Back in the days of the original Xbox I used to spend a hell of a lot of my spare time sat in my bedroom playing on Xbox Live with friends and foes (as, let's face it, there are some real cretins lurking online) alike. If you converted the hours I spent playing the likes of Unreal Championship, Midtown Madness 3 and Soldier of Fortune II into pints of Guinness, you might have been able to successfully induce a hangover in the almighty alcohol swilling machine, George Best (maybe). However, that all pales in comparison to how much time I spent sniping, head-shot-ing, and "GO! GO! GO!"-ing my way through Rainbow Six 3 and its sequel Black Arrow. These two titles are inarguably my favourite games to ever appear on Microsoft's debut console and it's safe to say that at least eighty per cent of my time on Xbox Live was spent playing these two games. Sadly, due to money issues and suchlike, I never got to play Team Rainbow's next outing, Rainbow Six: Lockdown (rest assured that I have only just ceased kicking myself over that!), but with my chronic obsession of RS3 and Black Arrow in mind, you'll probably have quite a good idea of how much I was anticipating the franchise Xbox 360 debut and how utterly scarred and heartbroken I would have been had the game turned out to be dire…

Dire, my arse! The second you place Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas into your Xbox 360, boot it up and start playing, you know that you are truly in for the ride of your life; something so special and so monumentally essential that you'll think to yourself, "Yes, this is what the next-generation is all about." Truth be told, a fair bit of the game does tread familiar first person shooter territory, but the amount of additions made to the core FPS formula will have you wondering just how the genre has coped without them for all these years.

When an all-new Team Rainbow, led by Logan Keller, is sent to Mexico to capture a terrorist named Irena Morales, things go horribly wrong and two of the team members are captured, leaving only Logan to pursue her and find out what she's up to. What comes next defies belief, as Logan is teamed up with Jung Park (a computer whiz and sniper specialist) and Michael Walter (the new-new team's demolitions expert and heavy gunner) and sent to Las Vegas, which has been besieged by Irena and a veritable army of mercenaries who plan to do something truly heinous within 24 hours. From that point onwards, the player (controlling Logan) must lead Rainbow through Sin City's myriad of casinos and locales, mowing down terrorists and preventing them from bringing Irena's diabolical scheme to fruition.

Vegas plays like this: before each mission you're briefed on the situation before being dropped in to put bullet to terrorist skull. As is the trend nowadays, you can't take many shots before you end up getting killed, although your health does regenerate if you go long enough without being shot. This now popular health system works well enough, but I really wish that developers would ditch it and come up with something better - we're playing as a military unit here, not bloody Wolverine. The Normal difficulty setting enforces this rule well enough on its own, but the Realistic setting will likely provide a bugger of a hurdle even for seasoned FPS players. Bearing this in mind, finding cover is the name of the game and the environments in Vegas are littered with walls, poles, fences, cars, slot machines and a multitude of other static objects for you to hide behind while you shoot it out with the enemy. And speaking of shooting, Vegas certainly delivers the goods in terms of firearms - you have an almost overwhelming choice of assault rifles, submachine guns, light machine guns, shotguns, sniper rifles and pistols, as well as a myriad of grenades and other tactical explosives. What's more, almost every weapon has a handful of optional upgrades available - such as scopes, laser sights, larger ammo clips, etc - allowing you to fully customise your weapon of choice and make it something for those dirty terrorists to truly fear. Want the rapid firing capabilities of a submachine gun with the added bonus of a 6x magnification scope? You got it! And naturally, what with this being a Tom Clancy game and all, each and every firearm and piece of equipment is accurate down to the smallest detail. Furthermore, making use of your night and thermal vision goggles is a must, as enemies can - and often will - be lurking anywhere.

Of course, seasoned RS players know that there's no way that they're going to be able to tackle an entire terrorist organisation on their own, despite what James Bond would have you believe. You need a team, and a team is what you shall have. Alongside your utilisation of cover, your AI teammates are quite literally the backbone of your chances of emerging victorious against Irena and her hordes of gun-toting yes-men. You have almost complete control over their actions via a simple yet versatile interface that allows you to issue commands, tactically essential if you don't want to end up with a third eye socket. Pressing the A button moves your team to whatever you were aiming at, so for example, if you were aiming at the floor or wall they'll move to that spot and cover behind it. Aiming at interactive objects in the environment generates a context sensitive result; sending your team towards a bomb sees Michael defusing it, or sending them to a computer results in Jung hacking it.

Sending your team to doors on the other hand gives you many options regarding how you're going to enter a room. Using your snake-cam to see who or what is in there and tagging priority targets for your team to shoot at is a good idea, but you can also have your team hold their position at one entrance to a room while you position yourself behind an alternate door. Subsequently ordering them to chuck a flash grenade in there before you all storm in from different angles and fill your blinded foes with lead is just one of many choices available to you. Basic commands such as hold, regroup, weapons free and return fire only are assigned to the D-pad, giving you even more tactical options. Alternatively you could opt to not use the button command interface and instead use the Live Communicator headset to issue commands verbally - it works, but the choice of commands is a tad limited when compared to RS3's virtual dictionary of verbal orders.

While at its core the action - and subsequently the tactics required in order to be successful - in Vegas is largely similar to what Rainbow Six and indeed every Tom Clancy franchise has always consisted of, Ubi Soft brought in one new major element to the gameplay. Think back to your Xbox days, when playing Rainbow Six and hiding behind cover offered you two choices - pop out and fire off a few rounds before darting behind cover again, or use the game's leaning feature to lean out from behind your safe haven. Neither of these two options was very practical. Leaning was set to the D-pad and thus extremely fiddly to execute without getting nailed in the head, while actually moving out from wherever you were hiding was just plain suicidal. Luckily, Vegas solves this problem; while behind cover, holding down the L trigger causes the camera to switch to a third person perspective and your character automatically hugs the wall. This allows you to move left and right behind your cover, wait around a corner (fully able to see what's going on around it) and quickly line up a shot, pop out, fire a few rounds and dart back in again with no hassle whatsoever. Delightfully, this also works for popping up behind low cover and you're can even deliver blind fire by moving to the edge of a corner and firing without popping out. Additionally, while hugging a wall you can still rotate 360 degrees, so if an enemy does get the drop on you and open fire you won't necessarily be out of the game just yet.

Basically, the new cover system has almost single-handedly revolutionised the genre and makes Vegas that much more incredible to play, largely because you feel totally in control and that you have some sort of genuine tactical advantage to use against the AI, but also because it makes each environment seem so much less static and lifeless - this was one of my only gripes concerning previous RS games, but now the scenery isn't just scenery any more; it's there to be used to your benefit in the taxing situations that you find yourself in. On top of the cover system, new gameplay elements such as being able to heal fallen team-mates (which has to be seen to be believed - quite what Logan is injecting people with is beyond me but I doubt it's in any way legal!) and rappel up and down the sides of buildings have been added into the mix, the latter helping no end to further immerse players into the role of a tactical military unit.

Vegas not only plays superbly, but also excels in terms of technical prowess, both on the surface and behind the scenes. Presentation-wise you'll be extremely hard pushed to find anything that looks as good as this game does on the Xbox 360 or any other console - I played this on my girlfriend's forty-two inch HDTV and nearly had an orgasm. With the game being set in Las Vegas, the environments are deliciously bright, vibrant and colourful, evoking the feeling of being in the bustling gambling capital of the world almost perfectly. Having said that, even when you're indoors and in seemingly poorly lit areas, the use of real-time shadowing serves to provide an equally atmospheric experience. Likewise, the character models, along with their animation, are just as impressive. As terrorists run scared or hold their ground, or you watch Team Rainbow sneakily navigate through a besieged casino, you'll believe that you're truly there.

On the aural front, Vegas is best played loud and with bass. Every gunshot, explosion and smash has real punch to it; the music sets the mood wonderfully and the in-game dialogue runs the gamut from gritty and sombre to surprisingly hilarious. I'll never forget the time I slipped my snake-cam under a door and listened in on two terrorists having a conversation about what their favourite videogames were! Under the hood, so to speak, the game boasts impressive AI. Computer controlled teammates do what you say, do it quick and do it well, while your opposition in the single player campaign puts up one hell of a fight. They use blind fire, pop out from behind cover, throw grenades, retreat, cover each other and execute flanking manoeuvres. Basically, they can do anything you do and in many cases may well do it better (to start with at least).

So, both the presentation and single player are amazing, but naturally when it comes to Rainbow Six the multiplayer needs to be astounding - and it usually is. Vegas is by no means an exception in any sense of the word; in fact, it's the best multiplayer FPS I've ever played and perfectly rounds off what would have already been an exceptional package even if the multiplayer had been excluded altogether. The range of modes on offer is staggering - you've got mandatory multiplayer FPS modes such as Sharpshooter (deathmatch), Survival (last man standing), Team Sharpshooter and Team Survival, as well as alternative modes of play such as Attack and Defend, where one team must secure a package and safely reach an extraction point with it. The team modes are especially entertaining when everyone communicates with each other and works as a team. In fact, not doing so will do you no favours whatsoever; all too many times I've been in an online game where everyone on my team wanders off on their own before subsequently being picked off one by one by the opposing team.

Multiplayer doesn't stop with Vegas' competitive modes either, as the ever-popular co-operative play from previous RS outings returns in spades. You and up to three other players can either tackle the single player campaign missions as a team or embark on Terrorist Hunt missions, where you're all dropped into a map littered with AI enemies and the mission's not complete until you've put holes in every single one. However, the most impressive thing about Vegas' multiplayer is the Persistent Elite Creation. Basically, PEC allows you to create your own character that you take online in all competitive and co-operative modes. Playing and racking up those kills gains you experience points, earning enough of which causes your rank to increase. This in turn unlocks additional firearms, equipment, weapon customisation options, clothing, headgear and armour for you to kit your character out in. And to add to the feeling of online individuality, Vegas allows you to use the Live Vision camera to map your face into the game, placed directly onto your character. Considering that the game merely asks that you to place your head so that it appears within an on-screen box and takes two pictures - one of the front of your head and one of the side - it works surprisingly well and is something that really should be included in every FPS in the future. Now when you shoot your friend in the head and win the game, you shoot him in the head and win the game.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas is the real deal when it comes to first person shooters. It surpasses any other games in the genre (yes, even you, GoldenEye), utilises gameplay mechanics and an innovative multiplayer component that will likely become mandatory for any decent FPS games from here on in and the very few minor flaws such as textures taking a slight dip during multiplayer games and the anything-but-swift loading times are all but forgettable. From its visuals, sound, cover system and tactical gameplay right through to its intense realism, essential multiplayer modes and genuinely impressive Xbox Live camera support, this game oozes quality from orifices it probably never even knew it had. For any shooter fan to miss this game would be a crime to rival the shooting of Abraham Lincoln, the Great Train Robbery or even the release of a new Simple Plan album. If you like first person shooters, you will love Rainbow Six: Vegas and it is imperative that you add this game to your collection - I can't spell it out to you any clearer than that.

Reviewed by Mark Reece for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).