A solid third person shooter
I've been a pretty big Socom fan since the originals came out on the PlayStation2 and became my primary online shooter on the system, and recently had a chance to complete Socom 4, here's my quick bullet point thoughts:
- I was pleasantly surprised by the voice acting performances and story as the game progressed, it's not exactly Shakespeare, but it felt really solid and sincere by the end of it.
- The squad management abilities are good and relatively easy to pick up, but can be annoying as the button to target an enemy and move to a position are the same, so if you're trying to target an enemy and you just miss them you often end up sending your squad mate right into open enemy fire.
- Multiplayer is as good as ever, with all the bells and whistles people expect from a MP shooter these days (ie: level system, unlocks etc.). If you've played Socom in the past you probably know what to expect.
- Camera feels like its in too close to the character during gameplay, which really makes any kind of combat that is in tight feel really awkward and difficult.
- Campaign missions are short (about 15 minutes each, with a few longer ones taking about 25 min).
- The stealth missions are actually a nice change of pace, they keep objective markers for you to move to at all times so you kind of feel like a lot of the stealth work is actually done for you and you don't have to spend that much time watching enemy movement paths or figuring out actually how to get through an area.
- I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a good online shooter, the campaign will only take you around 3-5 hours, but it's still one of the better MP shooters you can find on the PlayStation3 (for competitive and coop).
