I sometimes wonder what the hell is wrong with me. I mean, obviously that’s an open-ended question whose answers are too lengthy to enumerate, but specifically Rainbow Six Vegas 2 has me wondering about a particular facet of my madness. Having spent a good chunk of the weekend running through the game in coop, I realized at the end of that time that somewhere along the way I had silently developed a personality and background for my character where none was previously provided or even necessary. Think I’m making this up? In my mind, he’s the lone wolf on the team, preferring to operate on his own. He’s a bit reckless, and it’s only his cool nerves under fire and his friendly relationship with his superiors that keep him out of hot water for breaking the rules. I have some ideas about how he came to join Rainbow, but I think you get the idea.

All of that is based nearly entirely on his in-game appearance.

The easy scapegoats for this unusual behavior are the thin storyline — whose sauce can only be described as weak — and the surprisingly flexible custom outfit options. I’m not sure what I find so compelling about playing Barbie dress-up with an elite counter-terrorist agent, but suffice to say that undue agonizing occurred over the precisely correct pairing of sunglasses with hat. And just what do those shoulder pads say about me as a person? In the year 2008, it’s important to look good around the office if you want to succeed in business, even if your business is bullet delivery.

Ironically, given a non-linear sandbox game such as Oblivion where my character is given to me as a blank slate to draw upon, I’m much less likely to get creative. My most defining characteristics are that I’m fond of killing one or two innocent home owning civilians and then moving in like I’d always owned the place, typically followed by meticulously arranging my armor sets around their my new pad. I don’t know that I’d describe that as defining personality as I would exhibiting troubling sociopathic tendencies.

At any rate, this Rainbow obsession seems destined to be short-lived. With the campaign out of the way I’m hard pressed to find the desire to play without a cadre of friends in tow, and this doesn’t seem to be re-igniting the flame that everyone but me seemed to hold in their heart for the predecessor. From a certain perspective, however, even this brief incursion back into consoles has served its dark purpose. If you want to know what I’ve been doing with my free time lately, the evidence is readily available.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 12:27 am and is filed under Misc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.