It is a pretty interesting phenomenon to watch as each entry into the Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon series evolves from game to game. A few tweaks here and there always seem to make the latest outing greater than before. The Ghosts are back again to fight the evils of the world after their last foray into the role of world protectors last November. Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike, being touted as an expansion, not a full blown sequel to the series, sees the team return to the battle for good as they try to take down a Pakistani warlord named Rahil, who is on his way to take over leaderless country of Kazakhstan. As always, to succeed in your missions, you must use tactical strategies along with pinpoint accuracy, and of course a little luck doesn’t hurt either. Along with the 11 new single player missions, there are 24 multiplayer maps, 24 multiplayer modes, numerous new weapons to choose from, as well as the return of your trust camera gun.

The first thing you will notice when you fire up the game is the vast graphical improvements from the previous games. For being released less than a year after the previous title, the visuals are a big step up. They are much smoother and softer and everything is detailed greatly. Explosions are a sight to behold and taking a chopper out of the air as it barrels down on your position has never looked or felt more satisfying. Character animations, both enemy and team mates, are fluid and convincing and not jerky and irregular. The weather effects change during the game, depending on your location and are done quite nicely. The snow falling on the winter maps and the sand blowing as you trek through the wastelands of the deserts helps create a more convincing environment, but seeing foot prints appear in the snow would have been a welcome sight, unfortunately it was over looked. Another oversight with the games graphics is the night vision. Although you really only have to use it on one or two missions, it is just awful. Enemies blend right into the scenery and practically disappear from view even when they are right in front of you. One of the missions you need to use the night vision on is easily the hardest mission of the game where you need to defend a bunker from an attack at night and the night vision just makes it all that much more difficult.

The game play style is one you will already be familiar with if you have played Ghost Recon 2 previously. The over the shoulder view lets you see the action at a wider point of view than it would in first person, which can be turned on as an option, but there is no visible weapon while using it. The commands you use to direct your team are straight forward and simple to access with the controller, additionally, you can also use the communicator headset to issue the commands by voice. Unfortunately, with all the great graphical improvements, the AI of game controlled allies and enemies still leaves a lot to be desired. Too many times during missions, an enemy would manage to get in close and the team would sit and stare at him instead of taking him out, while at the same time, the enemy would look around with targets directly in front of him. Other times, enemies that are a huge distance away will spot you sitting in a bush, in the dark, no matter how much noise you make. Whether you attract attention or not, they have one hell of a way to know where you are almost all the time. In missions where you need to defend an objective, enemies will rush in and not bother to use cover. They will run into the area, stop where they are and start firing until you drop them.

While the single player game length doesn’t seem all that extensive with only 11 missions, given the varying degree of difficulty the missions offer, some missions will take 10-15 tries to pass, while others can be dealt with in one. Keeping true to the Ghost Recon realism, sometimes all it takes is one wrong move, a bullet in the head and you will fail the mission in a heartbeat. The missions, whether it is to defend, demolish or lone wolf missions where you go alone, they all feature a number of objectives to complete and usually open another set of objective when the first set is complete. The game is looking to be more open-ended in how missions are handled, so you can choose to lay out your attack by using the map of the area any way you want to, completing objectives in any order you choose. With the new single player storyline that the expansion adds, the improved graphics and the sizeable multiplayer additions, it really could have been released as the next full game in the series. All in all, with a price of $29.99, Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike has a few flaws and annoyances that can be over looked for the punch it packs.