So the first 360 game to hold my extended attention has been Rainbow Six: Vegas, on the recommendation of people I trust, including this guy. This is a desperate attempt on my part to actually master controlling a shooter on a console controller. Some observations:

1) I haven’t played R6 since the first one, which was, what, a decade ago? I didn’t play it much, but I seem to remember it being much more tactical with a lot more up front planning. As Brandon points out, the game I’m playing now is pretty much a standard FPS with two sidekicks.

2) I’ve officially gotten to the point in the game where my sidekicks are doing most of the killing for me. I’m just hanging out, directing them, sniping when possible, and rushing in to heal them when they fall down. As much as I like sniping, this feels kinda anticlimactic. Especially given my ability to handle the controls, it can take me 5-10 seconds to line up a shot.

3) As Brandon mentions, the story is so bad it’s laughable. There really has not been a story event that hasn’t involved a certain amount of eye-rolling. And I’m not one who usually demands Shakespeare from my games.

4) Memo to Ubisoft: The minimum requirement for AI in a game with any stealth element should be: if I snipe someone while in a conversation with someone 5 feet away, his partner should, you know, notice.

Despite all of his, I’m still having fun. I haven’t had the guts to go online yet – maybe once I get down to only 3 seconds to line up a shot.