Over the years, the city of Las Vegas has played host to thousands of huge shows. None, however, have been more impressive than Team Rainbow's debut last year on the Xbox 360. After a considerable wait, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas has finally infiltrated its way onto the PS3 and while the chance to blindfold and gag Vegas regular Celine Dion and lock her in a cupboard in a casino basement is still sadly missing, fans of Ubisoft's tactical first person shooter series will be pleased to hear that the title has lost nothing in its transfer onto Sony's system.

In this new outing for the multicoloured task force, you play Logan Keller, leader of a crack three-man team sent down to Mexico after international terrorist Irena Morales' activities in the area raise a red flag. The mission's an in and out - locate Irena and take her alive - but something goes badly wrong and instead of relaxing at home with a tequila and a bag of tortillas, you're sent straight to Las Vegas where Irena is planning a misdemeanour so large that even the City of Sin would have trouble forgiving her.

Before all of the above, you begin the game's first level, on your own, in San Joshua del Mosquiera; a living breathing cliché of a Mexican border town. As professional as Logan's camo gear looks, there is a nagging feeling that a poncho and sombrero combo, ideally teamed with some chewing tobacco and a couple of days of facial hair growth, may have been more appropriate, as apart from the eerie trumpet music blaring from an unseen radio, the sun-faded streets are quiet - almost too quiet. With all of the inhabitants seemingly vanished or indoors behind closed shutters, the only people you do run into are a handful of terrorists and this allows the game to provide you with a basic tutorial.

That isn't to say that things start off easy though; unlike other first person shooters, such as Resistance: Fall of Man, Vegas is a much more tactical game, one that requires and rewards consideration and planning before action. Rushing into engagements usually results in only one outcome - namely your character spending the flight home in the plane's hold, rather than in first class.

To avoid this occurrence, Ubisoft have introduced a new cover system, which is a refined version of the one used in their Ghost Recon series. Whenever your character is close to almost any wall or other object large enough to shield him, you can press against it by simply holding one of the shoulder buttons. From this position of safety, the game switches to a third-person, over-the-shoulder view, from which you can either blind-fire around the edge of the cover or pop your head up into a position that's more vulnerable, but also restores your normal shooting accuracy. The cover system is such an integral part of play that, for Vegas to work as a game, it needs to operate with ease and accuracy. Thankfully it has been designed so well that it not only accomplishes these objectives, but also enhances your playing enjoyment.

As well as constantly looking for cover for yourself, Vegas also gives you a large amount of control over the other two members of your team. The select button toggles between instructing your men to either fire only when fired upon, ideal for when you're trying to move unseen, or to shoot on sight, which is the setting of choice when you're in position and good to go. Other single button press controls allow you to quickly send your squad members off to any point you target with your weapon sights, hold their current position or regroup at your location. At numerous points, the game also allows you and your men to use features in the environment to fast rope out of helicopters or from other heights and rappel down the sides of buildings, making for some atmospheric and impressive entrances.

You'll also quickly learn that, using a few simple on-screen options, your team can be a potentially scarier greeter at a Vegas casino doorway than Mike Tyson ever could, and this, in no small part, is thanks to your snake cam. The snake cam fits under almost any closed door, allowing you to see what's on the other side. On top of this, when you're looking through its fibre optic eye, you can tag up to two terrorists as primary targets for your team to take out when you go in. You're supposed to use the SixAxis controls to move the snake cam around, but it's a shame that it doesn't come with its own snake charmer, as it's so difficult to manoeuvre that, on more than one occasion, you'll find yourself giving up on it, as it leaves you with nothing but snake eyes. Besides the disobedient serpent, your kit also contains night vision goggles, which come in handy in Vegas' many dark areas, and thermal goggles, which when combined with a well thrown smoke grenade, are very useful for clearing a room without the need to find cover.

Guns in Vegas come in a wide variety of authentic forms, but ammo is not as plentiful as you might hope and spaces in your inventory are severely limited. Thankfully you are given the option to toggle between single shot, automatic and semi-automatic fire, and to pick up weapons dropped by downed terrorists. Vegas also stacks the deck further in your favour by stepping away from reality slightly and giving you a self-regenerating health system; this allows you to take a few hits before you need to find cover or become the victim of a blackout caused by excessive lead intake.

The game splits its action over six levels, each of which is made up of a number of chapters. While this may not sound like a lot, and Vegas is certainly not the longest game in world, there's still around ten hours of entertainment for the average player to extract from the story mode on the standard difficulty setting. If that isn't enough, ramping things up to 'realistic' makes the distances between checkpoints seem like an eternity and regularly bringing up the map of your immediate vicinity, which includes the positions of terrorists in your team's line of sight, becomes a necessity.

There's no doubt that Vegas is at its most exciting when the bullets start to fly - and this is largely down to the excellent standard of both your team's and the terrorists' AI. Shootouts are adrenaline-fuelled games of cat and mouse, with both sides trying to outflank each other to obtain the best position. With the intensity and intelligence of the action, Ubisoft have managed to make the wide expanses of Vegas feel extremely claustrophobic and give a real impression that you're fighting room to room with the bad guys; the amount of control you have over your squad really makes it feel like each success has been truly earned.

The design of each of the levels is also impressive, not just because they all have multiple routes to explore, but also due to the fact that the best ways to progress are often also the most enjoyable. There's nothing more satisfying than positioning your team at the door to a room containing terrorists and hostages whilst you rappel down to a nearby window. When everyone's set you give the go and your squad burst in, hitting the priority targets you allocated earlier using the snake cam. As the other terrorists back away from the incoming fire, you smash through the plate glass, unloading a full clip as you go. When the dust settles, the terrorists are on the ground taking a dirt nap, the hostages are quivering on their knees and your men are the last ones standing.

Vegas' music is appropriately dramatic, but largely forgettable due to the game's other great effects. The sounds of shots being fired and clips being loaded are extremely authentic and surpassed only by some of the more memorable of the environmental noises, such as the electronic tunes and rattling coins emitted by the endless ranks of slot machines. As a tactical shooter, the game is definitely a seriously professional work and one that's fully worthy of referring to itself as next gen, but that isn't to say it's completely perfect. While the graphics used for your character and squad members are impressive, the rest of the visuals don't have the crispness of some other games made specifically for the PS3. The Vegas reproduced looks exciting, but doesn't quite capture the intoxicating way in which the real city places eyeball-straining, unnatural darkness and illumination side by side. The game doesn't feature any real casinos, so there's no shoot out amongst the fountains at the Bellagio or on the pirate ships at Treasure Island. Instead, while some of the level settings, such as the Chinese Restaurant and the Vertigo Spire, stand out, many of the others slightly disappoint. The Fremont Street light show lacks pizzazz and it would have been nice if Dante's Casino had a little more baroque opulence and a little less building site. Another, slightly less obvious downer, is that the Vegas backdrops also generally seem to lack detail.

Vegas' dedication to its realistic action also seems to have come at the cost of its storyline. The game's plot is thin, formulaic and has an unsatisfactory ending. While every level begins with lifelike scenes from inside your helicopter as it carries you to your next destination, you do feel that the whole experience might have benefited from the odd sweeping shot down The Strip or around the Vertigo Spire. In addition to these graphical issues, there are also some problems with the otherwise excellent use of AI. Your teammates' AI is so impressive that it's possible to overuse it and, as a result, take part of the enjoyment away. Sending your men into situations ahead of you as a kind of human shield is even more appealing due to the fact that if one of them gets taken out they can be revived with a magic injection, but if you get nailed there's nothing that can be done for you. On the other side of the ball, whilst the terrorists are individually smart, their AI never has them acting as the combined force they could be. A shootout in one room, for example, won't attract men from the room next door.

Despite these chinks in Vegas' armour, the single player experience is still very enjoyable and, by way of backup, it also provides some extremely entertaining additional options. Not only is the story mode available to be played through in multiplayer co-op, but there's also Terrorist Hunt, where you and your crew can attempt to clear levels of computer-controlled bad guys. On top of the co-operative modes there is also a full cache of other online and offline multiplayer options, including the usual every-man-for-himself and team modes, with varying rules that can be played over a large number of maps. All of the multiplayer content provides exactly the same high adrenaline, high skill experience as the single player game and the number of possible setups means that anyone who enjoyed the story mode will almost certainly find something to their tastes in multiplayer, be it split screen or online.

Although it has all the markings of a next generation title, in some ways Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas is much more of an old-fashioned game. It may not have the best graphics or story, but it's still great because it shines in the area it really cares about - tactical realism. Its action is so good that it'll have you sweating like you're wearing one of Elvis' cat-suits in the midday Nevada sun. Unlike the King, however, Team Rainbow hasn't left the building and, hopefully, they're warming up for an encore at this very moment.

Reviewed by James Hamblin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).