Socom Special Forces is the PS3’s first real Socom outing, as Confrontation was online multiplayer-only and wasn’t made by Zipper. Socom Special Forces is a third-person tactical shooter, but can go into first person when aimed in with a gun. The story is set in an East Asian country, where a rebel group is attempting to cause a revolution, which could escalate into global war. NATO has sent a team in to deal with the crisis, and this is where the story starts.
You play as Cullen Gray, a Special Forces commander, and who is in charge of two, 2-man teams; blue team, who specialise in heavy weapons and demolitions, and gold team, who specialise in covert operations and Reconnaissance. These teams are where the tactical part comes in, with you commanding them to flank enemies or occasionally snipe a distant sentry. The game certainly throws up moments where tactics are required but I frequently found that these teams weren’t needed, and you could just play through the levels without commanding them at all. By default the two teams (the covert gold team isn’t available until a few missions in) automatically follow you, unless ordered otherwise. The command controls are very straightforward and easy to use, with the left directional button controlling the blue team, and the right directional button controlling the gold team. The command options are 'situation sensitive' so it'll depend on what your crosshair is aimed as to which commands you can issue, so if the crosshair is over the ground you’ll give a ‘move to’ command, if it’s over an enemy you’ll order the team to fire at them, or if it’s over an enemy’s head you’ll be able to order a silent takedown.
The main story is told over the course of six days, starting from when you are first inserted into the area. These days are split up into missions, with the main menu showing your current progress as a percentage, along with the number day and the time. This adds more realism to the story as it seems like you have an actual deadline to meet, rather than just a limitless campaign. Each mission begins with an initial briefing, where a map of the level and all the objectives for the mission are shown. A path is shown through the level, indicating the exact route you will play through, as if it was an actual military briefing, helping draw you into the storyline. The story itself is told via radio transmissions between levels, as well as radio contact during missions. There are also a few cut scenes placed in critical points in the story.
Most missions are played out with you as Cullen Gray, where you have to complete a number of objectives, such as destroying targets or gaining access to a building, before moving to an extraction point at the end of the level. As in most modern shooters these days, the gameplay is given some variety with the sprinkling of a few stealth levels here and there throughout the story. These are where you play as female gold team member, “forty-five”, or Park Yoon-Hee, a covert ops specialist with whom the scriptwriters attempt to form some sort of sexual tension—but this is a difficult girl to love as she has a penchant for stealth killing enemies by stabbing them in the family jewels! You have to complete a stealth level without being seen; enemies can be killed either with a stealth melee kill or with silenced weapon but you have to ensure the bodies are hidden otherwise other patrolling guards may find them, and you won’t survive very long after being discovered. The first couple of levels aren’t too difficult, but they rapidly get harder, with the final one being very difficult, even on the ‘easy’ setting. Prepare to get annoyed at the number of times you’ll have to redo this level after being spotted. Every mission itself is in a different level, meaning that you will never play the same level twice, although some locations are repeated, but are at different times of day and you play through them from different areas. The reused locations are normally first used as a stealth mission, which are played through at night, then revisited in daylight.
As seems to be the fashion these days, even with a couple of tricky moments the single-player campaign is a relatively brief affair that you’ll probably zip through in 5-6 hours, but Socom has always been synonymous with PlayStation online play and fortunately this obviously hasn't been forgotten with Special Forces.
Most people will be glad to hear that there are custom co-op missions as well as competitive multiplayer, with the usual modes and a few new ideas. If you’ve seen the hugely overrated Iraq war movie Hurt Locker then the most notable new mode ‘Bomb Squad’ will be familiar to you, as your squad has to protect heavily-armoured (and therefore slow-moving) bomb disposal expert as he goes about his job. The co-op mode was where we had the most fun, but as with most PS3 online games it suffers because so few gamers seem to use their headsets and above all the co-op game requires voice comms to both be played efficiently and be more fun. The multiplayer game is now just as pleasing to the eye as the solo campaign and many maps are sections of actual mission levels, with all the detail present and correct. I’d like to tell you more about Socom’s multiplayer modes but as PlayStation online went down (seemingly to never return) during the review I can’t, for the time being at least.
Visually Socom Special Forces is pretty good, the best-looking Socom game yet, and by some way. Scenery looks very detailed and the range of environments give variety to the game. The maps are large and draw distances are good, allowing you to see quite a way across a map. There are a few graphical glitches here and there but nothing that will be too noticeable when playing, and definitely nothing that would spoil the game.
Controls-wise it is very easy to understand and pick up and start playing. Using a Dualshock controller is easy, with a traditional shooting control scheme, although this can be changed if you like. Team commands are very simple to operate, using just one press of a directional button. The only problem is when trying to get into cover quickly, it often doesn’t put you behind cover when the button prompt is visible, you need to be right next to the cover and facing it for it to work, which is obviously an extra hassle you could do without when in the middle of combat. Aiming with the Move controller works well, and is very precise, although you may find you will need to adjust the sensitivity. The Move Navigation controller is ideally needed because although you can use the Dualshock for movement (in one hand using just one of the analogue sticks), it is quite fiddly, and many of the buttons can’t be pressed with one hand.
Overall Socom Special Forces would be a very good third/first person tactical shooter, but it is let down by the squad AI in places, and can be frustratingly difficult in others. Nevertheless Socom veterans will find the game fun (and a bit of a return to form for an ailing series), and if you’re new to third-person shooters then this would be a good place to start, especially as there aren’t all that many TPS available on the PS3 right now.
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