Outstanding!
ACES High
Our favorite improvement by far has got to be the introduction of the A.C.E.S. system, which tracks your play style and rewards you with weapons that fit said style. While this system is great for tracking progress, the real selling point is that it works across all modes of the game, online and offline, competitive, solo or co-op. Every time you kill an enemy in a way that fits into one of the three A.C.E.S. categories (marksman, close-quarters, assault), you'll get points that count towards new weaponry from that category.
In practice, we found that this was actually very rewarding while playing the game, even though the somewhat understated trumpet fanfare that accompanies the achievement of a new level in A.C.E.S. pales in comparison to the power-chord metal guitar advancement sound in Call of Duty 4. Still, although we don't use shotguns very often, that doesn't mean we don't want access to a variety of shotguns, so in some ways, A.C.E.S. is fairly limiting.
A.C.E.S. is pretty open to exploitation, so it might not take you very long to max out everything. Case in point: our boss Will Tuttle maxed out each of the three categories in a matter of days by grinding specific kinds of kills from early levels of the game. Granted, not everyone is going to completely ream the system like that, but the possibility is there and so robs A.C.E.S. of a bit of its impact. Ideally, it's supposed to ensure that you always get to play the game the way you're most comfortable with, but for most players (ourselves included) it will simply be another area of the game ripe for complete domination.
As easy as it might be to exploit the A.C.E.S. system, the same thing cannot be said for Vegas 2's expansive ranking system. Each kill, committed either by you or your AI teammates, grants an award of experience points which are applied to your overall rank. Ranking up gives you access to new cosmetic updates and, of course, bragging rights. Only very small amounts of experience are needed for the lowest ranks, but the requirements for subsequent ranks seem to increase almost exponentially. That may not sound particularly discouraging, but once you've sunk an entire weekend's worth of play into the game and only earned a miniscule fraction towards your Captain rank, you'll understand. So, although the A.C.E.S. system may be a bit of a push-over and completely susceptible to exploitation, the overall ranking system seems to be a much tougher customer and provides the much-needed skill and experience kudos that the hardcore demand from this type of game.
