We’ll forgive you if you’re experiencing a bit of déjà vu. When you read about a tactical squad-based shooter starring Captain Scott Mitchell and his squad of Ghosts that sparkles with a robust multiplayer component, it sounds exactly like last winter, when we celebrated the release of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, the first true Xbox 360 killer app. For better or worse, the same description fits as snugly around its quick-to-market sequel, GRAW 2, as a bulletproof vest.

Scott Mitchell? Check. Ghosts? Check. Mexico? Check. Rebels with bad intentions? Check. Standard-setting multiplayer? Check.

Oh, and Editors’ Choice award? Check. By ironing out the wrinkles that put a few folds in the original GRAW’s otherwise silky-smooth cloth and by also raising the bar for what we should expect from a multiplayer action game, GRAW 2 keeps the Clancy train rollin’ with another can’t-miss experience. Even if it feels like we were just here yesterday.

NOT MUCH TORQUE

It turns out, in fact, that Scott Mitchell was just here yesterday. Though it’s been a year for us, a mere 24 hours have passed for our fearless Ghost captain. The events of GRAW 2 pick up almost immediately where its predecessor left off, with the fallout of GRAW’s rebel beatdown provoking another insurgent incursion, this time in the Mexican city of Juarez near the United States border.

Regrettably, GRAW 2 is a slow starter on nearly all fronts. It begins in the desert, where the drab, plain-brown color palette and dull textures might momentarily fool you into thinking you’ve booted up an original- Xbox game if it weren’t for the detailed- as-ever Scott Mitchell character model.

Worse, before you can even start the game proper, you’re forced into an inescapable combat simulator — a series of training exercises designed to teach you the basics of GRAW’s gameplay. The problem here is twofold. First, there’s really very little new in GRAW 2 that merits a required educational course (more on this later): the updates and changes to the gameplay are mostly intuitive bits and pieces that should’ve been in the first GRAW. And second, do the designers not remember that we just finished playing the original game? The play mechanics and controls are still fresh in our minds. So while we hardly fault the inclusion of a training section for first-timers, it should’ve at least been optional.

Sadly, the story shares the same faults as its recent forebear — i.e., it’s paper-thin (stolen nukes heading for U.S. soil? Ya don’t say!) and features grating dialogue, particularly in the first few missions. In the third chapter, a grateful Mexican ally thanks Mitchell for his assistance and asks for his name. “I have no name,” Mitchell replies. “I’m a GHOST!” Commence eye-rolling.

BUT PLENTY OF HORSEPOWER

Fortunately, our complaining ends there. Give GRAW 2 a little time, and the fun and excitement pick up to a level that peaks and never tails off for the remaining 8 to 10 hours of the mostly urban, mostly gorgeous campaign.

Take the third mission, for example. After watching a group of allied Mexican infantry near the Juarez market get firebombed off the same bridge you were supposed to help them secure (treating you to a glorious display of fireworks-like explosions in the process), you’ll have to fight your way out of the half-moon–shaped market area, fielding fire from three sides — one of which is a series of tanks. But before you can finish uttering the words “Oh sh—” under your breath, you’re granted air support in the form of friendly jets, which happily drop missiles that vaporize the targets you designate.

Later, you’ll have to fight your way deeper into Juarez, alone and in near–pitch darkness through a cemetery. Your trusty companion: the MR-C Guncam from Ghost Recon 2 and GRAW, which lets you shoot around corners and from behind cover. In one of the game’s more memorable shootouts, you’ll activate the X-ray–esque night vision (which, oddly enough, seems to boost the framerate from the standard and serviceable 30 frames per second to a buttery 60fps) and use headstones as cover while bad guys swarm at you from all angles.

The final mission is also a thriller. We won’t spoil anything other than to say it involves heavy damn-you-all-to-hell gunfire on your part that’s countered by massive enemy resistance. The action reaches impressive levels of awesome when you’re granted simultaneous tank and combat-chopper support — though regrettably, the game’s formal climax is disappointingly uneventful, just as GRAW’s was. At least here you’re spared a cheesy speech by a final “big bad” boss dude.

LEARNING FROM ITS MISTAKES

If GRAW 2’s single-player campaign is still sounding a bit too similar to the one you just devoured a year ago, that’s because, frankly, it is. Most of the sequel’s touted new features are simply picking up balls fumbled in GRAW.

Take, for example, your fellow Ghosts. This time around we’re delighted to say that they’re no longer a liability. Indeed, the first GRAW’s single massive, debilitating flaw was its friendly A.I. Computer-controlled Ghosts would constantly step into your line of fire or out into the open and get shot — despite your orders to take cover with you around a corner. GRAW 2 addresses this Achilles’ heel and makes your pals competent. Look at a target and press up on the D-pad to have them shoot at him, and they’ll usually bring him down in short order. Still, they’re nowhere near as intelligent as the whip-smart CPU-controlled cohorts of Team Rainbow in Clancy cousin game Rainbow Six Vegas. Enemy A.I., meanwhile, is predictable but passable. At least they offer a little more of a challenge later in the campaign, when some of them start packing Guncams.

If (er, make that “when”) you or one of your crew should happen to take a bullet this time around, GRAW 2’s revised health system keeps the action moving forward and the irritation held to a minimum. In the original game, you were essentially screwed if you hit a checkpoint with your health in the red: You’d either need to roll through the rest of the mission unscathed or restart it entirely. GRAW 2 makes that issue a thing of the past by adding the medic, who you can command (using the D-pad) to heal you, your teammates, or himself. It’s a significant improvement that does wonders to quash both your aggravation and the need to repeatedly reload your checkpoint.

The other biggie is the revamped Cross-Com interface. That same groovy picture-in-picture display is back, letting you see through the eyes of your fellow Ghosts, your returning eye-in-the-sky drone, or any of your mobile armor. The difference now is the ability to hold down RB and get a full-screen view of the designated ally. You can even issue orders from this perspective, which comes in extremely handy when controlling your non-human support. It’s far easier to paint targets with the drone, and it’s an absolute hoot to get a full-screen look from your missile-toting helicopter, designating bad guys you want shredded from the safety of your ground position a half-klick away.

So while these tweaks and additions do make GRAW 2’s campaign a smoother-sailing adventure — one free of the frustrations that peppered GRAW’s — there’s still nothing in single-player that screams “Sequel!” GRAW 2’s solo campaign definitely feels more like a glorified expansion pack, but that’s barely worth griping about given the high quality of the original…and the stellar multiplayer that’s wrapped around its follow-up.

ACOMPLEMENTINGCOMPLEMENT

If the well-crafted but same-y single-player fails to part you from your $60, the rich-as-it-is-deep multiplayer should seal the deal. Just as they did with the first GRAW, the grandfathers of Ghost Recon at Red Storm are handling this half of GRAW 2, and their experience with the franchise (which dates back to its 2001 PC debut, a title also acclaimed for its multiplayer) is obvious in every nook and cranny.

GRAW 2 ships with a staggering 18 multiplayer maps — all of them set outdoors, of course — but if you’re like us, your inner skeptic may initially wonder if Ubisoft and Red Storm are plying us with quantity over quality. Blissfully, the opposite is true. The collection of multiplayer levels here is easily among the most spectacular ever conceived — both from aesthetic and design standpoints. “Lagoon,” for instance, is an island paradise so mesmerizingly gorgeous, your mouse-finger will be aching to click on Travelocity to book a vacation there. It’s also a pseudo-sequel to GRAW’s popular “Rocky Cove.” In fact, you can even see the latter map off its east coast.

Though the maps alone might be enough to vault GRAW 2’s multiplayer to instant-classic status, its brilliance doesn’t end there. Every game mode under the sun — from the standard Team Elimination to the new and cooperative Helicopter Hunt (in which human teams gang up on waves of increasingly more potent A.I. attack choppers) — is ready to rock. Each mode is fully playable on any map (except for the co-op campaign levels; more on those shortly) — and fully fun. That is to say, the designers clearly thought about each variant when designing the battlegrounds, and the end result is the most well-thought-out and versatile map complement since Halo 2.

GRAW 2’s options to customize anything and everything also hearken back to Halo 2, and they reach a depth not seen since Bungie’s Live-dominating blockbuster was released. Hate grenades launchers? Disable them. Want more respawns? Just add them. Hell, you can even combine gametypes to create entire new ones. The same breadth of choices applies to your avatar as well. You’re given dozens of hats, masks, camos, sunglasses — you name it — with which to personalize your character.

Out in the field, the online action is more gripping than ever, bolstered largely by the new down-but-not-out health system. As in single-player, wounded teammates now show up as blinking diamonds on your heads-up display, and reviving them is as easy as approaching them and pressing Y. This system subtly but effectively encourages teamplay: You helped me stave off my death, so now I’ll roll with you and help you smoke some bad guys. And the new random respawn is greatly appreciated: We were never spawn-camped in our playtime (a huge problem in GRAW) thanks to the new system, which scans the battlefield, drops you in at a safe spot, and just in case, gifts you with five seconds of invulnerability.

Adding about seven cherries to the top of this sundae is the return of the co-op campaign. What was a four-mission supplement in GRAW now consists of six levels, all featuring scaled difficulty to accommodate one friend or 15. These new co-op missions also boast primary and secondary objectives that will alter the course of the mission depending on what you choose (or fail) to accomplish. Hell, they even throw you 20 Achievement points for completing each one, up from GRAW’s measly eight.

KING ME

Wrapped around the entire single- and multiplayer package is, again, some of the best presentation in any Xbox 360 game to date. The series’ graphics are noticeably, if not drastically, improved, largely thanks to the amazingly cool smoke and particle effects. (Just watch the flames blow when your extraction chopper lands at the end of Mission 2.) The audio even exceeds the already-high Clancy-game standard with an epic orchestral score that can be described only as topnotch.

With single-player delivering another snipe-’em-if-ya-got-’em ride and multiplayer upping the ante with its everything-you-could-imagine delivery, GRAW 2 easily achieves must-play status. Though some might scoff at the idea of coughing up another 60 bones so soon for a sequel that does more polishing and perfecting than it does innovating, we’re willing to put up with a strong sense of déjà vu every year if the game experience we seem to be repeating is this damn good. –Ryan McCaffrey

On Xbox 360

+ Deepest, richest multiplayer experience yet on 360.

+ Excellent solo campaign with none of GRAW’s annoyances.

- Feels a bit more like a glorified expansion than a full sequel.

? Now that Recon’s graphics have evolved, when will its A.I.?

9.0