Bugging Out

Video gamers are not a litigious bunch. But a few players are blogging that they're thinking of suing Ubisoft because the company's newest "Tom Clancy" title for the PS 3 is a little buggy.

No one will be suing anybody, probably. But it's no mystery why gamers are anonymously threatening a big, faceless company like this. After all, gamers attack corporations within the plots of video games. It's what we do!

Anyway, here's the beef. Quite a few online players of "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2" are having trouble accessing the game at first, because the PS 3 keeps making them download long patches.

When you do get the online game to work, it lags, so you point at someone and shoot a shotgun, a rifle or a pistol, but it takes a moment for the bullet to spring forth like a pretty daisy, and by then your prey has run away.

I've been having these problems, too. It's annoying. Even more aggravating is that normally I would just play the game on my Xbox 360 instead. But my Xbox 360 just imploded due to the widespread, notorious "red ring of death."

For me, this situation requires patience to wait for Ubisoft or Sony to clean up "Vegas 2" online, which could be fixed by the time you read this. Or it requires patience for Microsoft to repair my 360, which could take longer.

If I weren't a reviewer, I would just return the game to the store for a refund, then buy it again later when the dust settles.

Or I would simply play the game for now the old-school way: offline, which works fine, is a lot of fun, and is very pretty with Vegas sites, from the fake Eiffel Tower to velvet-red theaters and billboards of silhouetted female forms.

The plot of the offline game is routine. You play as Bishop, a highly trained anti-terrorist agent. Terrorists have infiltrated Vegas again, just as they did in the first "Vegas." You kill them, and you guide fellow soldiers to kill, as well.

The beauty is how well it's all structured. Every time you turn a corner, you must be prepared for another dumb terrorist to shoot at you. To combat this, you lean against walls and peek first, then strategize your approach.

"Vegas 2" is a more realistic and more challenging death game in that you die if you get hit with a bullet or two, unlike games where you get shot and shot and live and live.

At the beginning of "Vegas 2," you can choose an option to play the "casual" difficulty level, but even on "casual," it's quite daring, because you have to kill a lot of terrorists in many corridors before the game saves your progress.

To win, you need patience. So to recap, if you're not waiting for the PS 3's "Vegas 2" to work online, then you're waiting offline for a terrorist to turn his back so you can bloody him. See how shooting games teach us to calm down and wait?

("Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2" by Ubisoft retails for $60 for PS and Xbox 360 -- Plays very fun offline, but the online version shipped a little buggy. Looks great. Very challenging. Rated "M" for blood, intense violence, strong language. Three stars out of four.)