Play is totally focused around a task force called an OPA, which is an acronym for Observe, Plan and Assault. Try that and you won’t make it through the first mission. Vegas isn’t just about kicking over a slot machine and blowing everything else away. Game play is a little different from the ordinary shooter, too. The streets of the Mexican border town are dust-blown and gritty and feel completely different from the sparkling casinos of Las Vegas. Each new chapter feels more like the unique location it’s supposed to be than an average game level. They’ve also layered their game with well-defined level design and excellent graphics. To help heighten game interaction, the Ubisoft team has devised great one-click control mechanics that make commanding your team, choosing weapons and taking cover as easy as, well, clicking one button. (Where’s Jack Bauer when you really need him?) You and a new team go on the offensive in the streets and casinos to save hostages, ascertain the terrorists’ plans and, eventually, save millions from a weapon of mass destruction. Just about the time that you fight your way out of the city-alone-you find out that the terrorists have made their way to Nevada. But because of some bad intel your comrades are captured and you’re left for dead. Things start out somewhere in Mexico where the team is supposed to flush out a terrorist group. You play as Logan Keller, the leader of an elite, three-man counterterrorism team. It’s a game that demands thought and planning at every turn. Their latest in the Rainbow Six series is a tactical shooter set in today’s Las Vegas that’s thick with tension, realism and close-quarter battle.

The creators of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas are obviously people who share my strategic bent. (Although I soon learned that women are well beyond the game plans of mere mortals.) And as I grew up and honed my mental strategies, I happily realized that I could apply those same skills to my other favorite pursuits, from tennis to video games to girls. But driving me forward was the joy of plotting out the movements of those funny-looking little horses and castles. He suffered through game after game until I could wrap my young brain around the particulars.

My dad was more of a checkers man, but he taught me how to play chess after I bugged him long enough.

Rainbow 6 vegas