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SOCOM fans who have been eagerly awaiting the venerable series' return to consoles should be warned: You may not get all that you've hoped for in Confrontation. The beating heart of the series--the realistic, tightly wound tactical combat--is still healthy, but Confrontation's arteries are clogged by network issues, control hang-ups, and graphical hitches. Those who enjoyed previous SOCOM games may be able to push through this malaise, but with no single-player campaign to cut their teeth on, newcomers will likely find the game inaccessible as its myriad problems compound the already steep learning curve. Though there is still some life in it, Confrontation is a disappointingly anemic entry in this historically hot-blooded series.
A multiplayer-only shooter lives and dies by the pace and precision of combat. SOCOM has always strived for a realistic feel by arming players with finely tuned real-world guns, limiting their speed to reasonably human levels and making them as vulnerable to bullets as actual soldiers. Hostile encounters are over in a matter of seconds, so positioning and accuracy are paramount to survival. At its best, Confrontation stands on this knife edge of precision and imbues firefights with a tense, desperate energy, amplified by the fact that in many matches, you won't respawn if killed. The thrill of victory is exulting; the agony of defeat is crushing.
Alas, these emotional highs and lows are often muted by Confrontation's technical problems. Hiccups of lag will sometimes pop up during intense encounters, turning a tightly contested fight to the death into a crapshoot. In a match where you respawn, this is merely frustrating; in one where death means becoming a spectator until the round is over, it's downright aggravating. These hitches can also cause control issues; you may find that your reloading process gets interrupted or that you've brought up a screen-commandeering command menu rather than initiated voice chat. The margin for combat error is so slim that any of these snags can sabotage even the most skilled player. It's possible to savor many a match without encountering these issues, but the times you do get hung up are sure to leave a sour taste in your mouth.
Before you jump into combat, you'll want to customize your loadout. SOCOM's signature depth in this department is back on display, offering you a number of guns that look and sound realistic, as well as a full complement of scopes, sights, and other attachments. In addition to customizing your primary and secondary weapons, you can choose two gear items from a diverse list of grenades, explosives, and rocket launchers. You can choose to be quick and lightly armored, slow and heavily armored, or anywhere in between. These options significantly affect your play style, and adjusting them (either from the initial menu or after you die in a match) is quick, easy, and engaging.
Once equipped, you'll dive into the PlayStation Network in search of a game. This can prove to be time-consuming as you choose an appropriate channel, find a game with an opening, and wait to spawn into the action. Fortunately, there are plenty of players online, and communicating with them via headset or preset text commands works smoothly. Despite--or perhaps because of--the robust population, there are a host of network issues to contend with, from pace-killing lag to straight-up system crashes. We played for three full days and hard crashed at least twice each day, losing our session stats (only recorded during ranked games) in the process. Though some players appear to have earned ranks and joined clans, we had difficulty with both, meaning that all of our matches were stand-alone affairs, with no lasting benefits or repercussions.
The conflicts you do engage in will unfold on maps of varying sizes, each depicting a different war-torn environment. Many of them are updated versions of maps from previous SOCOM games, and they are all cleanly textured, though not quite beautiful. Each is also well designed enough to simultaneously create chokepoints and allow for diverse pathfinding. The draw distance is formidable, and you'll find yourself spotting enemies that are far outside the range of most weapons. This makes the sniper rifle very dangerous, so you'll have to be extra alert, hoping to spot enemy snipers before it's too late and the death camera swings away from your corpse to show you the position of the enemy you failed to notice.
Death comes quickly to the careless, and players will have to embrace this harsh truth to stand a chance of survival. Sticking with your teammates is essential, and all of the varying mission objectives are more easily accomplished when you work as a unit. Though many players seem to default to the run-and-gun tactics prevalent in other online shooters, some verbal nudging (or a few failed missions) is usually enough to inspire a little unity. Achieving victory as a unit is satisfying, even more so when you know it's because you had your teammate's back and gunned down his would-be assassin.
The reality that you could be killed at any time ratchets up the tension a few degrees, but it also fuels the fires of frustration when you find yourself getting hung up on environmental obstacles. Despite the third-person viewpoint and your ability to jump and climb over impedances, you'll still find navigation to be somewhat finicky. Rubble that could be easily stepped over might require a full-on leap, and a curb that seems easy to jump may demand a time-consuming clamber. Small spaces can be similarly misleading, and just because you can see between balcony railings or two adjacent boxes, it doesn't mean you can shoot through the empty space. The Sixaxis-controlled lean allows some flexibility, though maneuvering into a good lean-friendly position will often leave you exposed to the very line of fire you're trying to evade.
Confrontation tries to re-create the wire-tight combat that made the SOCOM series so popular, but as of now, it hasn't succeeded. There are excellent moments to be found, and the heart of the action still beats strongly. However, the positive elements are overshadowed by pervasive network problems. Folks interested in accessorizing can pick up the Bluetooth headset retail bundle for $59.99 (the headset alone retails for $49.99) and get the game for cheap, but even at the discounted download price of $39.99, Confrontation is hard to recommend.
No getting around it: This review will soon be inaccurate. That's what happens when a game goes through the kind of launch that SOCOM: Confrontation just had, with tens of thousands of would-be players simultaneously discovering that the servers allocated for the launch of this online-only game were woefully inadequate. For substantial periods during the week the game's been out, players who could get into a match at all were the luckiest, and those who spent time logged into the servers but unable to join a game were only somewhat less lucky. The really unlucky ones couldn't progress past the start screen thanks to extended server overloads, meaning that the game would literally do nothing more than boot up; they couldn't even adjust options or customize a character. But even the luckiest have experienced glitches, freezes, and at least one game-changing bug in the course of play.
It's been a mess. But growing pains aren't unusual for online games these days. These sorts of kinks get worked out in time, and there's no reason to doubt Confrontation's issues will be smoothed out in the process of a patch or two. But in the meantime, the game is available for purchase at retail and via download through the PlayStation Store, and you deserve to know what that game's like right now.
The good news is this: When Confrontation's working like it's supposed to, it's fantastic. It's already going toe-to-toe against SOCOM II for bragging rights as the pinnacle of the series in my personal ranking, and that's saying a damn lot. The game capitalizes on the best features of the SOCOM series, delivering long, deliberately paced, exceptionally tense matches where one wrong move can put you on the sidelines for lengthy commiseration sessions with your fellow deceased. (Don't worry -- respawn-enabled games are available for you run-and-gunners.)
A large part of the attraction's the exceptional level design. Sure, the game only includes seven maps, but they're intricate, realistic, and detailed, with a huge number of different routes from one end to the other, tons of tasty sniper roosts, and a healthy number of choke points to encourage teamwork. They may not be as gorgeous as those of other modern shooters, and long-distance views can suffer from some texture draw-in glitches, but such things are forgivable, given that most of these levels are just ridiculously huge. The only exceptions are the retooled Frostfire and Desert Glory, both of which are re-created in their original layouts with beautifully detailed, modern graphics, for an experience sure to raise happy goose bumps for veterans of the first two games. The rest of the maps are so enormous that teams absolutely must stay in constant communication, which has the happy side effect of encouraging the widespread use of headsets and ensuring the game retains its community focus. (Any USB or Bluetooth headset works, though Sony's excellent new Bluetooth headset is a steal as part of the $60 Confrontation bundle.)
But it's also important not to overlook the responsiveness of the weapons. Whether it's a new damage or ballistics model, or simply the processing speed of the current hardware, the weapons feel somehow more reliable. I feel like I've been getting far fewer unexplained misses than in any previous SOCOM, and I'm noticing less of a delay between pulling the trigger and the shots hitting their target. For a series that aims for realistic damage, that's a very welcome improvement.
Another highlight comes from the introduction of tilt controls for leaning, ducking, and aiming grenades: To my astonishment, they're beneficial and intuitive, and I've found myself relying on them much more than I thought I would. Most useful is the ability to crouch unseen behind cover and pop up as enemies approach simply by hauling back on the controller. But leaning is slightly less useful, thanks in part to the most game-damaging bug I've encountered.
Here's the problem: Scopes don't actually show what your gun's aiming at. If you're lying prone and zoom in to your scope, the scope will show what you'd see if you were crouching -- about two feet above where you're actually aiming. And scoping while crouching shows what you'd see if you were standing. I'm sure you see the problem: It makes long-distance sniping virtually useless, and almost eliminates the value of the scope in any scenario. Since SOCOM's more about deliberate tactics and careful shots than run-and-gun mayhem, this is a brutal bug. And it also appears to influence aiming when near any obstacle: Lean around a corner and try to zoom in, and the scope just zooms back out to the over-the-shoulder view. Shooting down over balcony railings or through windows also appears to be affected by this bug; both are awkward, requiring players to scope in while aiming up, and then moving the aim back down. This bug isn't a game-killer, but it significantly damages the serious tactical side of the game, which has been the series' main draw since Day One.
But that's just the start of the issues with Confrontation's current incarnation. I've already talked about the rampant problems with getting into the game at all; imagine spending hours just trying to log in and finally joining a game successfully, only to discover that the game locks up your PS3 after just a couple of rounds of play. Or to get into a game, only to find yourself being shot through walls or by apparently invisible enemies, as the servers scramble to update the location of all the players. Or to finally complete a game and discover none of your statistics were recorded
To be clear, none of these issues happen all the time. But they happen enough that it gives the game a crushing feeling of rushed incompleteness. And that's a feeling that's dramatically heightened if you actually read the manual, which includes references to the matchmaking system (and it's accompanying party system), tournaments, clan ladders, and the in-game calendar for scheduled matches. The problem? None of these features are in the game yet.
I have no doubt that they will be, in time. And I have no doubt that the inaccurate scope, teleporting glitches, lock-ups, and stat-tracking problems will be fixed. I have no doubt that the friend list will become more useful or that the promised integration with SOCOM.com will go live. I have no doubt the server load problems will be addressed -- a temporary fix has already dramatically improved reliability. The problem's that permanent fixes aren't in the game now.
So, yes, in what I hope will be a very short time, this review will be inaccurate. We'll post an updated review once the game's actually, you know, done, and we'll all laugh that Confrontation could've ever gotten a score this low. But right now, the game sitting on store shelves and on PSN has major flaws that keep it from being the classic I'm hoping it'll be. Fans of serious, realistic tactical shooters will want to set aside the cash to pick this up someday soon.
Bad news, dear gamers.
The evil sorcerer SOCOM: Confrontation has kidnapped the beautiful Princess Enjoying-this-Game. You, stouthearted gamer, are tasked with rescuing the princess from the clutches of this foul fiend.
In order to rescue Princess Enjoying-this-Game, you’ll first need to pass through the Mighty Gates of the Lengthy Install, followed immediately by a grueling climb up the Cliffs of Lengthy Patch Download. Once you’ve traversed that barrier, you’ll then have to wade through the Sluggish Swamps of Server Lists trying desperately to find an open server. Once beyond that obstacle, you’ll have to muck your way through the Pits of Poorly Designed Controls. Past those lie the Pools of Graphical Despond, and just on the farther shore—barely visible through the Cloudy Mists of Perpetual Lag—you see the Glorious Fields of Mediocre Gameplay. And finally, after your long and perilous journey, as you enter the Castle Freeze-n-Crash, you frustratingly realize that the beautiful Princess Enjoying-this-Game is in another castle.
If it isn’t clear yet, far too many obstacles stand between you and playing SOCOM: Confrontation. And once you finally do get started, you’ll discover that it wasn’t worth the trouble.
On the PS2, the SOCOM series was the console’s most substantial foray into the world of online shooters. It was Sony’s answer to the Halo games, and for the most part the SOCOM series satisfied PS2 gamers with reasonably compelling single-player campaigns and engaging multiplayer experiences. By the end of its stint on the PS2, the series had found its bearings, made important gameplay tweaks, and found its own unique niche.
Now, almost exactly two years into the PS3’s lifecycle, the SOCOM series enters the current generation. Unfortunately, you would never know it. Not only does the game scarcely look better than its PS2 predecessors—which weren’t particularly well known for their graphical prowess—but remarkably little of the gameplay has changed in the meantime.
Gone completely is the single-player campaign, which is all to the better since that had always been the series’ weakest link. But the multiplayer mode hasn’t taken up the slack. It looks and plays like the cast-offs from the military shooter gene pool. More crudely said, playing SOCOM feels like digging through the waste of Call of Duty 4, Metal Gear Online, and Gears of War. Every once in a while you find some undigested piece of something recognizable in SOCOM: Confrontation that may once have been fun, but mostly its just crap.
Similar to Call of Duty 4, you can customize your default weapons, add-ons, armor, and appearance. However, in stark contrast to CoD4’s smooth and easy-to-use set-up, the menus in SOCOM: Confrontation are extremely clunky and non-intuitive, and they’re plagued by frequent pauses for texture and object loading as you browse through the many weapons and accessories.The stats for your weapons and armor aren’t easy to read, and some stats will only change after you’ve equipped a particular item.
To be fair, the basic gameplay itself is solid enough if also terribly cliché. There are seven different possible modes of play scattered across a handful of maps. All the play modes are directly lifted from prior SOCOM games, which in turn were directly lifted from Counter Strike. Expect no substantial variations on basic deathmatch games, hostage rescues, escorts, and bomb defusion play types.
Weapons are believably responsive, and offer the standard variety of rifles, submachine guns, pistols, and specialty weapons you’d expect from the genre. In addition, the use of ambient noise—footsteps, gunfire, and talking—fits seamlessly into your battle strategy. Beyond the more typical voice chat, the use of proximity chat adds an unexpected layer to your fighting methods. This keeps the chatter to a minimum during matches and helps to quell the inane talk that runs rampant in most other online multiplayer games.
Overall, SOCOM is a far slower-paced and more strategic game than most other shooters. You’re more likely to spend a few minutes camped out in a corner getting the lay of your surroundings than you are running down an enemy. Choosing when, where, and how to attack is the heart of SOCOM and is what sets it apart from all other multiplayer shooters. Its few moments of greatness come from executing well-planned and carefully staged attack and defense strategies.
The default control scheme seems to have been invented by Martians since the controls resemble no other game on Earth. Unless you plan on making a 35 million-mile trip, you’ll definitely want to spend some time reconfiguring the controls to your liking. But no amount of tweaking can fix some of the game’s more half-baked control ideas. There’s no quick or easy way to toss grenades, and using the zoom is far clunkier than need be. Even stranger, the jump button only comes in handy when you get stuck behind one of the many poorly placed low-lying walls, but it serves no strategic purpose. Also, there’s no training mode or tutorial, so if you’ve never played a SOCOM game, you’ll have to jump straight into the deep end with the big boys.
Last—and perhaps most egregious of all—SOCOM: Confrontation is butt-ugly. As in, worst-hangover-ever with a-nasty-stranger-in-my-bed ugly. God-awful texture and object pop-in are de rigueur in online matches just as they are in the load-out menus. Draw distances aren’t bad, but since every map looks like you're viewing it through a mud puddle, you won’t be able to make out what it is that you’re seeing. Character models range from bland to jaggy to oh-my-god-what-is-that-hideous-thing. And while this may be a server-related issue that gets fixed in the near future, annoying lag rears its head all too often.
It feels a bit like kicking a puppy because many of the pop-in, lag, and graphical issues may be fixed with a promised update, but until then, I can only review what I have right now, not the game that might be. The only reason you should buy this game is for the headset pack-in. It’s everything SOCOM: Confrontation is not: pretty, functional, and fun.
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ill get it soon
