SOCOM 4 PS3 Review

SOCOM is a series that has a serious fanatical following that are reluctant to change. Some games change very little over time and become stagnant, and others change so much that the series becomes unrecognizable. There always has to be a happy medium that allows a game to evolve while retaining its core roots. SOCOM made it first debut on the PlayStation 3 with SOCOM Confrontation a few years back, which wasn’t a bad game, but lacked a single player campaign and visually looked like a polished PlayStation 2 game. As a result of the bad press and the game not doing well in sales, SOCOM 4 has been developed and honestly does a great job of providing a solid multiplayer experience.

SOCOM 4 has both a single player campaign and a multiplayer mode. The single player campaign has four difficulty levels from Easy all the way to the painful Elite mode. The story follows Cullen Gray a soldier who is thrust into a fictional Asian island country on the brink of civil war. The player controls Gray and four other squad mates through a series of 14 missions over a six day period. The team mates are split into two squads of two each that can be deployed to perform a variety of battle tactics. Ally AI is highly competent most of the time, but can get confused with some waypoints as to which side of the cover to be on. Enemy AI is also very competent and will advance on the player and flank when given the chance. The enemy AI will also run for cover when needed as well. The game environments are beautiful visually and fairly large. The game supports the PlayStation Move controlled and 3D output. Missions vary from standard run and gun, to stealth missions that involve controlling one of the squad mates rather than Gray. Players can also create their own custom single player campaign with six maps to choose from. The mission objective can either be to kill the leader or collect intel, with three difficulty levels and three enemy population levels to choose from. The single player is engaging enough to entertain most players, but multiplayer is the heart of SOCOM.

SOCOM 4 provides a multitude of game modes to choose from. Players can either play cooperatively or competitively. Cooperative mode is the same as the single player custom campaign, only now the player has live team mates to assist. Competitive mode consists of standard mode and classic mode. Standard mode puts SOCOM 4 more on par with today’s arcade shooters like Killzone 3, with regenerative health and respawns. Classic mode has no regenerative health and no respawns. In addition, both modes have the same game types, which are Suppression (Team Deathmatch), Bomb Squad (Defuse bomb), and Last Defense (Control Points). There is also a Clan Challenge mode that allows clans to battle it out against each other. Leaderboards and medals are also available, with a stat tracking feature that tracks kills, deaths, etc… Multiplayer maps are large and varied enough to keep the gameplay interesting.

SOCOM 4 is an excellent game that brings the SOCOM series to the masses, while still trying to keep core fans happy with the Classic mode. Unfortunately, some core fans dislike the departure from previous games, but games need to evolve and SOCOM was a stagnant dying franchise. SOCOM 4 is a solid single player and multiplayer experience that everyone should try and will be pleasantly surprised at how fun the game really is.