Review: SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Confrontation

You have to admire a game with focus. Some of the best games in history have achieved greatness because they did not compromise their core mechanic. SOCOM: Confrontation wants to be a multiplayer tactical military shooter and it nails that goal head on. You will not find any single player mode here. There are no un-lockable items. There is no vestige of a story, no recharging health and no tutorial. Every player starts equal and the only barometer is a player's skill. It's apparent that Slant Six has, effectively, cut the chaff.

Despite the focus of a stripped down multiplayer experience, the level of customisation available from the outset is impressive. In addition to selecting your load-out from a range of real-world firearms (replete with scopes, laser sights, underslung grenade launchers and suppressors) you'll find a wealth of head and body customisation options including camouflage choices for the three different game environments. Everything about your soldier can be tailored to taste and, as your soldier is on screen at all times, you’ll appreciate this individuality.

Uncompromising

Presented entirely in third person, combat is tight and tactical affair between Special Forces commandos and generic middle-eastern mercenaries. Both teams share a variety of mission objectives ranging from straight up deathmatch to bomb defusing and VIP escorting. In most of these game types, respawning is disabled by default so run-and-gun style tactics will rarely succeed and most likely end with a bench warming session between rounds. The pulled back camera means that seeing without being seen is second nature; corners and doorways become deathtraps to the unwary and there are very few hiding places that are completely safe. The maps are so large and panoramic that running off on your own is seldom recommended.

While the environments are attractive, there is not a great deal of graphical flair present here. Each individual warzone has a gritty, realistic feel to it, with every piece of terrain relevant to map strategy. These environments are polarised between fairly drab and uninspiring middle-eastern towns to breathtaking ruined cityscapes with dozens of opportunities for sniping or RPG use. The bloom and particle effects are kept to a minimum to ensure nothing obscures your appraisal of the battlefield. The feel of a sharp, no-nonsense action game permeates throughout. Even the other soldiers in your squad, while all individually customised, still look like a cohesive unit, and this adds greatly to the immersion in a way that perhaps first person games cannot manage.

Late to the Party

Admittedly, some areas of the control scheme can be frustrating at times. There is no cover system to speak of. You will soon realise that crouching behind any low wall will render it nigh-on impossible to shoot over, your ammunition ineffectually ploughing into your brick-and-mortar bullet shield. Voice chat activation and weapon selection is also rather clunky. A mistake in button management here could render you powerless if taken by surprise. Finally, the instant kill melee attack is more like an art than a science and requires a bizarre combination of positioning, movement and blind luck to connect. This should really only be used as a last resort as it’s rather humiliating to catch an enemy off guard (wrestling with his voice chat or weapon selection for example), only to flail your arms around wildly before he shoots you in the face.

Every online game lives and dies by its community. On the whole, the current player base surrounding the game is progressive and friendly. The PS3's lack of multiplayer focus combined with SOCOM’s hardcore-centric gameplay ensures you will be relatively safe from the F-bomb dropping adolescents of Halo 3 and CoD4 fame. The fact that the game has already been out for five months in America means that our side of the Atlantic is quite behind the learning curve, but we have also been spared the litany of bugs that plagued the games original launch. Organised play is encouraged and clans are presented with a set of tools that can be accessed from the game or from a web browser to facilitate management tasks. Like any team based shooter, the game really comes alive when you play within a circle of players that know each other and communicate well.

Hardcore Only?

At its core, SOCOM is a very unforgiving no-frills experience. If you like your graphical sauce layered on thick, or if you're not prepared to sit out for four and a half minutes of a five minute round to begin with then you need not apply.

However, if you like a game that rewards teamwork and strategy as well as hair-trigger reactions and steady nerves, then SOCOM becomes immensely rewarding. Take the game seriously, learn quickly and bring a headset. This package will keep you entertained for a long while.