SOCOM II: U.S. Navy SEALs

"Not as fun as the original."

I will divide this review into two parts, Single Play, and Online Play, which are really two different games. I will refer back to SOCOM I features for those who have played SOCOM I and are skeptical about getting this game. Before you judge me for giving this game which you love a 5/10, read the whole review.

Single Play
The single player in this game consists of 12 missions, which take place in Albania, Brazil, Algeria, and Russia, respectively.

Story (8/10)
The storyline is that you are a SEAL in a group of four Navy SEALs that fight terrorists in different parts of the world. The storyline consists of stopping terrorists who smuggle weapons, build nukes, etc…All the stuff you are used to in a game like this. It is pretty much a realistic storyline, but it isn’t really a story. There are no shocking surprises in the game. No real antagonists (although they do attempt to put some in), and the cinematic sequences are pretty boring.

Gameplay (6/10)
The single player game can be very frustrating at times. I have a few problems with it. For one, there are no save points, and these are really long levels. You can spend 15 minutes sneaking around and make it to the end of the level, only to get shot by a terrorist and have to start all over again. Another problem is the glitches that occur in levels. You can be walking on a roof, and then fall through the roof to your death even though it is solid. The worst thing though is when you beat a level, then it freezes before you can save the game. This happened three times to me. The levels can be insane on higher difficulties, and it makes you want to snap the disc in half when this happens.

Another problem: This game takes up 3000 KB of your memory card. That is 3/8 of a standard memory card. A ridiculous amount of space.

The levels can be more fun now that you have a health bar. You can take more hits now and still go on. In my opinion, they are more fun then the original SOCOM.

One thing this game emphasizes is teamwork. You have three teammates that follow you around and can do things when you tell them to. You can tell your bravo team to breach a door, then clear the room, and they will do it. They do help you sometimes, but other times they are just as stupid as in the original SOCOM. Often you will catch your teammate running into a wall instead of going around it. Also, they don’t know when to get the hell out of your way. If they walk in front of your line of fire and you accidentally shoot one, he will fire back and kill you immediately. Not fun.

This game also emphasizes stealth, but I find myself running in with my unsuppressed M4A1 blazing, gunning down everything in my path. That seems to be much more effective than sneaking around with a silenced rifle, taking your time. The game does not force you to use stealth.

Online Play

Features (9/10)
The online play sounds like it is going to be great. Here are some of the new features Zipper added:

- The scoreboard allows you to see who is alive and who is dead on both teams.
- You can see the name of the person talking on the microphone.
- You can talk in the game lobby.
- There is no longer a ‘force’ option for the host. Instead, the game will start once the majority of the room is ready. If one or two people aren’t ready, tough.
- Two new game modes (which I will cover later)
- Twelve new levels.
- Modified old levels.
- Unlockable Characters
- A large arsenal of new weapons.
- Customizable taunts.
- Stationary turrets.
- The ability to call in air strikes.
- Voice modulation.
- Thermal vision.
- DNAS, detects and blocks most cheaters.
- New scoring and ranking system.
- Buddy list system.
- Clan ranking system.

The two new game modes are breach and escort. In breach, the SEALs must infiltrate the terrorist base by breaching the barricaded entrances with C4 explosives, and then plant a bomb in a specific building in the terrorist’s base. The terrorists must prevent this from happening. The other game mode is escort, where the SEALs are given three VIPs to protect and escort to an extraction zone, where they must wait for about twenty seconds before a helicopter arrives to extract the VIPs. The terrorists’ goal is to eliminate all three VIPs. This is fairly balanced for both sides. Although the terrorists can easily kill the VIPs, they will lose if they don’t kill all three by the end of the round. This requires a lot of teamwork for the SEALs, to determine what they want to do with the VIPs.

The old levels that were modified are both good and bad. Some levels were completely ruined, such as Abandoned and Rats Nest. They are so dark you cannot see anything, and it just ruins the fun that the levels used to have. Other levels have been improved for the better, such as Desert Glory, where you can now blow a hole in the hostage room wall with C4 to prevent hostage room camping. Some old levels were left untouched, but all 10 old levels are online to play.

There are new weapons and new classes of weapons, such as the AT4 (M136) and the RPG-7 rocket launchers. The terrorists receive PMN mines (not PWN). They get four of these mines that will explode whenever anyone steps on them. You can just plant it and leave. It gets to be a real pain in the ass for the SEALs, and terrorists if friendly fire is on, but they can change the strategy of both teams. The SEALs have claymores, where the terrorists don’t. Both the terrorists and SEALs now have the M14, M16A2, M60E3, and M63A. New terrorist weapons include the STG77 (Steyr AUG), the 552-SD (a silenced assault rifle), SASR sniper rifle, and the TA 12 Gauge, and M3 12 Gauge (shotguns). The SEALs get the IW-80-A2 (L85A2) assault rifle, RA-14 assault rifle, AK-105, and 12 gauge pump shotgun.

Both sides get grenade launchers, although the terrorists get the MGL and M79, where the SEALs only get the M203 attached to an M4A1 or M16A2. The grenade launchers and rocket launchers are only available on certain maps.

There are also new pistols, including the SP-10 and M11 for the SEALs.

You can unlock terrorist and SEAL characters for online play, which sometimes come in handy. They usually have different uniforms from the standard characters. These characters are unlocked in single player.

You can customize your taunts to say whatever you want. The enemy team will read them, but there is no audio. Your generic taunts, and character speech like “fire in the hole!” can only be heard by those in a realistic hearing distance to you, not throughout the whole map. There is no longer a “MAN DOWN!” either.

The stationary turrets are on certain levels, but nobody really uses them. You are bound to get sniped almost immediately if you are on one. Some of them are equipped with thermal scopes. Which brings me to the next new feature: thermal vision. You can only get thermal vision on sniper rifles in certain levels, on turrets, and on assault rifles with scopes using a glitch. The thermal vision lets you see the enemy glowing bright orange against a black background, but it is not as useful as it sounds. While you are wasting your time spotting someone through a scope, they will just walk right up to you and kill you.

Voice modulation is a feature put on the game, which modulates your voice, in an attempt to make little kids sound older. You end up sounding like the kidnapper from Ransom. It doesn’t sound good. I think Zipper made a really stupid decision by making that default every time you sign on. You cannot save it as off. Most times I forget I have it on.

The DNAS bans most cheaters who attempt to log on. It does not prevent all cheaters, but it does prevent the average guy who owns a codebreaker from getting online. You actually have to be smart to cheat, but there are so few cheaters that it isn’t really a problem.

The new scoring and ranking system tends to piss a lot of people off, including me. There are five ranks, Admiral for the top ten players, Captain for the top five, and then Lieutenant Commander, Lieutenant, and Ensign, Ensign being the lowest. This puts a lot of pressure on certain people to become a Captain. The ranking system basically works like this: kill people ranked higher than you, your rank improves. Get killed by people ranked lower than you, your rank gets worse. The ranks seem to be pointless though, because many times one will be playing great and then end up having their rank actually get worse, and vice versa. I won’t go into the reasons for why this happens, but let me say it is really stupid. Ask anyone on the GameFAQs board and they will give you their theory on why the ranking system sucks. There are rank-specific servers, so if your friend is a Captain in the Captains only server, and you are an Ensign, you cannot play with him.

The buddy list seemed like a good thing, but it never worked for me. It works for some people, but not others. It would never let me invite anyone.

The clan ranking system ranks your clan once it has more than 8 members, and it ranks them with other clans based on the player’s individual rank within the clan. Not a very good way of doing things. The top ten players all made a clan, so that clan will always be ranked #1. It isn’t a fair way of ranking clans.

Gameplay (5/10)
This is what separates SOCOM II from SOCOM I. The gameplay is not as fun as the original SOCOM, and can become very frustrating at times. When you shoot someone, from let’s say 20 feet away, you can empty a full magazine on them and not hit anything. You can pop someone in the chest with an assault rifle up close and they will keep running at you like they didn’t just have their liver shredded by a bullet going 1400 FPS. Why is this? Zipper attempted to put ‘realistic’ recoil in the guns. So when you fire in automatic, your bullets go everywhere. You are even more inaccurate when you are running. People try to solve this by firing in bursts, but then you can get clipped by someone with a lucky shot. In my opinion, which may differ from others, they made the M4A1-SD and AKS-74 a lot weaker. They do not drop people like they used to.

A health bar was added into the game, that’s right, a health bar. It takes a lot of hits to kill someone now unless you get hit in the head, or with a one shot kill sniper rifle (M87ELR or M82A1A). Pistols seem to kill people faster than assault rifles.

Although Zipper tried to make the game more realistic, you still have to wonder how a skinny little terrorist can carry and fire a 7.62mm 20 pound M60 while running, and kill someone accurately. If you were to do this in real life, you would lose control of the gun after five shots. Even though it is supposed to be more realistic, it is less fun. SOCOM I is much more fun than this game because you can drop people a lot easier. It is frustrating sometimes to empty your assault rifle on someone only to have him shoot you with 2 shots from his machine gun, or “noob cannon” as many will call it. (Don’t get me started on that…)

Despite the new convenient features, this game will never match SOCOM I. In fact, many people are quitting this game once they go back and play SOCOM I. With the rank, realistic recoil, glitchers, and other problems, people just get so frustrated they tend to quit.

Sound (10/10)
I love a game with good sounds. This game made excellent gun sounds for every gun, great explosions, and other great sounds. It sounds just like the real thing when you turn your volume up. Everything down to the bullet shells bouncing off the floor is accurate. Also, as you get further away from someone shooting, their gun sounds more like a tap than a faded machine gun. If you have ever heard gunshots in the distance in real life, it sounds muffled just like in the game. In large multiplayer maps sometimes you won’t even hear gunshots if you are far enough away from someone. The sound adds some good strategy into this game. I can know exactly where people are in the maps from hearing their footsteps, or which direction the faded shots came from.

The musical scores in this game are very appropriate and sound great. It puts you in a killing mood.

Graphics (9/10)
The graphics in this game are very realistic. It is an improvement from the original game. The animation in this game is very good too. All the textures have great detail put into them, and the foliage adds an element to the levels that makes it different from other shooters. The fog effect, which fades out far distances, adds a realistic feature to the gameplay.

Replay Value (6/10)
Although you are given many things you can unlock in single player, such as characters and weapons, the levels are just too redundant to play again. It isn’t worth replaying. One can say online play has infinite replay value, but that too gets old and frustrating after a while. The new levels are not as fun as the original SOCOM, the game is less addicting due to the problems with online gameplay, and you will find yourself frustrated when you should be having fun.

Conclusion:

Single Play
Story – 8/10
Gameplay – 7/10

Online Play
Features – 9/10
Gameplay – 5/10

Both Modes
Sound – 10/10
Graphics – 9/10
Replay Value – 6/10

I am giving this game a six out of ten because it just is not fun. Zipper attempted to make it realistic, but they took away the entertaining part of the game when they added in realistic recoil. People who don’t care about that kind of stuff will find it annoying that their guns do not hit anything. The single player is redundant and gets boring at times. Don’t buy this game just for the single player. The online play is in no way as fun or as exciting as SOCOM I. Despite all the new features that this game has, it is just an average game overall. Online play is not worth it, you will find yourself getting bored and angry at it in no time.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/07/04