Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 [PC]

The Rainbow Six team is the embodiment of Teddy Roosevelt's call to "Speak softly and carry a big stick." They're certainly discreet, and with their terrifying arsenal, they hit hard enough to make a baseball bat wince. But Teddy didn't say anything about carrying a monster rig, and unfortunately, that's exactly what you'll need to get the pop you'd expect from Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for the PC. And even then, the PC version of this great tactical shooter doesn't quite measure up to the performances found on the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions. The AI seems even less capable than before, and the textures break, as does the frame rate whenever there's heavy action onscreen. The game is certainly playable, and can still be a lot of fun despite these shortcomings; it's even possible that gamers with the right rig won't experience any of these hitches. But on both of our test machines, which easily exceeded the recommended system requirements, Rainbow Six Vegas 2 ran with a limp even with many of its graphical bells and whistles set to low or off.

Nevertheless, this game is locked and loaded with enough good content to keep a small army waging virtual war for months. There's an entertaining single-player campaign, a terrorist hunt mode to fool around with once you've played through the story, and rich online play. You can gain currency to spend on decking out your agent either online or off, and a new sprint button speeds up all the action.