Tactical squad games are common on the home consoles but they haven’t really flourished on the handhelds. With this latest SOCOM, Sony has had a crack at working a relatively complex tactical shooter onto PSP hardware and for the most part they’ve been successful.

If you’ve played any of the Full Spectrum Warrior titles you’ll have an idea how this game works. Rather then having direct control of your team, you issue them orders ‘on the fly’. Movement orders are given via a cursor or “skimmer” which you navigate around the level to the spot where you want the soldiers to go and then a simple tap of a button will send them to that point. Unfortunately the camera can often be unhelpful when working out your next position and it can be hard to see where you are sending your team. On a number of occasions I accidentally had my squad move to an area out in the open (due to the camera being stuck behind a wall) only to get spotted and shot up by the enemy.

Once everything clicks after an hour or so’s play you’ll find yourself thinking more tactically and more in tune with the vast amount of options at your disposal. My only gripe is something that plagues many a PSP games - the controls. To compensate for the lack of buttons some commands require you to hold them down to access further instructions. Whilst this does work it can be tricky remembering when to tap or when to hold down. Luckily as you have no direct control over your team you can plan your moves before acting them out. If this was a straight action shooter it could’ve been a problem.

Maps are large and relatively detailed and often with more then one insertion point or route through the level. You can, for example, take the enemy head on but obviously this is going to be messier then sneaking in. Having access to a sniper for those less public kills is essential. Find your target and the sniper will aim and fire. A handy function allows you to force the soldier to line up a shot but wait for your signal before attacking. This works for all of the commands and is useful if you need to get your second team into position before proceeding.

Completing missions gives you experience points, which can either, be manually or automatically assigned to your team. These can upgrade shooting skills, damage resistance or weapon skills. It’s a nice touch but it doesn’t add anything substantial to the game.

Multi-player is of course included in both Ad-hoc and Infrastructure modes. It’s certainly an interesting prospect as each of the player’s gets to control their own four-man squad meaning tactics honed in the single player game can be transferred here just as easily. Of course there is always the chance that it’ll turn into an all out firefight but hey that’s all part of the fun. Definitely the most fun I’ve had online with the PSP.

So to sum up this latest SOCOM is a welcome diversion from the earlier incarnations but it hasn’t been a flawless exercise. As I mentioned the camera is awkward far too often and your squad - whilst being reasonably intelligent - do still make silly mistakes if you’re not there to hold their hands. That said it is a solid enough title, which despite having only a handful of missions to tackle will last you a good few hours of play which if you add to the multiplayer - it’s not a bad deal.