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IGN Review of SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 2
One of Sony's most important franchises under its wing is SOCOM. The series has helped launch and push the Networking Adapter and USB headset support on the PlayStation 2, as well as headset and voice support on the PSP. Not only is it a platform for pushing new hardware, but its online functionality has been essentially second to none on Sony's platforms.
Coinciding with the release of SOCOM 3 last year we saw the series' first foray onto the PSP with SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo. The game worked as an aside of sorts to SOCOM 3, where Fireteam Bravo went on secondary objectives that tied into Alpha team's work. And now, along with the release of SOCOM: Combined Assault on the PlayStation 2, we have the follow-up to FTB with SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 2.
Part of the reason that Crosstalk has a great deal more impact on in-game events is that Fireteam Bravo 2's storyline is closer and more tightly knit to Combined Assault's. While each team has separate objectives to take care of, they almost cross paths a number of times in the two games. On occasion you might even see the other team going about their business, even if you can't directly interact with them. It's cool stuff and we hope it lays the groundwork for what we'll see going into the next-generation, where this sort cross-connectivity should be more commonplace.
Local Influence and Command Equity help to encourage "correct" play, whereby you restrain villagers, use non-lethal force and so forth. Local Influence is gained via getting villagers to safety and results in the ability to buy black market weapons, increased mission intelligence and so forth. Command Equity is earned by completing mission objectives and capturing enemies and allows you to unlock advanced weapons in the armory, buy air strikes or supply drops and the like.
The setup and surrounding elements to the missions are mostly cool, though there hasn't been a whole lot done to give your team much personality or keep you from feeling a little disconnected to the storyline. You're still running what can seem like random missions, something that not many tactical or even war games have overcome. Though you still only have one team mate at any one time, you do have the ability to choose who you take on missions, with each member have unique strengths and weaknesses. That works pretty well to personalize the play experience a bit.
One thing that is a bit curious is that you can no longer see stats for weapons on the equipment screen, either in single-player or multiplayer. There are short descriptions for each weapon that'll quickly point out its strengths and weaknesses, like whether a weapon is geared for long or short range, how accurate it is and so forth, but numbers folks will have to hit up FAQs after release for hard numbers.
The misses come in the structural layout and some of the mission flags. While there are sometimes multiple routes you can take, there are oftentimes very linear paths that you must navigate to get from area to area, especially in and around buildings. This takes away from the tactical feeling a bit as you feel strung along a predefined path rather than having been given numerous options on how to progress. This is worst when you have to back-track, which we had to do on more than one occasion just to fulfill mission objectives, like clearing an area of every soldier (someone would inevitably hide in a bush and we'd have to go back to find him). In these cases, you need to not only back-track but cover your tracks again as you head back to the extraction point.
The aiming mechanic has been altered a tad bit since the last game. Zipper realized that some players would take advantage of the lock-on mechanic by constantly tapping the R button to find players hidden in bushes and such. In Fireteam Bravo 2, you'll slow down a tad when you press R, theoretically giving you an incentive to use it sparingly. In practice though, you really don't slow down all that much, and if you just slow your tapping a tad bit it doesn't have much of a noticeable affect on your movement speed.
Network performance seems to be decent, though it wasn't perfect in our time with the game. During one session, the server dropped what seemed to be all of the players from the match a couple times. During the same session, lag was a bit of an issue and adversely affected our ability to fire accurately. While movement seemed to be perfectly fine, including not only ours but everyone else's, we ran into a number of gunfights where we'd be at a standoff and unload three or four clips until either ourselves or our enemy would drop dead. It was pretty ridiculous. After a bit of testing though, we're confident this was a direct result of lag, and hopping onto a quick server fixed this right up.
One aspect of the targeting mechanic that we have a problem with, both in multiplayer and single-player, is that weapons now have different ranges for lock-on. Long-range rifles can lock on from far away, but shotguns will only work up close, for example. This becomes frustrating because in many cases you'll be unable to even shoot near an enemy from a distance unless you switch to the freelook mode. Weapon accuracy already degrades over distance, so it's annoying that you need to cope with both that and the inability to target from a distance.
©2006-11-07, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Coinciding with the release of SOCOM 3 last year we saw the series' first foray onto the PSP with SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo. The game worked as an aside of sorts to SOCOM 3, where Fireteam Bravo went on secondary objectives that tied into Alpha team's work. And now, along with the release of SOCOM: Combined Assault on the PlayStation 2, we have the follow-up to FTB with SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 2.
Part of the reason that Crosstalk has a great deal more impact on in-game events is that Fireteam Bravo 2's storyline is closer and more tightly knit to Combined Assault's. While each team has separate objectives to take care of, they almost cross paths a number of times in the two games. On occasion you might even see the other team going about their business, even if you can't directly interact with them. It's cool stuff and we hope it lays the groundwork for what we'll see going into the next-generation, where this sort cross-connectivity should be more commonplace.
Local Influence and Command Equity help to encourage "correct" play, whereby you restrain villagers, use non-lethal force and so forth. Local Influence is gained via getting villagers to safety and results in the ability to buy black market weapons, increased mission intelligence and so forth. Command Equity is earned by completing mission objectives and capturing enemies and allows you to unlock advanced weapons in the armory, buy air strikes or supply drops and the like.
The setup and surrounding elements to the missions are mostly cool, though there hasn't been a whole lot done to give your team much personality or keep you from feeling a little disconnected to the storyline. You're still running what can seem like random missions, something that not many tactical or even war games have overcome. Though you still only have one team mate at any one time, you do have the ability to choose who you take on missions, with each member have unique strengths and weaknesses. That works pretty well to personalize the play experience a bit.
One thing that is a bit curious is that you can no longer see stats for weapons on the equipment screen, either in single-player or multiplayer. There are short descriptions for each weapon that'll quickly point out its strengths and weaknesses, like whether a weapon is geared for long or short range, how accurate it is and so forth, but numbers folks will have to hit up FAQs after release for hard numbers.
The misses come in the structural layout and some of the mission flags. While there are sometimes multiple routes you can take, there are oftentimes very linear paths that you must navigate to get from area to area, especially in and around buildings. This takes away from the tactical feeling a bit as you feel strung along a predefined path rather than having been given numerous options on how to progress. This is worst when you have to back-track, which we had to do on more than one occasion just to fulfill mission objectives, like clearing an area of every soldier (someone would inevitably hide in a bush and we'd have to go back to find him). In these cases, you need to not only back-track but cover your tracks again as you head back to the extraction point.
The aiming mechanic has been altered a tad bit since the last game. Zipper realized that some players would take advantage of the lock-on mechanic by constantly tapping the R button to find players hidden in bushes and such. In Fireteam Bravo 2, you'll slow down a tad when you press R, theoretically giving you an incentive to use it sparingly. In practice though, you really don't slow down all that much, and if you just slow your tapping a tad bit it doesn't have much of a noticeable affect on your movement speed.
Network performance seems to be decent, though it wasn't perfect in our time with the game. During one session, the server dropped what seemed to be all of the players from the match a couple times. During the same session, lag was a bit of an issue and adversely affected our ability to fire accurately. While movement seemed to be perfectly fine, including not only ours but everyone else's, we ran into a number of gunfights where we'd be at a standoff and unload three or four clips until either ourselves or our enemy would drop dead. It was pretty ridiculous. After a bit of testing though, we're confident this was a direct result of lag, and hopping onto a quick server fixed this right up.
One aspect of the targeting mechanic that we have a problem with, both in multiplayer and single-player, is that weapons now have different ranges for lock-on. Long-range rifles can lock on from far away, but shotguns will only work up close, for example. This becomes frustrating because in many cases you'll be unable to even shoot near an enemy from a distance unless you switch to the freelook mode. Weapon accuracy already degrades over distance, so it's annoying that you need to cope with both that and the inability to target from a distance.
©2006-11-07, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved