Ghost Recon: Island Thunder (or GRIT for short) is a standalone expansion pack for the original Ghost Recon, with the elite commando force known as The Ghosts heading into Cuba. The reason The Ghosts have been called back into action is a simple one; Fidel Castro is dead, and his former lackey is running around trying to take over as supreme island dictator. The US government would rather not see that happen, and so they send in The Ghosts. Your job in GRIT is to command The Ghosts through the game’s eight missions as they restore free elections to Cuba. It’ll take all the tactical command skills you’ve got and then some to keep your squads alive, protect the civilian population and finish the game.

If you’ve played the original Ghost Recon for the Xbox, you’ll easily slip right into GRIT. There’s absolutely nothing different about the command and control aspects of the game, with the exception of an obvious shift in the difficulty. In GRIT, there are distinct differences between the Novice, Veteran and Elite settings. Whereas I was able to handily mop up the bad guys in the original title set to Veteran difficulty, it was a heck of a challenge in this sequel. The AI is boosted to lethal levels as you move to higher difficulty settings. You’ll see the opposition make better use of cover, teamwork and spotting skills. Soldiers that might never have noticed you in Novice mode will see you coming a mile away in Veteran and Elite difficulties. Only the bravest and most skilled should try the Elite difficulty, which even deals out the punishment online in co-op mode.

Speaking of online mode, that’s really the only way to play GRIT. It’s pretty obvious that GRIT was designed to fix all those annoying online bugs from the original game. While the original was fun to play online, there were some annoying control and lobby issues that made it less enjoyable than it could have been. With GRIT, all those problems have disappeared, and you have a game that simply dominates the pantheon of Xbox Live enabled titles. Personally, if it weren’t for review needs and Ghost Recon (and now GRIT), I would have bailed my Xbox Live account long ago. With GRIT, I’ve now got dozens of new reasons to keep playing on Microsoft’s gaming service, not the least of which being the great co-op, team and solo online modes. Games can be tweaked in a myriad of ways, from removing the ability to use explosives to getting rid of the radar, so every one of your online adventures can be different. Cooperative mode can get stale, as many players I’ve seen know the levels by heart, set the difficulty to Novice and then clean house to pad their online rankings. Most of the time though, you’ll find plenty of good players who are out to enjoy a great online game. The only complaint I have about the Xbox Live options is the fact that getting to the Friends menu is an absolute mess of button clicks and hidden menus. I know more than one player who couldn’t even get to the Friends list without help from other players.

Besides the online improvements, there are a few changes to the gameplay you might not notice at first, but you’ll appreciate once you do. For starters, there’s the now more realistic night vision goggles. There’s no more cheating and using them during daylight hours to spot targets. Try using them during daylight missions and you’ll be greeted with nothing more than a washed-out green screen. This is a great boost to the game’s realism.

And if the night vision fix doesn’t do enough to boost the realism, you’ll be glad to know that cover and camouflage are far improved over Ghost Recon. In GRIT, if you hide in some brush, it’s going to be hard for your opponents to spot you. Along with the visual protection afforded by foliage, there’s the heavy cover, such as trees, which will protect you from damage. This is a welcome addition for me, as I’m a big proponent of being stealthy in a tactical game. No sense in making yourself a giant target if there’s no need to!

In GRIT, the terrain is far less limiting to movement and combat tactics. In the original, your soldiers couldn’t climb even the shortest rises in the terrain. Now, they can climb most inclines and use them as effective sniping points. You can even hide in objects like farm carts and use them as sniping posts. It’s nice to no longer have to avoid every bit of elevated terrain like the plague when your troops are on the move.

Soldier classes have also seen a better balance in GRIT. In Ghost Recon the demolition professionals were only useful for their heavy demolition skills, but now they’re more balanced to be useful in general combat. The new multi-grenade thrower that Klaus carries around is absolutely punishing, though to maintain game balance, it reloads slowly and makes the carrier move much more slowly than if he was carrying a standard weapon. Marksman types will now need to rely on more precision aiming, since firing automatic weapons in burst or automatic mode won’t hit anything at long range, which is another boost for GRIT’s realism.

There are some minor nitpicks I have with the gameplay, the biggest of which being the weakness of grenades. In the real world, if you lob a grenade into a small building, nobody is coming out of there alive. In the game, however, any grenade that doesn’t land within a few feet of its target will do nothing but make your ears ring. For "bang and clear" players like myself, this is a royal pain.

If you’re looking for a huge graphical improvement over the original Ghost Recon for the Xbox, you won’t find it in GRIT. The graphics are improved, but not so much that you’d see it as a quantum leap in quality. The best changes are in the models of the Ghosts themselves, who are much more detailed at close range and actually have a distinct look from character to character. The foliage and ground surfaces also have more realistic textures to them, but most other items such as buildings, hills, fields and enemy models are just the same old polygonal clunkers we saw in the previous game.

The song remains the same in GRIT, with plenty of good voice work and quality weapon effects. A grenade goes "boom" like it should, and if you’re too close, it’ll set your ears ringing. The voice acting is almost a carbon copy of that in the original Ghost Recon, and the troops still shout out the same inappropriate comments. I say "inappropriate" because they sometimes suffer from delays that cause them to be spoken after the fact. A classic example appears when a squad is under fire. There’s a delay between the end of the firefight and the moment when your squad informs you they are under fire. So after mopping up the opposition, your squad may shout out "we’re under fire," even though it’s clear sailing by that point.

The single-player campaign in GRIT is woefully short, but as I’ve said earlier, it appears that this game was designed more with online in mind, and that’s how it is best enjoyed. If you’re not a Live subscriber, don’t bother getting GRIT, since you won’t get your $40 worth from the single-player game alone. But if you are online with your Xbox, expect to play a whole heck of a lot of this game. There’s always an open game to be found of each game type, and it’s easy to lose several hours playing GRIT online.

So, should you buy it, rent it or ignore it, that’s the question, right? I’d say that if you’re looking for the best Xbox Live game available right now, then GRIT is what you need. But if you’re looking for an in-depth campaign, you won’t find it here, though you’d certainly enjoy renting GRIT to play a few new levels.

See more screens in the Ghost Recon: Island Thunder media page