I’d like to start this out with an apology since I would’ve had this review out a month ago but refused to publish a review without being able to play online. I could’ve based my online portion on the beta that I spent quite some time on but I went against it since that would be cheap.
After a few years of hiatus from the SOCOM series, Zipper Interactive played around with MAG and now they’re back with the fourth official title in the series. I’m sure many SOCOM fans have been waiting years to get their hands on this game and it’s finally here for them to get their multiplayer freak on. I’m going to mention this now; the game supports PS Move and it works great, but personally I preferred the dualshock.
SOCOM 4
Developer: Zipper Interactive
Price: $60.00
Platform: PS3 (reviewed)
The campaign will take you through 14 missions, 3 of which are replayed as stealth missions, and will last you around 5-7 hours to complete. You control 2 other squads, of 2 people, using the directional arrows and your only options are moving to a certain position or marking targets to kill. Not only is the enemy AI brain dead (shame their accuracy is still fine since their grenades remind me of MW1 on veteran) your allies also suffer from a mental impairment. Lots of times they’ll get stuck on something invisible and refuse to follow you until you move to the next battle (sometimes that won’t even make them move) and having them kill targeted enemies usually leads to them missing their shots even when they’re right in front of the enemy. The other issue I have with your partners is that they’ll shout “ENEMY SNIPERS” yet you’ll have to be the one who looks for them and target them for your allies to shoot, or shoot them yourself. I just wish they added something to help seeing snipers easier(since lots of them are pretty hidden until you alert them) or having your allies attack the snipers since they will seriously ignore the snipers unless you tell them to fire at them. My other complaint with the campaign is that I felt the enemy spawns were pretty bullshit, but maybe I’m just garbage at this game. I noticed many times that as I’m fighting the guys in front of me enemies will suddenly spawn next to me in some hidden ally or in a window. These guys are usually snipers or rocket launcher guys and having one of them spawn right next to you, at a high vantage point, and with your already low health leads to some pretty cheap feeling deaths. A neat feature of the campaign is that each weapon you acquire has upgrades that you can get by leveling up your weapon by killing enemies. It’s a neat feature that could’ve been great if the guns got more obvious upgrades instead of “better scope”. I know some guns got silencers, extra ammo cartridges, etc added to them but I would’ve liked to be told this. This is honestly the only positive thing I can think of for the campaign since it’s just overall incredibly repetitive and completely forgettable. It honestly felt like they were trying to go for a grand and epic feel to it towards the end such as in one mission you have to fight off enemies while your ally hacks a computer to control the missile targeting system. After finishing off the enemies you use this to target a far off boat to blow up. It was pretty cool at first, until you get to the last one where the devs seem to have collectively decided to tell the players to get fucked since not only do the enemies keep re-spawning and contain some of the tougher guys, but the boat needs to be hit multiple times while it’s firing missiles at you with deadly accuracy. I get it was supposed to be grand to play through, but they could’ve had the ship fire the missiles at areas around you so you’d get hit with minimal damage, not die in a single shot or survive enough for an enemy to slip by and shoot you. There’s also an incredibly annoying helicopter boss fight in the middle of an open area where not only can it kill you instantly, but you have to deal with keeping 2 NATO soldiers alive and fighting off groups of soldiers coming to introduce their friend bullet to your skull.
You’ll get to play as 45 in a few missions with the goal of sneaking bases like a pro. These help to break up the base in-between some of the more intense missions and work pretty well. The main issue is that the AI must have been the offspring of not only a woman who was punched multiple times during pregnancy but she also drank alcoholic cigarettes. You could be standing right next to them and they won’t ever notice you, as long as you’re in a shadowed area. Of course this isn’t Splinter Cell so when I say ‘shadowed area’ I don’t mean the complete pitch black darkness from SC, I’m talking like a spot that’s pretty well lit, but not as well lit as standing under a damn light bulb. More like the area 5 feet away from a lightbulb. I’ve also shot multiple people while they were near their allies, they yelled loudly, 45 said she had been discovered, and nothing happened at all. Oh did I mention that sometimes when you die and restart at a checkpoint all the enemies will suddenly be aware of your location and open fire? When this glitch happens (and it happened to me a lot) you can either keep hitting ‘Restart at Checkpoint’ until the glitch fixes itself or have to restart the whole mission. The stealth missions work fine, but when they’re not working it’s a huge pain. Also fuck the final stealth mission; you’ll know what I’m talking about when you get there.
My absolute favorite part of the game has got to be its fantastic story. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bigger case of ‘small group of people murder an entire army’ since Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando. I know many people are going to shout out things like Call of Duty and stuff but at least in those games you’re always with a squad and you’re clearing small areas while getting in helicopters, tanks, and the rest of your army is wrecking other shit. This game literally has 5 people with no supplies, no food, and no vehicles take out an entire militia and a PMC. Annoying little things like that will bug me for the entire game, so excuse me if I’m ranting on it. I also want you all to take a good look at the cover. Did you notice the subtitle that says U.S. Navy Seals? Yea you don’t even play as navy seals in the game, they’re NATO soldiers. Maybe NATO has navy seals hired or something, I don’t know but that shit annoyed me a bit since when I read a game title I expect it to reflect *somewhat* in the plot. It’s like if I buy a copy of Manly Death: Heterosexual Warfare I’m going to expect some goddamn manly heterosexual American violence.
The multiplayer is of course where this game shines. Let me repeat that: Only buy this game for the multiplayer. There are four modes available when you jump online: Suppression (TDM), Uplink, Last Defense, & Bomb Squad. Uplink is a CTF type game where one team has to defend 3 separate laptops while the other team captures the data, and then they switch places. Last Defense has both teams trying to capture 3 points on the map, once a team controls all points they have to plant two beacons at the enemy base. Bomb Squad is easily my favorite with Uplink taking second. The basic idea is that you have 3 bombs that need to be defused by your team while the enemy stops you from doing that, the trick here is that the only person who can defuse a bomb is your Hurt Locker lookalike who’s armed with a grenade launcher, an automatic shotgun, and extra health. The bomb technician is basically a walking tank and a group of 3-4 guys with him will end the match in minutes so it’s wise to focus fire on the bomb tech when you see him coming. Your weapons will level up as you kill enemies with them just like in the singleplayer mode, but I noticed that it takes considerably longer to level up a weapon online. I got my basic rifle to level 3 close to the second or third level in the singleplayer, yet I’ve killed hundreds of players online and I’m barely halfway on either one of my rifles. There’s also a classic version of all the game modes to cater to longtime SOCOM fans, but my favorite option are the custom rooms. It’s here where you can tweak the games to allow certain weapons, health, and a bunch of other options. The maps are also pretty varied with a forest, city, village, dock, and highway map plus others.
SOCOM 4 also has a neat co-op mode where you can play with up to 4 other players in various maps with different objectives available to select such as killing all enemies, sneaking an hour like 45 in singleplayer, and killing enemy officials. It’s a shame that you can’t tell your friends to attack targeted enemies or to take cover somewhere, but it makes sense since either you’ll get one leader who’s a complete idiot or everyone gets squad controls and it’s a spam-fest. I would say these are a blast, but I found most of my problems with the singleplayer here too and it annoyed the hell out of my friends and I.
I still don’t know how to feel about the graphics. While the character models look fine the environment has some pretty dated and muddy looking textures and some effects just look plain ugly. The game does do well with its voice acting though with all the characters doing pretty well and the sound effects for explosions, gun shots, & headshots especially sound fantastic. Also there are oranges hidden around the game for you to collect.
The Final Word
With a 5 hour campaign that’s mediocre at best, some decent co-op with your friends, and a solid multiplayer feature SOCOM 4 delivers exactly what most SOCOM fans want out of a SOCOM game and a little more. This is the equivalent of buying a Call of Duty game; you do it for the multiplayer. It feels like Zipper should’ve just scrapped the singleplayer and put 100% focus on a great multiplayer game to make it fantastic.
– MonsterVine Rating: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair
