After some delays, the Player’s Pack Red Edition for Rainbow Six: Vegas was released Wednesday. The pack contains 5 new maps and 2 new game modes. At 800 points,$10, I think this is a must buy for any who plays Rainbow Six: Vegas regularly. Give that Halo 2 charged $2 a map recently, with no additional game modes, I think this is a pretty good value for your money.

Game Modes
The two new game modes are Assassination and Total Conquest. Both are team based and require that teams work well together to win. In Assassination one team is charged with protecting a VIP and the other team is charged with killing this official. What makes it interesting is that the the VIP is one of the players on the defending team, and he only gets a pistol with no armor. The objective is simple enough for the attacking team; kill the VIP. For the team defending the VIP the goal is to him to a set checkpoint alive. I really enjoyed playing Assassination. With only one life it sometimes turns onto Team Survival with the VIP hiding in a corner somewhere, but when teams work together it can be quite an intense game. I played on both the attacking and defending team and on most maps the attacking team can setup a couple choke points and wait for the defenders to approach. It takes patience, but pretty much ensures a victory if your team can play that way.

Total Conquest is essentially a King of the Hill Style game where there are three hills. What makes this mode really interesting is that the more of the areas you hold the faster you get points. So, when you hold one hill you get 5 points a second, if you hold two you get 15, but if you hold all three you get 25 points. Personally, I really enjoyed this mode. The exponential scoring made the games really close and allows for a loosing team to mount a fast comeback with an organized effort. Like any other game mode some maps are better for Total Conquest than other, but I enjoyed it on all the maps I played it on.

Maps
There are three brand new maps and two maps that are recreations of existing ones. Roof, Doscala Restaurant, and Marshalling Yard are brand new and then there are remakes of Killhouse and Border Town.

Roof is a very interesting map. The whole map is basically a three story building with a section of street on two sides of it. When I started playing it seemed like the Alpha spawn point (which is on the roof) has a distinct advantage, but since there are about 8 ways to get up to the roof it is not as bad as it first seams. The fighting inside the building can get quite crazy because there are three floors of hallways and rooms to get lost in. When playing Total Conquest on Roof it took me 3 minutes to find one of the satellite locations. It was on the first floor in the corner, but I first had to get down to the lower floor and then find my way there. It is a good map. On Team Survival and Team Sharpshooter if you start at the Bravo Spawn point don’t go out into the street. Instead spread your team throughout the building and wait for the Alpha team to come down to you. A well timed push for taking control of the roof by the bravo team can work, but if the Alpha team is intent on holding the roof they should be able to.

Doscala Restaurant is quickly growing into one of my favorite maps. It has a great split between wide open areas outdoor and confined close quarters inside. As expected there is a restaurant to fight in, but there is also the street out back and an adjacent parking garage. I played a few rounds of Team Sharpshooter and at first it seemed like the Bravo spawn point has a much better start location because they can get tot he second floor of the parking garage much quicker. However, once I got the hang of the map I found that the alpha spawn provides some great routes to use for flanking. Overall this map is well balanced between open street areas and confined indoor areas.

Marshalling Yard is also a mix of open areas and indoor corridor, but unlike Doscala Restaurant is seems like most of the fighting takes place outside so be sure to have a long range weapon and to take it slow walking through the level. Nothing worse than rounding a corner and getting sniped. This maps takes some getting use to for me because I prefer a close to mid-range battle, but once I started using more accurate weapons I had a much better time. The setting is an old train yard so there are some train cars to help provide cover while crossing the wide open spaces. Around the edges there are plenty of building to hide in while you try and snipe the players crazy (or stupid) enough to attempt to cross the open areas.

Killhouse Redux is a remake of the current Killhouse map. The essentially took Killhouse and opened it up. Each building not haw a back door on the first floor and the center dividing wall is now a hallway. Also, the spawn points have been moved from behind the buildings to the second floor inside the buildings. These changes mean you can get from your spawn to the other teams a lot faster. I’ve never been a big fan of Killhouse because I tend not to do that well on it, but I found some of the strategies I like to use still work pretty well. Just keep in mind that the opposing team can get behind you a lot faster now.

Border Town Redux takes the original Border Town map and moves the church to the center. The roads back behind the house are gone now. The map is much smaller without these areas. The area behind the church has been opened up a little and is the Bravo team’s spawn point. The house now only lets you get into the first floor from the church side of the building. Most games really become a battle to hold the church, especially since from it’s roof you can get a nice vantage of the opposing teams spawn. This really sucks for the Alpha team because their spawn is just a short section of the road on the side opposite from the house. The Bravo team at least has some rooms to hide in in their spawn area. If the Bravo Team can take the church it is quite easy to keep the Alpha team pinned into their spawn area. I’d not recommend this map for Team Sharpshooter. For other Team Survival it would probably be ok since you’ll not be in your spawn area except as the game starts. Also, objective based games would probably work ok as well.

Auto Update
In addition to the new game modes and maps there was another Auto Update released. This one has less changes, but they still decided to change the guns again. All of the other tweaks seem ok, but I still don’t see why they are changing weapons at this point.

> A bug in Ranked Matches unintentionally allowed players to play multiple rounds back to back worth large amounts of experience points. Ranked Matches now properly disconnect everyone at the end of the match.
> Non-dedicated hosts can no longer automatically launch matches without being present. On a non-dedicated host, the game will start when either everyone presses Ready, or the host presses Launch.
> Added mechanisms to detect the use of rubber bands on your gamepad to level up. Anyone doing this will receive a “player idle penalty”, which means zero experience points at the end of the match.
> Fixed a bug introduced in the last patch that unintentionally increased auto-aim when using long range scopes.
> Modified the efficiency of certain Sub-Machine Guns and, to a lesser extent, Assault Rifles. Noticeable changes can be found on the MP7A1, MP9 and MTAR21.
> The Take Cover camera has been improved to fix a specific situation that allowed someone taking cover to aim-fire at a target without being seen.
> Fixed the fact that Grenades could be thrown through certain walls.
> The sound effects of explosions are now working as intended on dedicated hosts.
> Reloading your checkpoint / saved game in Single player will no longer revert your difficulty level. This should help make the Rainbow Six Legend achievement more attainable.

Overall this is a great addition to an already fun game. Although $10 may seem a bit expensive with everything you get it is well worth it. The new game modes and maps add even more options to the well rounded multiplayer and the Auto Update cleans up the few annoying glitches that people were complaining about.