Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike

If you don’t know what Tom Clancy looks like, one thing to keep an eye out for is a dude with a satisfied grin a mile wide. As if the monstrous success of his books wasn’t enough, Clancy’s immensely profitable venture into videogames has created a genre all of its own. There have been enough Rainbow Sixes and Rogue Spears over the last year to keep fans more than satiated, and with the Ghost Recon series, the Clancy enterprise shows no signs of slowing down commercially. Artistically though, we’re talking about something else entirely.

Admittedly, when Ghost Recon 2 hit the shelves last year, there were some sneaky alterations to the Clancy formula that aroused welcome/alarmed suspicion amongst its fanbase. One of the biggest differences was that instead of controlling two teams you only controlled one character. By adding a twist to the proceedings, the series stayed alive and the sequel sold by the thousands.

Summit Strike isn’t a new game but an expansion of the existing GR2, so you might be forgiven for thinking that this is as essential as the director’s cut of Alexander. There are sweet concessions, however. In fact, this is almost something approaching GR2.5. Granted, it’s the same engine, same style, same gameplay... in fact, it’s the same bones overall, but a slightly different body. There are eleven missions over the fifteen in the previous, so there’s not much of a compromise in size either.