Sony's PlayStation 3 military shooter, SOCOM Confrontation, takes the series in a drastic new direction. Instead of including a single-player campaign with multiplayer options, it's strictly an online only affair. That'd be fine if it wasn't ruined by numerous glitches.
Like Warhawk before it, SOCOM Confrontation provides multiple options for PlayStation Network users including detailed maps, a mixture of five new North African-themed settings and classic SOCOM favorites from previous games. You also choose between various International Special Forces teams, multiple uniform types and other options, such as facial and physical features. From there, you can jump into an online match and work alongside others to complete missions. There's even leaderboard, tournament and clan ladder support, so you can see how you measure up against others.
Despite these modes, glitches ruin the fun. Constant freeze-ups force you to reset your PlayStation 3, and the long load times and slow menu navigation certainly don't help either. This results in tedious waiting just to get a match set up, if it ever occurs. It looks as if the problem regarding exiting a match and checking its time limit were remedied, but other issues still remain.
Developer Slant Six made some changes for the better, including a bigger emphasis on team play (you can't win a match by yourself) and removing vehicles. However, manual weapon switching sometimes leads to an early death in the heat of combat. For instance, if you have a rifle and need to throw a grenade, it's slightly more complex than just tossing it. This small delay takes just enough time to turn the tide in a battle, leaving you vulnerable to enemy attack. Furthermore, even something as simple as changing gun views takes a little longer than expected. This is one of those times in which realism should've taken a backseat to efficiency, even for SOCOM.
It's sad that these problems occur, because the rest of SOCOM Confrontation is superb. The visuals are surprisingly crisp, with a steady frame rate (even with 32 players at once), gorgeous map designs, smooth character models and realistic lighting effects. It all unfolds at 1280 X 720 resolution, so you've always got a clear view of what's ahead.
Sound quality is also unparalleled. Weapons go off in all directions and bullets whiz past. If you fork over the extra $20 for the bundle, you'll also get the excellent Bluetooth headset. This device works magnificently, not only delivering crystal-clear sound but also blocking out unnecessary background noise.
SOCOM Confrontation has a solid presentation, but the lobby options are severely broken, weapon switching is a chore and the lack of a campaign mode hurts. This is one tour of duty we'll decline until the proper patches are in place.
Reader Comments (48)
Wow it's pretty bad when a commenter writes a better review than someone who was paid to do so. Nice job lcsaint2 . I hope he gets fired for this pathetic attempt at being both a critic and a journalist. I mean honestly, This was bad.
This is a bad review, not beacuse the game itself is bad, but because it didn't seem to me that the person who wrote the review actually played the game, or at most maybe played the game for 30 minutes. "There is no time limit on your matches..." False. Typical time for a round is 8 minutes, and can be shorter if you want it to be. "No ability to simply drop out if you're frustrated or tired of losing." Again, false. Press start, scroll down, select "quit game," and you're free to go somewhere else and lose some more. "Developer Slant Six made some changes for the better, including a bigger emphasis on team play." Yes the game does stress team play, but so does every other game in the SOCOM series, and its one of the reasons why fans of series like it so much. Nothing new there. Then theres the whole deal about manually swtiching weapons, and slow switching of gun views. Yes, if you want to throw a grenade, you DO have to hold circle, and then select grenades, then throw.... AT THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME. Once you've selected grenades the first time, however, it becomes your default second option instead of your handgun(press R1 to switch to grenades then throw after grenades become your default second option). My advice is to change this at the start of the first round so you don't have to worry about it later. Changing views from third person to over the shoulder to scope takes no longer than it does for any other game, don't see a problem here myself. Also, the knock on the game about it being too realistic is personal preference to be honest... Most "old school" socom fans agree that the realism of the game is what set it apart from other franchises(ie. great hit detection on shots and not having to unload a whole clip with a M60 machine gun to take someone down). So a little time to take out your grenades before you throw them is no big deal. Now the rest of review is accurate, everything from the visuals and sound, to the ridiculous load times, is spot on. The game itself, isn't the main problem. The game play is actually a throw back to the original socom(thats a good thing if you didnt know) with some great upgrades and additions. But the gameplay doesn't get to shine much because of server issues. Its sad that a game that was planned to be "online only" from day one in developement, can have such a bad launch as far as servers are concerned, so bad that it makes an otherwise awesome game, look like crap. But that being said, unlike gameplay, its something that can be fixed. If Slantsix can somehow right the ship and get the servers up and running properly then there's hope for this game. So my advice to those thinking about picking this game is to wait. Give it a month or two, check the review once more, and if people are still talking about crappy servers, then keep waiting til its fixed. To the diehard SOCOM fan, pick it up now, if you haven't already. Server issues aside(again, it's fixable) the game is great, and once the servers are straight this game will be make a great addition to the series thus far.
Gamedaily is a complete joke. I feel sorry for any mom or uninformed teenager who uses this site for their reviews. Their reviews, nay, their entire site is smeared with bias and unprofessionalism. Case in point, this came from their E3 live blog a few years ago. "GTAIV IS 360 EXCLUSIVE!!! TAKE THAT SONY! HAHA" Yeah. How pathetic and wrong was that? So people who read this review and got past the first few sentences. Don't take their word for it. Socom is a great competitive shooter and is well worth buying if you like the slower paced more methodical team based shooters. The game has some of the best maps seen in any shooter and most of the problems that this review talked about were over exaggerated or plainly false. Updates are being made to make this a better experience as online multiplayer shooters are seldom perfect right out of the box. I'll see you online hopefully.
I've successfully played the game for 19 hours with a few problems at peak hours. speak for yourself
Wow, dunno what happened with that word. Finicky.
I know plenty about video games, thanks. And the point o*****ame is to be playable FROM DAY ONE. The fact SOCOM shipped in such a broken fashion, without reliable servers, without a single-player campaign mode, without fully functional controls, is a sheer disappointment. It looks and sounds great, sure, but that can only take you so far if the controls can't keep up. Opinion stands.
"...there's no time limit on your matches and no ability to simply drop out if you're frustrated or tired of losing." So are you completely full of **** or just partially? All games have a time limit, and there is this little option in the start menu called "Quit Game". Also who rates a game on the server issues, and the freezes don't occur half as often as your review leads people to believe. Have you ever played a game with an online option? The servers suck as on the first few days after release. Look at WoW and hell any game. I'll go ahead and answer my question. You are completely full of ****. GTFO you shouldn't even have a job in reviewing games if this is how you do it. Learn to review the game not the servers dip****.
I believe your review is ridiculous.........tell me, do you know anything about video games? Do you have experience with games having server issues that, once rectified, get much better? You're obviously a fool who has no ability to see a games potential. You get stuck on growing pain related issues. Congrats. You don't know much. Maybe you knew your stuff when you used to play pac-man back in the day, but I fear the gaming world has passed you by......there are 100,000 people a day playing this game...........