Ghost Recon = 24?

I've been playing through Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter since I got my 360 a little over a week ago and enjoying it for reasons I couldn't pin down specifically. There are a bunch of general statments I can throw at it -- things like "damn nice looking", "exciting", and "immersive" come in to play -- but none of them seem to fully explain why this Ghost Recon is so much more entertaining than the previous incarnations of the series.

Then it hit me: it feels like a spiritual sibling to 24, the recently unseated King of TV Shows (The Shield took that honor recently). Ghost Recon plays out over 2-3 days of nearly continuous action, all the while throwing curveballs at the predicted course of events. It also never takes you fully out of the action like the previous installments in the series used to; there is a certain cohesiveness to the where and why of each mission that makes the overall package much more immersive and intelligible.

(It also doesn't hurt that they have some Predator-esque helicoptor sequences where you're sitting in the gunner's seat looking down across Mexico City with music blaring in the speakers. Sure, there's no Jesse "The Body" in the helicopter with you, spitting tobacco juice on your boots and calling everyone "slack-jawed faggots", but no game can be that perfect.)

This is now my third Ghost game, the first two being Ghost Recon 2 and Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike, but the first time that I will complete the single player at least once before even venturing into the multiplayer modes. I may even play through the game again on Hard -- it's that good.