. Meanwhile I'll be sitting pretty enjoying the game. Chawesome...

I played the demo for all of 5 minutes. I already like the feel of controlling your Agent and the graphics, while terribly cartoonish, are very striking and unique. I'm not sure I liked the feel of the driving. I hopped into a squad car and was turned off by the camera control and sluggish turning. Here's hoping that was only characteristic of the particular vehicle I was driving. Another sticking point of course was the total lack of story and cinematics. Yes, watching an introductory gameplay montage is cool but would it have killed Real Time Worlds to add that final bit of polish to their game? Hopefully they did for the final product.

Heero and I have already made a Crackdown appointment for tonight. There's word from Kotaku that the demo has a 30-minute time limit once your Agent reaches Level 2 in any skill. That seriously sucks, but for a open-ended sandbox game like this, it was probably the most sensible option method of implementing a "cut off" point.

Full first impressions of the demo to come.

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Terrorists on the Run Second Night in a Row

I've been meaning to properly introduce Play With My Box to the gaming blogosphere but Rainbow Six has been dominating my every waking moment. Therefore I cannot bring myself to even write about anything else, not until I report on my latest T-Hunt outing with Heero.

Long story short: we owned, as they say in gaming parlance. We completed an unprecedented 5 maps last night, beginning with our first love, the Calypso Casino. With the help of fellow R6ers, I and Gratzy, we finally dominated the casino on High Density setting. I had the honour of being the last man standing, facing down a disorganized band of terrorists in the vault and methodically putting them all to rest. Did I get an easy break? Oh, more than I few times. The Normal enemy AI seems to falter when they separate from the pack and you face them head on. I noticed that they take an eternity to draw a bead on you and in rare instances will even get stuck on a wall or be distracted by something other than you.

Border Town became the tough nut to crack that evening, as we were repeatedly ambushed and out-flanked on our first several attempts. Fragpocket promptly dropped out, leaving a 3-man team to grind through the streets of Mexico. Victory finally came on Gratzy's final game and once again, I was charged with eliminating the final wave of terrorists all by myself.

Heero and I bid goodnight to Gratzy and continued on to beat Casino Vault, Dam and Dantes. Heero pulled off a repeat of the previous night's performance as he played Rambo, using his strategically located base camp to defend against the unrelenting wave of attackers. I originally stood guard behind the crates while Heero pranced around the level, baiting terrorists into following him into our deathtrap. All was going well until I became too preoccupied with peering through my rifle scope and blown to smithereens by a well-timed grenade. From then on it was ALL Heero and he did not disappoint, switching effortlessly between his pistol, shotty and a modest helping of C4. My goodness, it was glorious to watch him detonate the C4 and send five unlucky attackers cartwheeling into the air.

All in all, it was a great night of T-Hunt. Heero and I both ranked up and earned our coveted Tour of Duty achievement. Our next challenge will be to finish all maps on Realistic difficulty, where the AI is much more aggressive. I also expect that they will spawn in the most inopportune places and make much better use of explosives.

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Terrorist Hunt Still a Challenge

It was another sleepless night of Rainbow Six: Vegas (R6) with Heero as we hammered away at Terrorist Hunt. Out of our dozens of matches, we emerged victorious twice. The first win came after several unsuccessful runs of Kill House. I grew tired of getting picked off by stragglers catching us unaware from behind so I suggested that we camp out near the initial spawn point and lure the baddies to us. On previous attempts that first wave of enemies always went so smoothly: I'd park myself at the corner of the first building, covering the alleyway and fast rope while Heero would circulate between shotgunning guys rushinig down the stairs or through the opposite alley. Things would quickly fall apart as we ventured further into the map, however, as we'd get to some magical moment when we'd engage a mob of terrorists in an area accessible by multiple entry points. A lone enemy would find his way through a route we'd already taken, get around us and shoot us both in the back.

I figured we could expand on our winning formula and turn the tables on the overwhelming odds stacked against us. Our camping tactic worked beautifully. It didn't take long for piles of bodies to gather around my assigned alley. The soler remaining terrorist, not taking notice of the blood-splattered death trap, valiantly rushed my fortified position only to be cut down with manic glee by my rifle-scoped MP9.

Our second victory didn't require much of my input, as I was gunned down early in the game attempting to foolishly escape a frag grenade by running TOWARDS the sender, out into the open Dantes courtyard FILLED WITH ENEMY SOLDIERS. Heero, against all odds, went on to eliminate the remaining 20+ terrorists single-handedly. Times like this I wish Ubisoft Montreal had coded in a replay feature into online play, not unlike the replays you get now in very modern car racing game. Heero's heated firefight in one of Dantes' tight construction zones is the stuff of highlight reels. Taken out of the match so early, I had decided to phone my father and hardly registered the intensity of the game during my conversation. I honestly did not expect Heero to survive beyond the 5-minute duration of my phone call. Yet there he was, frantically loading shells into his M870, dodging 'nades and stubbornly refusing to die.

I sat there, mesmerized, and started to offer up some play-by-play advice/commentary, which was promptly greeted with a breathless, "Shut up, man... I'm freaking out here!". Ah Heero, you lost your cool but you pulled through anyway. The last terrorist didn't put up much of a fight, sort of stumbling around in the smoke, taking cover just outside Heero's makeshift bunker then hobbling away in the opposite direction. His ass was promptly perforated with a load of buckshot.

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