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IGN Review of SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation
The SOCOM franchise is a well known and well loved franchise in Sony circles. Not only did it help push the PS2 into online multiplayer matches, but it's still frequently played by rabid fans that have established clans and sunk hundreds, if not thousands, of hours into their matches. Needless to say, the anticipation for the latest iteration of the game has been extremely high. Recently, Slant Six (who took over from perennial series developer Zipper Interactive) and Sony Computer Entertainment released SOCOM: Confrontation, the franchise's first steps onto the PS3. Unfortunately, the game has been plagued by a ton of bugs, glitches and server issues, and even two weeks after its release and a recent patch, the title is still severely flawed with technical problems.
Confrontation hosts battles between Commandos and Mercenaries across seven large maps that are packed with dozens of sniper nests, ambush alleys and crossfire points. Taking a page from some of the earlier SOCOM games, Confrontation includes some fan favorite levels, including Frostfire, Desert Glory and Crossroads, all of which are recreated as veterans would remember them. Skirmishes break out across these maps in one of seven game modes, such as Suppression (Team Deathmatch), Control (grabbing and holding checkpoints) and Extraction (bringing hostages from one area to extraction safe zones). Players have a number of customizable options with all of these modes, such as the option to select whether or not players will be able to respawn infinitely, a limited number of times or if there won't be any respawning allowed at all. As a result, you'll find that battles can frequently become hectic firefights as time starts running out in a round or as kill counts closely approach their round winning score.
Watch SOCOM vids here.
To help you accomplish your objectives and kill your opponents, Confrontation offers a large number of options for either Commandos or Mercenaries, ranging from assault rifles and shotguns to machine guns and sniper rifles. Players select both a primary and secondary weapon, as well as additional gear such as frag grenades, RPGs and C4. Guns can be further modified with scopes, laser sights and other equipment, all of which affect the statistics of that weapon. For example, adding a scope will increase your accuracy, while suppressors will reduce your damage. What's more, players can equip themselves with body armor to further reduce incoming damage taken from fire. The armor and additional gear comes at a price, however; the more equipment that you pack on, the heavier your soldier becomes and the slower he moves on the battlefield. While you might be able to shrug off some fire, you probably won't be able to avoid incoming rocket shells or grenades, so players will need to determine their gear according to their play style.
Regardless of whether you're a sniper or a run and gun style player, one thing that everyone can take advantage of are the new motion sensing controls, which allows you to perform leans and other moves by twisting the controller. In the past, you'd have to physically move and turn the camera, leaving you vulnerable to a headshot. Now, if you turn the DualShock to the left or right, you can lean around a corner, allowing you to crouch and take a shot and retreat to relative safety. Similarly, players can raise the controller up to peek over cover, or push the controller down quickly to go prone, allowing you to dodge and avoid incoming fire. Elements like this allow players to maneuver through the battlefield without exposing themselves, potentially helping their side come out on top.
However, the largest problem with SOCOM: Confrontation is that it's still full of technical flaws. I'll try not to bore you with all of the issues, but I'll bring up some of the larger issues. While you receive nearly as many disconnects as before, getting rejected from clearly open channels and servers happens way too frequently, and will bounce you back out to the title screen. I also discovered that while playing 8-on-8 matches could be somewhat stable, with an individual disconnect here and there, playing a 32 player match still results in vast disconnects amongst myself and fellow players. What's worse, playing some of these matches would frequently result in a freeze that would force me to hard reset my PS3, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever. A further problem that I found was that playing some ranked games would automatically launch me into spectator mode without any option to spawn into a game, even if I'd joined a newly created match at the same time as other players. It would be understandable if you joined a game that was already in progress and weren't allowed to hop into the action, but if you're waiting to play a game and are already stuck, it doesn't make any sense. Plus, considering that you have to wait for at least 30-45 seconds before you are launched into a match, this adds insult to injury.
Connection issues or odd game starts aren't the only problem here. For instance, the game still has a large amount of lag regardless of what kind of connection that you happen to have. I've played SOCOM on both our office connection and at home, with both wired and wireless connections, and discovered that the hitches and frame rate drops were just as frequent regardless of my location. Obviously, this is a problem when you're trying to accurately track enemies and fast paced action of the battlefield, but it gets even worse when you're trying to coordinate with allies and you notice that your screen and gameplay has been frozen for a few seconds while everything else is going on around you. Not only does this make it much harder to target enemies, but it can potentially kill you when an enemy in your sights escapes because of lag. On the flip side, I've seen players still teleport around the map now and then, which is extremely frustrating , particularly if you're targeting an enemy and suddenly they wind up leaping multiple feet away without any obvious lag occurring. I've also been the victim of shots that go through walls or other objects even though I haven't exposed myself to fire, and noticed that some of the hit detection for certain weapons is radically off, and the speed between weapon switching can sometimes be rather slow. Another issue I ran into was playing a Demolition match and not being able to pick up the bomb even though I was right on top of the explosive. Finally, one of my squadmates and another player traded off shotgun blasts at point blank range three times and neither one of them was killed. While I was able to move over and eventually get the kill, it was unbelievable to watch two guys in medium armor survive this assault.
But that brings up one final point, which is that these issues seem to be a very hit or miss kind of a thing. I, and other players, have had sessions where Confrontation has worked reasonably well with minimal bugs. Stop for a few minutes or so, say to grab dinner and return to the servers, and you run into a nightmare of glitches, network issues and other drops. When it works, the game is fun, and coordinating with your allies can be an engaging battlefield experience. When it doesn't, you want to throw something through your television.
©2008-10-30, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Confrontation hosts battles between Commandos and Mercenaries across seven large maps that are packed with dozens of sniper nests, ambush alleys and crossfire points. Taking a page from some of the earlier SOCOM games, Confrontation includes some fan favorite levels, including Frostfire, Desert Glory and Crossroads, all of which are recreated as veterans would remember them. Skirmishes break out across these maps in one of seven game modes, such as Suppression (Team Deathmatch), Control (grabbing and holding checkpoints) and Extraction (bringing hostages from one area to extraction safe zones). Players have a number of customizable options with all of these modes, such as the option to select whether or not players will be able to respawn infinitely, a limited number of times or if there won't be any respawning allowed at all. As a result, you'll find that battles can frequently become hectic firefights as time starts running out in a round or as kill counts closely approach their round winning score.
Watch SOCOM vids here.
To help you accomplish your objectives and kill your opponents, Confrontation offers a large number of options for either Commandos or Mercenaries, ranging from assault rifles and shotguns to machine guns and sniper rifles. Players select both a primary and secondary weapon, as well as additional gear such as frag grenades, RPGs and C4. Guns can be further modified with scopes, laser sights and other equipment, all of which affect the statistics of that weapon. For example, adding a scope will increase your accuracy, while suppressors will reduce your damage. What's more, players can equip themselves with body armor to further reduce incoming damage taken from fire. The armor and additional gear comes at a price, however; the more equipment that you pack on, the heavier your soldier becomes and the slower he moves on the battlefield. While you might be able to shrug off some fire, you probably won't be able to avoid incoming rocket shells or grenades, so players will need to determine their gear according to their play style.
Regardless of whether you're a sniper or a run and gun style player, one thing that everyone can take advantage of are the new motion sensing controls, which allows you to perform leans and other moves by twisting the controller. In the past, you'd have to physically move and turn the camera, leaving you vulnerable to a headshot. Now, if you turn the DualShock to the left or right, you can lean around a corner, allowing you to crouch and take a shot and retreat to relative safety. Similarly, players can raise the controller up to peek over cover, or push the controller down quickly to go prone, allowing you to dodge and avoid incoming fire. Elements like this allow players to maneuver through the battlefield without exposing themselves, potentially helping their side come out on top.
However, the largest problem with SOCOM: Confrontation is that it's still full of technical flaws. I'll try not to bore you with all of the issues, but I'll bring up some of the larger issues. While you receive nearly as many disconnects as before, getting rejected from clearly open channels and servers happens way too frequently, and will bounce you back out to the title screen. I also discovered that while playing 8-on-8 matches could be somewhat stable, with an individual disconnect here and there, playing a 32 player match still results in vast disconnects amongst myself and fellow players. What's worse, playing some of these matches would frequently result in a freeze that would force me to hard reset my PS3, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever. A further problem that I found was that playing some ranked games would automatically launch me into spectator mode without any option to spawn into a game, even if I'd joined a newly created match at the same time as other players. It would be understandable if you joined a game that was already in progress and weren't allowed to hop into the action, but if you're waiting to play a game and are already stuck, it doesn't make any sense. Plus, considering that you have to wait for at least 30-45 seconds before you are launched into a match, this adds insult to injury.
Connection issues or odd game starts aren't the only problem here. For instance, the game still has a large amount of lag regardless of what kind of connection that you happen to have. I've played SOCOM on both our office connection and at home, with both wired and wireless connections, and discovered that the hitches and frame rate drops were just as frequent regardless of my location. Obviously, this is a problem when you're trying to accurately track enemies and fast paced action of the battlefield, but it gets even worse when you're trying to coordinate with allies and you notice that your screen and gameplay has been frozen for a few seconds while everything else is going on around you. Not only does this make it much harder to target enemies, but it can potentially kill you when an enemy in your sights escapes because of lag. On the flip side, I've seen players still teleport around the map now and then, which is extremely frustrating , particularly if you're targeting an enemy and suddenly they wind up leaping multiple feet away without any obvious lag occurring. I've also been the victim of shots that go through walls or other objects even though I haven't exposed myself to fire, and noticed that some of the hit detection for certain weapons is radically off, and the speed between weapon switching can sometimes be rather slow. Another issue I ran into was playing a Demolition match and not being able to pick up the bomb even though I was right on top of the explosive. Finally, one of my squadmates and another player traded off shotgun blasts at point blank range three times and neither one of them was killed. While I was able to move over and eventually get the kill, it was unbelievable to watch two guys in medium armor survive this assault.
But that brings up one final point, which is that these issues seem to be a very hit or miss kind of a thing. I, and other players, have had sessions where Confrontation has worked reasonably well with minimal bugs. Stop for a few minutes or so, say to grab dinner and return to the servers, and you run into a nightmare of glitches, network issues and other drops. When it works, the game is fun, and coordinating with your allies can be an engaging battlefield experience. When it doesn't, you want to throw something through your television.
©2008-10-30, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved