The Bug That Got Away

Rainbow 6 Las Vegas 2 is a worthy sequel. However, having said that, I encountered one surprising bug that suggested to me that all was not well within the Ubisoft QA Department. The bug I am referring to is found in the multiplayer mode. As you log on to Xbox live your gamertag account data is checked in the server database and you are awarded bonus “EXP” depending on much you played / achieved in the previous game. Having no choice in whether you wanted this bonus or not, you then discover that the achievement for “Getting to Private First Class Rank” has not unlocked even though your new rank is much higher.
Achievements are really just a handful of variables that are examined by a database of criteria. When the variable in question, (in this case, EXP) reaches the required criteria the program executes a procedure and the achievement is then unlocked.In other words, If “exp” equals or is more than “exp needed to reach x rank” then unlock achievement. So simple… a few lines of code! So how on earth did QA miss it? Did they not test this game on a 360 with a logged on account?
The answer seems to be that they were too busy fixing even more important things, like graphical glitches, buggy AI and erratic lighting shadows. What started off as a story mode with 4 player co-op like its predecessor ended up with just 2 player co-op because cutting this feature down was the only way to eliminate as many bugs as possible in the program code. In order to keep to the release date , QA ran out of time : which brings us back to the simple achievement bug : it probably was tested before and worked but it was not tested again with the new watered down versions. It’s referred to as “Regression testing” : it should have been checked again but there was no time left.I am unable to find accurate sales figures for the first Rainbow Las Vegas game but it seems to be around 4 million copies worldwide with well over half of these on the 360 Console. What a shame that a big budget and profitable franchise like Rainbow 6 wasn’t given a bit more time to ensure the creases could be ironed out. Clumsy pre- production planning or perhaps a release schedule designed to get the game out before GTAIV arrived?

UPDATE

Ubisoft have announced that 2 million copies of the Rainbow 6 sequel have been sold worldwide in roughly 2 weeks! So congratulations to them but I will still stand by my evaluation above : it’s a good enough game but it could have and should have been a lot better. According to Kotaku.com, the PS3 version of the game was even more problematic, with some users being unable to play online at all for a period of time. Maybe Ubisoft should tread a little more carefully when it comes to planning the next sequel because the stakes are getting higher : only yesterday, Mark Rein of Infinity Ward announced that roughly 1.3 million people are playing online everyday with “Call Of Duty 4” on the 360 version alone. Add to that almost another million people online with the PS3 and PC versions and you get no prizes for guessing which sequel will sell more copies when the time comes : “Call Of Duty 5 “ or “Rainbow 6 : Las Vegas 3”.