SOCOM 3: Navy Seals (PS2)

(Sony/Zipper Interactive)

You may not have the stamina to pull the stuff these guys do in the wettest of conditions, but you sure can have fun with all the toys imagining how it might be.

Having played all the series to date I am now a definite fan of their latest graduate. The improvements keep coming and the variations on the themes of search and rescue, infil/exfil, surveillance, snatch & grab and finally sanctioned assassinations keep their edge; tied to obvious current hotspots and issues in the world to keep it close enough to be believable.

Firstly my experience of the game was only first person and not online so I apologise to anyone who has a different opinion to online play. Off the top I recognise that the headset voice command option of play (which was my initial draw card to the series) is no longer relevant for single person play; I always found it too clunky and clumsy so I am more comfortable issuing commands to team members via the hand controls.

Having said that I think the team controls were much more intuitive, laid out in a radial fashion, colour coded and sometimes locked in the point in play/action you were at so you could easily discern what options were available to you at that point in the game. So thumbs up for that one already.

The interface itself from set-up, loading saved play to Mission Instructions, team overview and Intel looked much cleaner and from a fetishists point of view thought was a nice improvement (from memory) on previous versions. The only bug I had was the mapping at briefing stage could have stood being able to zoom in on the field of play prior to a mission so that you could plan your routes, hiding places, escape paths etc…. more akin to a real mission plan. Unless I missed something this function did not seem available to me and was a constant ‘fly in the ointment’ in the prep stage before deployment.

The game itself made what felt like a great leap in terms of the previous offering in that it pitched the man with machine and all that it could offer to complete/assist a mission in a relevant and timely fashion. There was no feeling that the toys you had were flung in as another aside but rather a relevant companion to your mission or necessary tool to achieve your objectives. Their sense of relevance and fun was aided by your ability to use as you please (even drop if you so decided) and return to should it suit your situation or personal strategy.

Another aspect of the ‘toys’ shall we call them (be them ‘Technicals’, high speed gun-boats, HumVees or simply Fixed Machine Guns) was that you could swap in and out of the placements/roles within eg. driver, rear gunner, side gunner etc…. as you saw fit. This was a nice touch in the midst of battle should you choose to take over with some precision gunning to your own satisfaction, although the AI was generally good enough given good enough driving to take out enemies. You could complete a mission with or without these toys and could even seize and abscond with the enemies as you saw fit.

Other technical applications you would encounter include laser designators which would could be whipped out in the course of battle to immobilise a pesky tank or more stealthily. Again this sense of interplay between pure action shoot-em-up and reliance on technology/machinery lifted the overall sense of real-life mimicry.

The greater use of ‘toys’ was a highlight and contributed to the sense of thrill due to the speed involved and need to interchange for both mobility and firepower purposes, and was a great juxtaposition to the sense of stealth often used at other points in a mission.

Following that the game had also evolved in terms of player and enemy injuries. For instance a leg wound would not be instantly fatal compared to a head shot or a couple of torso shots and player and enemy alike could be seen to labour under such damage, which was more realistic and necessary in order to often capture rather than kill. Importance was therefore placed on real life captures or surrender for the purposes of Intel or humint as they call it in the biz. This level of play elevated the games realism above a typical firepower shoot-em-up, which I will not deny was always at hand and could be played that way too.

From memory the AI on the enemies was OK but still needed improvement. The old classics were still apparent such as enemies being shot at then you hide and their alertness of your presence dropping back to an Alzheimer’s rating – rendering drone like targets for the offing. Whilst I am a lazy player and love an easy target there was still some of these quirks in play – but still better than the previous in the series.

In fact there were a couple of bugs with team members who suddenly stopped responding to commands and would not act under orders until you moved to some ‘unknown’ point within the game that programmers only know about when they suddenly would catch up again and respond to orders. I saw so much more of that in Socom 2 – so by comparison was not an issue.

Cut scenes were also great, well dramatised, relevant and pivotal for the histrionics and elevation of purpose to the game missions, backed by equally relevant musical scores, which continued throughout the game to further marry the action with sense of tension.

Now down to weaponry. Whilst I am no gun devotee I did notice there was some sweet attention to the weaponry, as you would expect. From the get-go I noticed some rather lovely sound effects developed for this game, particularly when it came to the mini-guns, which I am sure had my neighbours worried as I took great joy in bursting of rounds at all hours of the evening. Even the sense of recoil was there with targeting being displaced under fire. As for targeting, never had I had so much fun swapping in an out between night vision and thermal targeting on my silenced automatic weapon taking out unlikely hidden enemies in the dark with multi-tap head shots – sweet purr of that thermal imaging kicking in and the soft quick thud of the automatic action. 

Whilst I have not spoken about the missions themselves I think that can remain for you to find out. I think the only thing you should know is that the game is an improvement in the series for my mind and not some piss-take on a franchise to just pull more of your bucks with very little by way of improvements.

The game very much honed in on what I envisage a SEAL team might do based on mission relevance and strategy of warfare, be it seaway or boating related (more so than the previous incarnations), and carried with it courses of action that emphasised their skills, from manning high-powered boats with multiple gun placements to the ability to camouflage or submerse on beach infills to avoid detection.

All in all I think Zipper Interactive didn’t let down the team with the latest in the series and I happily look forward to how it will grow, at least graphically, on the PS3 platform.

Rating 4/5

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