Introduction

SOCOM US Navy Seals is a tactical military themed shooter, along the lines of Counter Strike and most of the Rainbow 6 games. You assume the role of the Seals, or the heavily bearded Terrorists. Just like Counter-Strike, there are many different weapons to choose from, each with their own strengths and shortcomings. There are a few modes to choose from, and 10 or so stages to play on.

SOCOM is basically two games in one. You have offline play, which if you have broadband internect connection, more or less serves as a training course for you to go through before you get your ass handed to you online. The online play is the main attraction to this game, so thats what I’ll spend most of this review talking about.

Presentation

While the menus are a little too generic and stale, the presentation of SOCOM shines in the gameplay department. Developer Zipper Interactive stressed for a realistic environment, and they’ve pulled it off to such an extent that it outdoes Counter-Strike in my opinion.

The little things, like hostages and terrorists belting out things in a foreign language, and fighter jets soaring above you throught the round make it seem that much more realistic. They also designed the stages with realism in mind, giving players an abundance of sniping spots and ambush areas. Theres also little breakdowns of stage modes or stages on loading screens, making them less of a chore to sit through.

Graphics

While a player is standing still, this game isnt much to look at. The player models are plain and generic, as are the weapon models. Move into motion though, and its a whole new story. The stages are superb, detailed greatly with just enough visibility. The animation is even better. There are tons of animations in this game. From simple death animations from gunshots to more complex ones from say, a grenade blast knocking you through the air, the differences are vast and add to the realism. There are also team animations, such as SEALS giving off hand signals, as well as nice crouching animations and crawling animations, which usually differ from team and stage.

Spealing of stages, no game of this kind has stages that are uniqure in their own way like SOCOM. To a hot desert to a blizzard to a forest, each stage not only looks different, but must be played differently for success. For example, the snow stages are incredibly more difficult to see a hidden opponent in than any of the other stages. On the snow stages, you also leave tracks wherever you go. Lots of graphical touches that make have affects on the gameplay. The special effects, such as grenade blasts, are top notch. The coolest graphical touch would probably be the flash grenade, which makes anyones screen go completely white that was in the blast radius.

The only sore spot in the graphics are the models and plain textures, but I’ll take the realistic graphical touches and smoother online play over that anyday. While most games with on and offline modes generally look smoother offline, I honestly havent been able to tell a difference.

Sound

Just like the graphics, the sound in SOCOM pays huge dividends into the gameplay. Realism is the name of the game here, and each weapon sounds differently.

Little sound touches are present everywhere in SOCOM. Offline, some missions have you needing to overhear conversations between terrorists. Well, if only one of your SEALS is fluent in that language, you’d better make sure hes alive or no one will understand the conversation. Also, online, the headset works great, and with only 16 people using them and all on broadband, its alot smoother than most PC games and really adds another layer of depth to the gameplay.

The sound effects, such as bullets ans grenades, are some of the best around. You can hear the wood of a building or door cracking and breaking as bullets fly into it. Stand too close to a grenade when it goes off and your sound is reduced to nothing more than a high pitched squeak for a minute or so until your players ears can recover. Very cool.

The soundtrack meets the tone of the game. Adrenaline driven and still light sometimes, just what you need after losing a companion to a terrorist or after taking out 3 of them with your sniper rifle.

Gameplay

Gameplay will be broken into two sections. Online and offline.

Offline

Offline SOCOM can be a chore. You get more missions and more weapons than you do online, but you also get more tediousness and more hassle. While the missions are, for the most part, varied, after awhile you begin to get bored with it.

The weak AI wont help matters much either. Sometimes the weak AI will work for you, sometimes it will work against you. Usually, its against you. For some wierd reason, sometimes your partners choose to grenade or rifle-butt the terrorists rather than simply use that bug gun in their hands and shoot them. Sometimes if your in cover or doing something important like moving hostages or defusing a bomb, it will cost you with the mission as you or a hostage is killed in the hail of gunfire your teammate failed to prevent. Other times, the computer AI, equally weak, will not fire at you until they are at close range, sometimes opting for the same rifle-butt strategy as your partner.

However, when the AI is doing its job, SOCOM is a blast to play offline. The weapon selection is even bigger and better than it is offline, and theres usually no shortage of terrorists to take care of. Taken in moderate amounts, the missions are too boring even when the AI messes up. Just makes the game harder.

Given the short play time and lack of offline multiplayer(not even a co-op!), I would not recommend this game to anyone without high speed net access, especially if they have a PC.

Online

Without the lack of AI to mess the game up for you, online play is the reason to buy SOCOM. There are 3 modes to choose from:

Supression: Basically a deathmatch game. Take out your opponents with extreme prejudice before they have the chance to do the same to you. Pretty simple.

Demolition: I balked at the lack of a CTF mode when I first got this game, but Demolition has since become my favorite mode and is just as good as CTF. There is a bomb in the middle of the map. Either team can get it, and the objective is to get it to your opponents base and plant it. Sounds easy, but it isnt. The stages for this mode are crammed with sniper spots, as well as ambush points. Teamplay is a must in this mode, as one guy carrying the bomb is going to get mowed down by the opponents once he reaches their base.

Hostage Rescue: You rescue hostages in this mode. If you’re the SEALS anyways. The Terrorists must kill the SEALS or keep them at bay until the time runs out. Dont think about just capping the hostages if you’re a Terrorist either, you’ll be penalized bigtime and probably be voted off the server.

You can interact with your teammates through pre-set messages and of course the headset. You will need to also to get the best of this awesome game online.

I havent had many problems connecting and registering. The online lobbies are perfect. Stat rankings, clan sections, I really dont see how they could have made it any better. This game alone was worth the long wait for an online PS2 game.

Conclusion

Offline, the game sometimes becomes a chore and the AI can be dumb as rocks. Its apparent Sony and Zipper catered to the online section, and the result is a game thats just as good as its PC counterparts, and the best online game thus far on PS2.