The Sum of All Fears is based on the movie (and book) of the same name, but you shouldn't expect to play through the events depicted in the film.  Instead, you are the leader of an elite team sent to bring those responsible for the terrorist actions depicted in the movie to justice - and by justice I mean expedited removal from this life to the next for final judgment.  Don't be too disappointed if you were looking to play the part of Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan; you'll be enjoying the action too much to care.

The Sum of All Fears takes you through an eleven mission storyline that features a variety of mission types.  You'll take part in hostage rescues, demolition missions, covert spying, and assassination missions, to name a few.  Each mission begins with a briefing outlining the tactical situation and the mission's objectives.  You'll also be given the chance to select your team's weapon mix for the mission from a variety of loadouts geared for everything from stealth missions to full-out open assaults.  Many tactical shooters feature a detailed preplanning phase before missions begin, but The Sum of All Fears provides a nice and streamlined way to get into the missions in short order.  This may make the hard-core crowd cringe slightly, but it works quite well and makes the game a lot more accessible by keeping the complexity of the game manageable. 

Once the mission opens, you'll have a number of aids to assist you in completing the mission.  The first is a minimap of the area immediately surrounding your team which sits at the bottom of the screen.  This minimap will show your team's current position along with a white line indicating the direction to travel to find the next objective.  Of course, it is up to you whether or not to follow the line directly, and you would do well to pay attention to the locations of alternate paths to use to assault a room or to keep an eye open for possible routes enemies might use to attempt to flank your team. 

When you equip your special heartbeat sensor, you'll also see the position of nearby enemies on the minimap.  This will help to warn you when to advance cautiously, but is not a guarantee that you'll be able to easily take out enemies just because you know that they are there.  Also, the heartbeat sensor has a couple of drawbacks that will help keep you honest in the game: it's range is limited and you can't use a weapon while you are operating it.  Charging down a long hallway with the heartbeat sensor in hand can easily turn you into a long range kill for a vigilant terrorist.

Another useful feature of the game is the ability to quickly give orders to your team.  You can point at a door, and with only a couple of key presses order them to open the door and toss in a grenade, or even to go in and clear out a room.  You guys go in and look for bad guys, I'll just wait out here...

In some missions, your three man squad will be just one of several teams on a mission.  Each team is usually responsible for different objectives, making some missions group efforts.  However, you will never have command of these other squads, so there is no mechanism for inter-team coordination.  Like the mission preplanning, streamlined play wins out over the additional complexity of total control.  The AI of the other teams works quite well in most cases, but occasionally they'll get ahead of the game and go charging into a room that you haven't quite had time to clear for them yet.

As mentioned earlier, you'll have a variety of mission types that will take you to locales which include Middle Eastern prisons, terrorist training camps, and even art museums.  The missions take place at various times of day and weather conditions, which can have a big effect on visibility.  The environments themselves include both indoor and outdoor locales, and the building interiors include such diverse areas as office cubicle farms, large industrial warehouses, and claustrophobic environments filled with small rooms and hallways.

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