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I got my hands on Desert Siege the day it was released. I installed it with no troubles at all. I launched the game in anticipation and watched the new intro (nothing to write home about). I started a new single player campaign and jumped right in to the first mission.

I played through the entire expansion pack in about 5 hours, on the medium (Veteran) difficulty setting.

I’m not sure if it’s because I am really THAT good at Ghost Recon, as compared to when I first started playing the original… or if the expansion pack missions are just much easier… but it was too short. I flew through it. I should have played it on Elite difficulty, and then perhaps it would have lasted a bit longer. So the weekend after I got it, I had three friends over and we played through every single mission on Co-Op, on Elite. We beat it in about 4 hours.

The one thing that did make it noticeably easier was the fact that you don’t always die when you get shot. You get “wounded” a LOT more often then in the original game. This seemed more realistic to me, since you’re wearing Kevlar and you often DO take wounds, not and insta-death from getting shot, in most cases at least. It’s definitely a lot less frustrating.

With the eight new missions we get eight new maps. The maps are AWESOME! They’re all in the desert, but the designs are killer! I have trouble finding words to do them justice. You need to experience them to see what I am talking about. Kudos to the level designers! There are suppose to be four more multiplayer maps on top of the eight new ones, but for the life of me I couldn’t find them when I set up a multiplayer game. I either misinterpreted the box or I got jipped! I am thinking I got jipped. The only new multiplayer maps I was able to pick were the new eight standard mission maps. I must be doing something wrong… I hope. There are two new multiplayer modes though. Team based siege and domination. Command and hold an area in a map, or camp out and wait for the enemy team to try and assault your position.

One of the things I bitched about in the original Ghost Recon was the enemy AI. It’s more tweaked now than it was in the original game. Hopefully there will be patches to fix it. I can blast a tango with another group of tango’s standing 20 feet away and from him and they won’t respond. Other times, they’ll rush for cover and come around to flank you while you’re pinned down by enemy fire. It’s like they fixed some things while breaking other things on top of not fixing more things. Thankfully your team AI works well. You don’t find yourself playing against your own team like you may have in other games. The addition of “jeep rushes” was an excellent touch. In several of the maps, enemies will come down the road at you in jeeps with mounted machine gun turrets in the back. Capping the driver will stop the jeep short of it’s intended destination as the passenger tango will jump out for cover and the rear gunner will open up on your position. Or you can do like my team did and try to blast the moving jeeps with rockets and take them all out with one shot! The enemy tends to throw grenades a LOT more often as well so watch out!

The new weapons add a whole new element to the gameplay. I always liked playing a Support Specialist. Thanks to several new support guns (amongst others) I was justly renamed by my teammates, from Eclipse (my usual moniker) to “The Glory Hound”. If you drop prone with the M-60 or the PKM, you can ravage a pack of enemies with deadly accuracy in seconds. The sound effects are chilling! Hearing the M-60 fire across the battlefield is like nothing you’ve ever heard before (well, unless you’ve actually heard it in real life). There are a slew of new assault rifles, and a couple new sniper rifles as well – including a really nice semi-automatic 7.62mm baddy (the PSG)! Oh, and when you’re carrying the rocket launcher, you actually see it strapped to the back of the soldier’s model – nice touch.

The length of play and the tweaky AI are the only two major issues with this expansion pack. Everything else helps to make up for those two shortcomings, but you still can’t ignore them. I have faith that the AI will get patched and that Redstorm is working on another expansion pack to quell my thirst for action (damn, am I greedy or what?) The levels are awesome and the story is interesting enough to keep you playing. Starting each new mission will keep you guessing with anticipation with what you’ll face in each of these new eight challenges. One suggestion I have is if you were good at the original Ghost Recon, don’t fiddle around with the lower difficulty settings – go right after Elite difficulty. You also need the full retail version of Ghost Recon in order to play the expansion pack (of course).