When I was a little boy, there were the games my dad didn’t let me play and the games I could definitely play. It wasn’t some kind of age restriction thing, my parents didn’t believe in that kind of thing, it was more of a difficulty category kind of thing. On my side was Banjo-Kazooie, Call of Duty, House of the Dead, Time Crisis, Metal Slug, Halo and Street Fighter. On my dad’s side was Zelda, Splinter Cell, Manhunt, Doom 64, Timesplitters and Rainbow Six and Rainbow Six was a game I wanted to play as a little kid. Each time my dad put that black cartridge in, I ran into the room and watched him play the game in awe. This was the first time I saw a game do something like a reality of a SWAT team where they can’t kill without permission. You had to apprehend people to complete the mission even if they aren’t armed and lethal force was more of an emergency choice than the primary. It was a straight SWAT Clone, but it was the closest we could get on the console and I couldn’t wait to get the game.
When I came of age to play these kinds of games, I got the newest entry of the time called Rainbow Six Las Vegas 2. I don’t remember much of the story even after the recently playing it, but the game is incredibly fun to play. The game had this aspect of going about the mission any way they wanted and each way was shown to you with a lot of options applied to them. Along with that, the game gave you gadgets to really pull any playstyle you wanted, giving you a smoke or flash bomb to sneakily take down your disoriented enemy. Or it gave you a grenade to take those enemies out of cover and take them outstanding in front of you. And if those options didn’t sound like what you want, then you might have some options above them if given the right circumstances. The game had a lot of variety to it and the game was aggressively fun on both ends of the playstyles. I’m just sad the game hasn’t caught on. I guess it’s due to the fact that the game didn’t do well when it came out. It’s considered a kind of cult classic kind of game, but the game hasn’t gotten much love as far as I could have seen and the anticipation of another sequel to this game was put down, so any kind of hope for another one in the same of vein as this game in the franchise was lost. That kind of made me sad back in my tweenage years because the game was fun and so great. The multiplayer could use some work, but the game was fun. Of course, the franchise continued with the installment we all love called Siege, but it’s not the game I wanted. The game I wanted was more tactical and had a high skill ceiling and, well had a story that was completely different than the multiplayer. Hello and welcome to this Game Making Challenge.
Mechanics:
In the game’s campaign, you are the team leader, so what does that do? Well, in Vegas 2 there is no perks to it and the only thing that helps is commanding your team. Of course, playing alone that would work, but what about a full lobby of people? What would that do besides have a disobedient team? I want to make essential to listen to the team leader in the game when playing co-op, having the players keep a limited loadout of a few items and each role in the game will have specific and crucial perks. The team leader will have both grenades and flashes which is the standard grenade loadout for any leader, but not smoke bombs or incendiary grenades. He will have both thermal and night vision goggles as well as the door-snake camera to spy on enemies in rooms as well as carrying any weapon he can. The Ranged role will have both flash and smoke to confuse the enemies and make them either sitting ducks or have them move to a more accessible position, but not grenades or incendiaries. He has only long ranged weapons as well as any with burst fire mode, but no shotguns or light machine guns. He has the thermal goggles, but not night vision. The Point Man role will carry grenades and incendiaries to push the enemy down and have them carry agro on you, but not flash or smokes. He can carry any weapon he wants like shotguns, AK’s or LMG’s, but anything ranged would be locked from the menu as well as snipers. He carries night vision, but no thermal goggles. Then the Flanker role will have both flash and incendiary which both can be used at the same time to destroy a standing crowd during a flank or in the middle of a firefight. He only carries SMG’s and automatic pistols to at least draw more attention towards him and allow his teammates to put their two cents in the battle. He would have only thermal goggles, but he can request for the night vision to the leader if he wants. The button prompt would be displayed on the leader’s screen to accept it or deny it, which the answer would be notified by via voice lines or notification on screen.
The team leader is the only member in the team that can mark enemies and requests to focus fire on them and is the only one that can Door-Snake in rooms, so the leader is a major role when you want to know your surroundings. He can also advise the team to halt, follow or suggest ideal cover areas in the game. If the orders are not followed, points will be deducted from your overall EXP reward. I really want this game to encourage some kind of team effort and have the team listen to the leader. And to avoid some kind of misunderstanding of the map layout or which weapon would best be used in certain situations, the team leader will always be the higher leveled player of the group (only when playing publicly). I want to make this role more freeform to give the player a sandbox kind of feel to it, having your team rely on your command and hope everything goes well with his orders.
The Point Man’s perks come with some extra damage resistance so he can aggro the enemies easier than the standard health pool. He also has a more accurate blind fire when covering, so that (again) agro is easier for the player playing this role. He carries one more of each grenade (ideal standard 2 each) and has a better ammo capacity that scales up by 30%or 25% than the rest of the team. I really want to make this kind of character more aggressive in the game, so players can at least help the team by drawing attention to him instead of towards the team. He can also flank if he has to, but that’s the Flanker’s job since he’s faster.
The Flanker will be faster but have less damage resistance than the rest of the team. Because he’s so fast, his transition from cover to cover is quicker than the rest of the team, so he’s much harder to hit. Snipers can down him though since they can lead the bullet, unlike the standard enemy types. His hip fire is very accurate, but his blind fire is only to suppress the enemies. His grenade combo, on the other hand, can do very nicely when the enemies are bunched up together. He can draw more agro and make the enemies panic when they notice him, having them scramble to safer cover, which leaves them vulnerable to incoming fire from the team. The Flanker role is the only one I want to be offensive as well as dangerous, appealing to the daring players out there that like having the sense of ominous danger since he is more likely to be downed than the other teammates.
The Ranged role is obviously the ranged part of the group which can do a lot more damage in higher places. Other than the obvious, he can do an enemy for the team leader while using scope or binoculars. This can only give the number of enemies in the area but doesn’t mark them, that’s the team leaders job to do that. He has the same damage resistance as the team leader does, but the flash and smoke is a good way to make your enemies a standing target as well as confusing them for the team. I want this role to be only one that more so directly help the leader instead of the entire team. He's supposed to be the most reliable role in the game next to the team leader.
Other than the roles, the only thing I want completely similar to the Las Vegas games of the franchise is the cover system. It’s the one thing I love about the game is the few games I enjoy with cover mechanics. It was reliable and fun to flank people with. I just wish that this kind of cover was more prominent in games. I think the only thing I would change from this would be the aiming behind cover thing since the camera was a clunky mess when you did that. I think the best way to do it is either make the game do a smooth transition to first person or have the cover appear transparent. Those are the only changes I would make to that. And probably keep the button to cover the same, which was left trigger on the console version, and keep the aiming like Halo. Maybe change the sensitivity to the aiming out of cover, having some kind of easy to transition from side cover to above cover and all that.
Multiplayer Modes:
In Las Vegas 2 and 1, they both had Terrorist Hunt, which had the player hunt down randomly spawned enemies on a map. There were at least a hundred enemies to kill at times, but the mode was a mess to me. The mode had you wondering through areas aimlessly and were only to attack a small portion of the enemies to slowly chip away at that hundred enemy round. It wasn’t fun and made a lot of the game feel more like a flank simulator. Just wasn’t fun to me. I think it should be more like Siege’s Terrorist Hunter where there’s a house or an entry in a building and you have to clear the building from a small to a large enemy count. There’s no objective other than shoot to kill orders. Just have the player tactically take out the enemies like in the campaign, except there’s no needed roles, just loadout to pay attention to.
The only enemy types you would see is a rushing shotgunner, snipers, and the normal machine gun-toting enemies. There will be special ones like Dozers and Demolition Men which are supposed to make the mode more exciting and refreshing compared to the more realistic campaign. These enemies will have a large health pool and take a lot to take down, but they do have certain weak spots on them that can be spotted in the thermal goggles, where the red areas do the most damage, tear off armor or, in the demo’s case, reveal an explosive area where he keeps all of his bombs. There will be no suiciders in this game though… I hate those guys in Siege…
Another mode will be the standard PvP mode where there will be a team against another to fight it out. Almost like how Counter-Strike does it, but more tactical and with cover mechanics slapped on it. There will be modes like King of the Hill, Rush and Attack/Defend, but there will be unique ones like Tactics, Gunpoint and One-Man Sniper.
Tactics would be an objective based mode where the players have to take down an over-gunned terrorist group (the other team of four or five people) as they only have 100 lives to share with the rest of the 8 person team. The enemy team will have a very large health pool which can’t be replenished by getting in cover and can’t run or get in cover, all they have to do is fire at the team with their giant guns. Once either team takes out the other, the match is over with the last few standing. This mode is basically just another juggernaut mode, but with some stuff mixed in.
Gunpoint is like a hostage situation, but one team has to keep the hostage as long as they can before killing them. The long the hostage is held, the higher the score for the team. Once the good guys come in to take out all the terrorists, no matter how many points you have, the counter-terrorists win. If the hostage is killed from the start, the round ends in a stalemate meaning no EXP is given and the round won’t count as well as switching teams. I really want this mode to be a fair win and the story behind it like the terrorists know they’re not getting what they want and they’re more hostile as the SWAT team comes in to enforce them. If this ever gets to be made, I just hope to balance this mode out as much as I could since this mode can seem exploitable in some ways, I just don’t know how to fix it unless I have it made.
One-Made Sniper is a mode where there are four terrorists and they are hard to find. There will be three, lightly armed SWAT members to identify and mark for their sniper to take out. They barely have much to fire with and the terrorists can’t shoot much without giving away their position. The entire mode will have the players try not to get out of cover get found by either team. The Sniper has a very powerful rifle that can break through any surface, so it won’t matter where you are, you can’t run away from the sniper’s bullet. The team has only one life to count on, so when they’re killed, they can’t come back beside spectating living teammates. Suppressors can silence your fire from the sniper, but not from the three SWAT member coming after you, so firing will still be a risk more than anything else in this mode. I really want this mode to be suspenseful to the players and create this kind of unique gamefeel. I know this can be easy for hackers on here, but it would be easy to spot one when you notice the team hasn’t found you and the sniper fires randomly at towards you like a god.
Campaign:
I think it would be nice to have a small branch of different campaigns in the game where there is a small story to care about as well as fighting as different counter-terrorist specialists from different countries and have assigned specific weapons for each country like in real life. For example, the Russians are usually assigned the Bizon SMG or how the Japanese are given the H&K G36 rifle. I want to make the campaign to be like that, but contain some kind story as well as some great fun even if you’re alone playing it. I would love to see some different countries portrayed in these branches of the military.
Maybe just make the game a long story experience like the Las Vegas games, where you play as the same character with a wide variety of weapons from different countries as well as their tactics, but who knows which would better. What do you guys think? Many campaigns in different countries or just one long campaign?
As for playing alone, I think the standard AI would always listen to you no matter what, so the player doesn’t have to worry about having other people in the game to enjoy the classic Rainbow Six combat. If you say halt, they will stop in their tracks until you say otherwise. If you want them to take cover over there, they’ll do it without question! If you want to have only one of them to get to cover, then you can have the Flanker go behind enemy lines. Same goes with the Ranged role, they’ll take out anyone in their sights if you want them and to make it fair, have the damage output from the AI only do a little bit since that would destroy some of the fun for the player. Of course, they would be reliable in many situations, but come on! Have the player get most of the fun.
What do you guys think of this entry of mine? Do you think this would surpass the fame of Siege or would it fail to catch most people’s attention like the originals? Well, I hope you enjoyed this somewhat as I do this challenge. Don’t forget, the challenge is how would you go about a sequel of a game. If you have any questions ask me or Haley. Again, I hope you enjoyed this and ‘til next time…
Play More Games!