Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2 Summit Strike Single-Player Preview

Just recently, we took an exclusive look at the multiplayer portion of Ghost Recon 2 Summit Strike, the upcoming retail expansion to last year's popular Xbox tactical shooter, and now we've gotten to spend some time with the single-player campaign to see what Summit Strike will offer to budding offline soldiers. The game isn't an expansion in the traditional sense that it'll require the original Ghost Recon 2; rather, it's a lower-priced pseudo-sequel that uses the same gameplay mechanics and largely the same engine and artwork to provide new content for fans of the first game. From what we've seen of the numerous missions and improved graphics here, though, it looks like Summit Strike will provide almost as much meat to chew on as the original Ghost Recon 2 did last fall.

Every time the Ghosts are called into action, you have to figure it's for a pretty darn good reason, and in Summit Strike that proves true once again. A Pakistani warlord named Asad Rahil is using his ill-gotten wealth and international influence to amass military might that will let him wrest control of Kazakhstan and use the country to further his far-reaching nefarious schemes. Rahil has already gotten the Kazakh president killed and is spreading his forces across the country, and UN forces haven't been able to stop him alone. Cue the Ghosts, who will infiltrate Kazakhstan and conduct a covert 11-mission campaign against Rahil's military installations, with the eventual goal of capturing the warlord alive.

The first Ghost Recon 2 had 15 missions in its single-player campaign, so the 11 in Summit Strike really isn't that far off the mark that was set by the original. And it seems as though these new missions are potentially more replayable than the older ones, since they've been designed--both geographically and in terms of objectives--to give you more freedom in choosing how you go about completing your goals. Mission objectives will unfold dynamically as you move through a given level, and many of the levels we've played so far have offered a variety of routes to take in order to reach the key points you need to blow up...er, gain access to.

We've seen a good amount of graphical and topographical variety in the maps we've gotten to play so far. The single-player missions will take you from mountainous, nearly arctic terrain, to heavily forested areas, to arid, canyon-filled desert environments. In fact, the Badlands Fortress map that we described in our hands-on look at Summit Strike's multiplayer is taken right out of the single-player campaign. There are plenty of man-made structures populating some of the missions, too, such as an industrial complex out in the wilderness. Our favorite map so far is probably Government District, which is the one mission in the single-player game that's set right in the middle of a congested urban environment. This mission has you roaming the city streets with your squad, attempting to pick off enemies down alleyways and across courtyards--when you're not defending against marauding helicopters, that is.

Summit Strike's gameplay will still revolve around the same soldier classes that we've seen in past iterations of the series, including rifleman, gunner, and marksman, though the game will introduce more than a dozen new weapons that you can use within each class. The most interesting one is the SCAR modular assault rifle, an advanced weapon that can accept different modules to change functionality on the fly. These new weapons should add some nice variety for those who played the original Ghost Recon 2 to death, though of course the core over-the-shoulder shooting action will remain the same.

As we mentioned in our multiplayer hands-on, Summit Strike will offer a lot of improvements in the graphics department, as Red Storm has been working to beef up the engine's lighting capabilities and bolster the game's frame rate at the same time. The most noticeable improvement to the graphics, though, is the frequent weather effects you'll see in some missions. When you find yourself in a frigid area, for instance, you may be faced with heavy snowfall, but this contributes to ambience primarily and doesn't really obscure your view of enemies. Likewise, in arid areas the wind may frequently kick up clouds of dust, which again adds to the overall cohesion of the environment. Ghost Recon 2 was already quite a nice-looking game, but it's good to see the developers taking an active approach to improving it further for this follow-up.

At only $30, Ghost Recon 2 Summit Strike is looking like a compelling package for anyone who appreciated the tactical nature of the original game's shooting action. What we've played of the campaign so far indicates that it should be almost as involved as that of the first Ghost Recon 2, and, of course, the extensive Xbox Live functionality of the original will make a return as well. Look for Summit Strike to invade stores next month, and stay tuned for a full review.