SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo

"Strong singleplayer and multiplayer makes Fireteam Bravo a resounding success"

The SOCOM made tactical shooters a huge hit on the PS2, and the franchise moves to the PSP with this first iteration. While not as impressive as the sequel, Fireteam Bravo is a very complete package, with great singleplayer and multiplayer.

Story:
The story in Fireteam Bravo isn't very coherent or well connected. You get to play as Raymond "Sandman" Stokes. Along with your partner, Tate "Lonestar" Rawlins, the two of you are Fireteam Bravo, the world's most elite two man SEAL team. You fight four different terrorist groups in four different areas of operation. Each area of operation has its own story, and the game tries to connect all of the areas of operation together. The plot isn't very interesting, but the game has some good story presentation.
Score: 6/10

Graphics:
Fireteam Bravo is graphically impressive, with few flaws. Character models are amazing detailed, letting you see the individual bullets on a bandolier for example. Levels look amazing, ranging from lush jungles and sandy beaches to decrepit slums and dank sewers. The game also has an impressive nightvision view. Two major problems are the lack of variety in character model and the unstable framerate. You'll basically be fighting the same terrorist over and over again, because they all look the same. The framerate in Fireteam Bravo also fluctuates often. It'll slow down when more than 2 enemies appear onscreen, and it plummets in a few indoor focused levels.
Score: 8/10

Sound:
Fireteam Bravo doesn't disappoint with its audio design. The music in this game is well composed and very fitting of the game's military theme. The voice acting is similarly very impressive, and characters in each area of operation speak in their native tongue - a very nice touch. The SEALs can speak in the area's native languages too, which is cool. Occasionally, the two SEALs also speak to each other, or taunt enemies with amusing quips such as, "Look at me when I'm shooting you!" or "He won't be getting up for a while." Fireteam Bravo's sound effects are particularly effective, ranging from the boom of an M60 and the puff of a silenced MP5 to the chirps of crickets in the jungle and the crunching of sand underneath your feet.
Score: 10/10

Gameplay:
In order to squeeze the SOCOM experience onto the PSP, several important changes were made to the gameplay. The aiming and the overall difficulty of the game were reduced to make it more accessible for portable gamers.

The PSP's lack of a second thumbstick makes aiming a difficult thing to do, so the developers threw in an intelligent target lock system. By holding the R button, your character will automatically aim at the closest enemy. However, when you are locked on, several factors play into the accuracy of your shot. If you are lying prone with a sniper rifle aimed at a still target, the game will aim for a headshot for you. If you're using a sub-machine gun and strafing about, aimed at a target at the far end of your gun's effective range, you won't be hitting many targets. Even with these factors coming into play, the target lock still makes everything relatively easy. If you want a challenge, or you want to get those headshots while on the move, you can still use free aim, which is activated with a tap of another button. However, you won't be able to look and move at the same time, and the camera orients itself automatically as you move through different terrain types and elevations.

The rest of the controls mostly work fine. The use of a target lock system frees up the face buttons for other commands, and each face button has two different functions - one that is activated by holding the button, and one that is activated by simply tapping the button. You will find yourself fumbling a few times, such as going prone when you wanted to swap from your primary weapon to your grenades, but with time you will learn to overcome this. Two major gripes with the controls are inventory system and the lack of quick-turning. The inventory system is clunky at best. You have to hit the left arrow button to open up the menu, and then you have various other buttons that let you cycle between weapons, change firing modes, etc. It's a huge hassle, especially when you need to quickly swap weapons in a firefight, to have to go through a clunky menu to do so. Secondly, the lack of quick-turning - the ability to quickly turn 180 degrees - makes it very easy to get ambushed behind. In fact, the game does take advantage of this several times in the singleplayer campaign by having enemies hit your backside, and you take more than a few cheap hits having to slowly turn around. This also guarantees you'll win any fight online by getting somebody from behind.

Aside from a few minor complaints with the controls and target lock, the game itself is very solid. Fireteam Bravo has a moderately lengthy singleplayer campaign, that takes about 6 to 7 hours to complete on the default difficulty level. The campaign consists of 14 missions spread out through four different areas: Chile, North Africa, South Asia and Poland. These missions are mostly well designed, with a large variety of different objectives, ranging from stealth infiltration and bomb defusal to VIP capture and hostage rescuing. The developers have done a great job with level design. One level has you infiltrating a terrorist compound from the sewers to rescue an important politician who has been taken hostage. Another has you tailing a radical sympathizer, photographing him as he meets with other terrorists. Most annoyingly, though, the game forces you to sit through some escort levels, as you baby-sit unarmed hostages or enemy captives. You do get rudimentary control over them, but you have to stand right next to them to give them orders. Unlike the missions in the sequel, many of these feel more grounded in reality. Levels generally don't last longer than 15 minutes, with the longest being a half hour at most, but they seem more difficult because of the lack of checkpoints or mid-mission saving.

The game's difficulty is somewhat eased by the mostly idiotic artificial intelligence. Your team mate's AI is particularly well done, with you having a vast amount of control over him. You can direct him to move to a specific location either quickly or quietly. You can order him to kill a specific target and then holding his fire. He is also particularly adept at throwing grenades long distances. He does have some difficulty following basic orders, and gets stuck on terrain a few times. The worst problems come when he misthrows grenades. More than a few times he has either thrown them at his feet, or thrown them at my feet, killing either or both of us. The major problem comes from the enemy's AI, though. They're nearly blind, being unable to spot you from 3 feet away. Sometimes, though, their vision is uncanny, as they spot you immediately while you lie prone in a dark hallway. Playing on the default difficulty, enemies don't get particularly smart until the last five or six missions, when their alertness and weapon proficiency improve dramatically. One thing that they do that does keep you on your toes is throw grenades at you. If you've been spotted and choose to stay in your position, sometimes they'll throw grenades at you with deadly accuracy, and their huge blast radius basically means that if a grenade is tossed at you, you can pretty much consider the mission over. The other difficulties offer huge contrasts. On the easiest difficulty, you can pretty much blaze through the whole game, treating it as a run-and-gun like Quake, as enemies don't seem to be able to hit you at all. Playing on the hardest difficulty will provide a challenge. Although they still have problems detecting you when they should, their accuracy and numbers increase enough to make things challenging.

Regardless of these problems, the singleplayer experience is very enjoyable. Every mission you finish, you can replay again to improve your overall mission rankings or just for fun. You can replay each area with a choice of five different objectives in the Instant Action mode. Instant Action lets you replay each area you've completed with the objective of your choosing: hostage extract, sweep and clear (where you have a time limit to clear the area of enemies), sabotage (where you find and disable enemy communications) and stealth variants of hostage extract and sabotage, where you have a limited amount of time to neutralize enemies if you're spotted. You can modify the difficulty of the missions as well. For example, by playing on the easiest difficulty, you'll only have to rescue one hostage and you'll face inexperienced enemies. However, by playing on the hardest difficulty you will have to locate and rescue all of the hostages, and have to fight elite enemies. Instant Action is pretty good as it is, but I wish you had more options to pick from.

Additionally, you can replay the game to achieve bonus objectives in the form of Crosstalk. Crosstalk syncs copies of Fireteam Bravo and SOCOM 3 together. By completing bonus objectives in Fireteam Bravo, you will change certain aspects of the SOCOM 3 story mode, and vice versa. You can also gain extras such as new weapons, movies and multiplayer characters.

The real meat of the game is its multiplayer, which is still going strong 2 years after the game's release. The game's target locking does significantly simplify the gameplay, but you still have to snipe at long ranges and use manual aim for explosives. It also promotes teamwork, as you'll easily get gunned down by a group if you decide to go lone wolf. The game sports a variety of game modes, such as Suppression (aka team elimination), Captive (Suppression, but with the ability to revive downed team mates), Demolition, Extraction (where the SEAL team must rescue hostages from terrorists) and standard Free For All. The game's well designed singleplayer maps also return as multiplayer maps, and ones that stand out as some of the best include Thin Ice, Market Day, Rockslide and Rolling Stock. Most of the PSP community has moved onto the sequel, which also sports strong multiplayer, but you won't be hard pressed to find a good game going. Like the sequel, and many other games, Fireteam Bravo suffers from hackers. Some hackers have increased health or weapon accuracy, while others simply boot whole groups of players from servers. Hacking is definitely a problem, and the developers don't seem to care about patching the problem. However, you can simply join another game, or log back on if you've been booted. A greater problem that might factor into your multiplayer enjoyment is whether or not you have a broadband connection and the PSP's headset - without both, you will be missing out.

In spite of the sloppy AI and online problems, Fireteam Bravo has some great gameplay that you shouldn't miss.
Score: 9/10

There's no denying that there's a lot of content here, and the game does more things right than wrong. You will definitely get your money's worth, considering the game's dramatic price drop since becoming part of Sony's Greatest Hits. Fireteam Bravo is definitely a must buy game.

Summary:
Pros:
+ Great presentation
+ Solid controls
+ Great level design and singleplayer campaign
+ Excellent multiplayer
+ Instant Action mode offers lots of replayability
Cons:
- Story is weak
- Target lock will definitely turn off the hardcore
- Shoddy AI
- Lack of mid-mission saving
- Multiplayer experience will be ruined by hackers
- Broadband and headset required to get the most out of multiplayer

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/25/07

Game Release: SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo (US, 11/08/05)