"Even Better Online, Much Worse Offline"

When the original SOCOM was released in 2002, online gaming was mostly a PC-only concept. At that time, Sony decided that it would begin its online console gaming experiment by releasing the game alongside the PlayStation 2's network adapter. It was a risky proposition, especially when the game was announced to be playable online only through a (much rarer at the time) broadband internet connection. Luckily for Sony, the game received an overwhelmingly positive response, both from the gaming press and from gamers themselves. The success of the game resulted in two sequels, the latest of which is SOCOM 3.

When a game has the unenviable task of succeeding one of the most-played online console games ever, it has the potential to either build on its predecessor's popularity, or alienate the fans who made the series so popular in the first place. SOCOM 3 promises a host of new additions to the tried-and-true gameplay, including playable vehicles, twice as many players in online games, and a more coherent, less frustrating single-player campaign. Does it deserve to inherit its forerunners' throne? Read on:

Visuals:

The game's interface is simple, and features all of the options that a SOCOM veteran would remember. Every option in the main menu is easy to understand, and there are now ‘Quick Deploy' and ‘Fast Login' options to save players some menu navigation time. The menus in-game are much the same, with several control options available to be changed during gameplay. The select button allows for viewing of the objective map, which works well during the flow of the game. The game's functional aspects look nice, and perform as well as could be expected.

There are CGI interludes before every mission, and they are animated quite well. The character models look mostly realistic, and their movements are well animated. The only noticeable problem with the FMVs is very bad lip synching, which is especially apparent when characters are speaking a foreign language. The videos do, however, perform their job admirably, despite the problems with the voiceovers.

In-game graphics don't feature as impressive an overhaul as there was between SOCOM 1 and 2, although there are a few nice visual touches that spice up the experience a bit. The most noticeable is a blur effect that takes place after your character takes a severe hit from an enemy, which is a good touch, and an added incentive to stay behind cover. Otherwise, the newest visual additions are the vehicles, which usually animate smoothly.

The graphics that remained from SOCOM 2 have kept their luster, and the game looks good overall. It's somewhat disappointing, though, that the visuals haven't achieved an even higher level of quality, given the two-year layoff between new SOCOMs. This lack of improvement is most readily apparent in the game's occasional clipping problems. Another minor area of concern is the seeming lack of a solidly realistic physics engine; you will, on multiple occasions, see corpses lying flat on a nearly vertical surface after being killed, and there are also some odd results displayed when vehicles crash into either other vehicles or the environment. These problems do not detract greatly from the game experience, but they will leave you with a nagging feeling of disappointment that they couldn't be ironed out before the game's release.

SOCOM 3's visuals are very well made, despite the fact that they borrow heavily from a two-year-old game. It is difficult to say that they're great, though, because of the age and minor flaws that they do show.

Score: 9/10

Sound:

The sound effects in the SOCOM series have always been top-notch, from the voiceovers all the way to the guns and environmental effects, and SOCOM 3 delivers in this area as well.

The sound effects in every area of operation are extremely realistic, and help tremendously in maintaining the atmosphere that the game strives for. The impressive collection of weaponry, which is arguably the true star of the game, sounds entirely realistic, down to the last pistol or explosive device. The interactions between the weaponry and objects within the level sound so true to life that you will often find yourself reacting to the game on sound alone. The environmental sounds also do a good job of recreating the real-world locations that they are modeled after, and this also helps to envelope you in the game experience.

Once again, Zipper has brought together an impressive cast of actors to do the voice work for the game, and these men and women deliver impressive performances across the board. As with SOCOM 2, all conversations between non-English speaking characters take place in the character's native tongue, and the feeling of removal from the proceedings helps even more to put the player in their SEAL's shoes. The English voice actors all do an impressive job as well, and the entirety of the script is delivered as you would expect it to be.

The score for the game sound very similar to the triumphant military tone of such composers as Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams, and it becomes an important part of the game's proceedings. The music ebbs and flows with the action in game, and it plays dominantly during the videos and important encounters you will see.

Sound has always been the most impressive aspect of the SOCOM games, and SOCOM 3 is no different than its predecessors. The entire acoustic presentation is incredibly well created, and in the end it greatly enhances the quality of the game.

Score: 10/10

Gameplay:

SOCOM 2's weakest point was its offline mode, where frustrating difficulty and poor artificial intelligence marred a well thought-out and designed course of play. SOCOM 3 fixes one of these problems, but this unfortunately leads to the other becoming all the more apparent.

The concept pushed on you from the very beginning in SOCOM is teamwork. You are the leader of a four-man SEAL team, and you have to go about accomplishing your goals (ideally) using your teammates to help with the variety of tasks you will be performing. The game forces you to travel with at least one of these companions at all times, and will give you a ‘Game Over' if they are all killed in action. Other than this team dynamic, stealth is the other mechanic that plays a large part in the flow of the game, with certain missions requiring you to not be noticed, and others being made much easier by the same.

Given the importance of stealth and cover, the game does a good job of preparing you for keeping yourself and your teammates out of trouble. There is always plenty of brush and undergrowth to hide yourself in, and there will always be places to hide behind if you are being shot at. The levels are all laid out in a straightforward fashion, and the inclusion of an objective map ensures that you ill always know what to do and where to go.

The guns you use are all useful in different ways, and thanks to the new weapon modification system, they are more dynamic than ever: a single assault rifle can be modified to be silenced, turned into a medium-range sniper rifle, or turned into a grenade launcher with the right attachments. This customizability helps greatly in preparing you for what you will encounter in the game's levels, and is appropriately balanced by the game's new Load system. The Load system assigns a weight to each object the player is carrying, and if the player equips too much, they will run much, much slower as a result of their burden. These two changes, as well as the addition of the occasional use of vehicles, help the realism in the game reach another level.

In previous SOCOM games, each level was a once-through, die-and-you-do-it-again affair. This steeply challenging difficulty level hurt the game somewhat, as it made it inaccessible to more casual gamers who couldn't handle it. SOCOM 3 changes this by adding a checkpoint system into the offline game's levels. The checkpoints allow you two or three (or in some missions up to five) points during each mission where you will have your progress saved, and your characters will be refilled with ammunition and health. This change eliminates much of the challenge of the game, as there is now little need to be cautious, since death only means that you will restart at your last checkpoint, rather than at the beginning of the level. The game becomes so easy, in fact, that its twelve missions can be easily beaten in a five or six hour sitting on your first time through, and can be beaten in even less time – on a higher difficulty setting! – on subsequent playthroughs.

The move to a checkpoint system has the unfortunate effect of increasing the profile of the game's severely flawed artificial intelligence. The game's A.I. has always been questionable, but due to the difficult nature of the game's missions, it was much less noticeable during gameplay. Now, with there being little reason to stay hidden all the time, the A.I.'s warts come into full, clear view on nearly every occasion you encounter an enemy.

Enemies in the game act like little more than homicidal drones. If they spot you, they will shoot at you, and after a while, they may retreat to cover behind some object. They will always, however, move from behind their cover after a short time, giving you plenty of opportunity to shoot them from behind your cover. In addition, when there is a stationary turret available, the top priority of your enemies appears to invariably be getting behind that gun – even though the previous three terrorists who did so were shot and killed almost immediately by a sniper. This lemming mentality seems to be extremely pervasive in all aspects of the enemy A.I., and really harms the game's realism as a result.

Of course, your computer-controlled teammates feature similarly poor A.I., and they will act in an equally boneheaded manner more often than not. You will see these supposedly highly trained, highly intelligent commandos not move from their enemies' line of fire, allowing themselves to be chewed up by bullets. You will see your teammates outright ignore your commands, usually by refusing to deploy a grenade or to hit the dirt when they have been spotted by the enemy. They will also fire infinitely at walls that an enemy has hidden behind, fall off ledges to severely maim or kill themselves, and (my favorite) drop down to the ground right next to a door you just planted C4 on, as if waiting to be blown up. So poor is the teammates A.I. that, were it not for the occasional enemy they may kill or the bullets they are good at taking for you, they would be more harmful than helpful to have around.

The gameplay in the offline mode is solid as ever, but the incredibly weak level of challenge and the horrific artificial intelligence make the experience a drag to play.

Score: 5/10

Features/Modes:

Online play, which has always been SOCOM's bread and butter, is back, and has seen a large set of upgrades in this iteration. These are detailed in the Online Play section.

LAN play makes a return in SOCOM 3, and is fully compatible with all of the online play upgrades. Of course, with each player needing a copy of the game and a PS2 to play it on, this mode once again seems like an afterthought.

The only other extras involving gameplay are unlockable weapons and character skins, which are acquired by beating the offline more on all difficulty levels. These are usable in both offline and online gameplay, and some are important enough that they are worth slogging through the terrible offline game to get.

Another new feature in SOCOM 3 is crosstalk with the PSP game, SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo. This means that you can hook your PSP up to your PS2 via a USB connector cable, and if you have a copy of both SOCOM 3 and Fireteam Bravo, you can unlock new features in each by what you've achieved in the other. Achieving certain objectives in SOCOM 3 will make others in Fireteam Bravo easier, and vice versa. While Fireteam Bravo hadn't come out as of this review, the feature is still interesting enough that it should draw gamers who like the PSP game to try SOCOM 3.

The online mode is clearly the focus of SOCOM 3, as evidenced by the relative dearth of other gameplay modes and features.

Score: 7/10

Online Play:

SOCOM has lived and died with its online play. Up until Halo 2's release, it held claim to being the most-played online console game ever, with an average of nearly 21,000 unique users playing it online at its peak times. SOCOM 3 brings a lot of changes to the game's online experience, and in the end they help make this the best SOCOM yet.

The most significant of the additions is an increase in the maximum number of players in online matches from sixteen to thirty-two. The increase in team size is a welcome addition, as matches are now much more intense, but it does not come without another unwelcome side effect: latency issues. With a full, sixteen-on-sixteen room, lag sometimes becomes a factor, and in any room where a large number of players gather in one area, the game's frame rate can drop dangerously low. Of course, the majority of gameplay still works extremely well, and the increase makes for a lot more interesting matchups.

The increase in players also ties in to the changes in gameplay, where all of the offline additions are fully realized. Vehicles now appear in all of the maps, as well as customizable weaponry and the Load system. These new features ramp up the strategic challenge of every map, and result in fun, appealing confrontations. Vehicles in particular are satisfying to use, and since each one can hold at least three teammates at once (and all require a second player, besides the driver, if you wish to utilize their weaponry), teamwork becomes more important on every level.

The game types have seen some changes from SOCOM 2 as well. Escort missions, where the SEALs were charged with protecting VIPs and the terrorist side was tasked with killing them, have been removed, and replaced with Convoy missions. These function in a similar manner to Escort; the Terrorist side must guide a pair of Cargo trucks to a loading zone, allow time for the truck to load, and then bring the truck to an extraction point – all while the SEALs are trying their hardest to destroy those vehicles. Another new game mode is Control Points. This mode features five points on the map which each team must race to control; the first side to reach all five, or the team with more when the round expires, wins. In addition to Convoy and Control Points, old SOCOM standbys Suppression, Extraction, and Breach all return, giving the game a very healthy dose of originality on each of the twelve new maps.

New features also improve the online experience outside of the gameplay. Clans now can feature up to 32 players, and the clan menu allows players to join their teammates' games right from the main list. The game also now features in-game message boards and email, which allow an even better level of communication between clan members.

The biggest problem with online play in any game is the community of sociopaths who come out of the woodwork to ruin your experience. SOCOM, of course, is no exception, and you will undoubtedly run into some obnoxious, ignorant players who are out to annoy everyone they can. The improvements to the in-game communication methods allow you to more easily stay with a crowd you know, which helps to minimize the impact of any obnoxious individuals you encounter; unfortunately, though, this is not going to prevent the occasional disruption to your enjoyment of the game. Also, as of this writing, the ‘Mute/Ignore Player' function only works sporadically in online games, which can make some situations much more irritating than they needed to be.

Cheating was greatly reduced in SOCOM 2, and while SOCOM 3 has yet to be tested against would-be cheaters, it stands to reason that the developers have made certain that such players are not allowed online. Time will only tell if the game has been sufficiently set up to disallow these players from playing online.

The online play in SOCOM 3 is obviously where the game's development was focused, and as a result it is much more polished and enjoyable than the offline mode. All of the improvements make this without a doubt the best version of SOCOM ever, although the online experience is never going to be 100% smooth sailing.

Score: 10/10

Total Score:

SOCOM 3, in its essence, is a tremendously innovative online game, complete with well-fleshed out community features and spectacularly competitive gameplay. Disappointingly, that online play has had the regrettable circumstance of being coupled with a sub par story mode for offline-only players. Ultimately, it seems that Zipper's design decisions on the game were intended only to draw in previous fans of the series, and not to improve on what was already one of the most vibrant console videogame communities in existence.

If you were a fan of either SOCOM 1 or 2, or if you are a fan of realistic online shooters in general, then SOCOM 3 was clearly made with your interests at heart, and is definitely worth purchasing. If, however, you do not have the broadband internet necessary to play the game online, then you will likely find that SOCOM 3's brain-dead story mode is not to your tastes.

Score: 9/10 (not an average)

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Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/25/05