'Ghost Recon' excellent military tactics game

"Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon" is one of the new breed of military games, where stealth and patience are worth more than napalm and machine guns.

Ported over from a wildly successful PC game by Red Storm and UBI Soft for the Xbox, "Ghost Recon" puts you in the year 2008 at the head of an elite band of soldiers known as Ghosts for their ability to work their mischief undetected.

You guide your team through 15 complex and engrossing missions, including a climactic invasion of the Kremlin to overthrow the right-wing nationalists who have seized control of Russia.

Pick your two squads of three soldiers, select the two weapons each will carry and, with the easy-to-use controls, direct them to do your bidding. A press of the Y button and you take control of any of the soldiers in your squad. If you need to blow up a downed U.S. fighter jet (you do, in the second mission), simply click through the squad until you find the guy with the explosive charges, then march him to the plane.

Need a sniper? A few quick taps and you're peering through a high-powered scope at some hapless enemy grunt.

This game, which came out around the same time as "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell" and has been overshadowed by that excellent title, is a jewel in its own right.

It makes you work and it makes you think. There's no sense racing around, bullets flying. That will just attract a lot of people with guns.

Instead, you're rewarded for taking your time and trying creative ways to complete a mission. You don't necessarily have to complete your tasks in order, for instance. I tried a few missions by completing the tasks farthest from the extraction zone first and working my way back. It worked where following the list from top to bottom kept getting me killed.

Your soldiers are equipped with a nice variety of special equipment, including those eerie night vision goggles which turn everything a bilious green but are invaluable during the after-dark missions and in some indoor scenes.

Besides the Mission mode, there are three other excellent ways to play by yourself. In Firefight, your goal is to wipe out enemy forces across a particular map. In Recon, your goal is to get your entire squad across a map to an extraction point. In Defend, you defend your base against invading enemies.

For Xbox Live players, this game is an excellent way to match your skills against friends across town or across the country.

Graphics get a B. They're not as detailed as they might be, but the variety is excellent and the glitches are easy to ignore.

Control gets an A. You'll catch on to everything you'll need in an hour or so, and from then on, you can do almost everything on sheer instinct. Soldiers follow your commands precisely, targeting is easy and quick, and everything you want to do happens when you want.

Sound gets an A. Weapons effects are excellent, the score enhances game play at every turn and the ambient noise -- whistling wind over ridgetops, water rushing in a farmland stream -- are perfect.

"Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon" gets a solid A. It's a fabulous one-person title, and the fact that you can link up with other live players by means of Xbox Live is a great bonus. If you have a modicum of patience and enjoy strategy and combat, grab a copy quick.