SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Combined Assault
More of an expansion than a full sequel, we can see why it's not called SOCOM 4.
Published: December 18, 2006
If you get absolutely fed up with the offline experience (or just have some friends that will play along with you), the whole single-player story mode is playable online with up to three other friends. It's a nice addition, though it becomes fairly obvious that the game doesn't really scale to allow for more strategic planning, leading to a much easier experience if you know the levels. The rest of the online play is nearly identical to the stuff found in SOCOM 3 (and in fact, that identical content can by played with either SOCOM 3 or Combined Assault, which is a nice touch). The game's 32-player maps do get a few new Adjikistan maps, but for the most part this is the game you've probably been addicted to in the past, and that's not really a bad thing.
You know what is bad? Three year-old visuals. Sure, Zipper has made attempts to tighten up the framerate and the more focused setting of the game allows for some fairly nice looking locales that don't quite feel so uneven, but the game, even in progressive scan, is a little on the muddy side. The engine that has worked for four games now is starting to show some serious signs of age, even for a PlayStation 2 game, and let's face it: SOCOM was never that pretty a game to begin with.
Muted colors, blurry textures and incredibly stiff, jerky animations dampen the whole experience. Hell, there are even instances of blatant clipping where elbows or rife barrels pop through walls and doors. I honestly though we were getting to the point where that kind of stuff didn't happen save for in low-budget releases. Clearly I thought wrong.
The audio in the game is, as always, superlative, though. Solid Pro Logic II quasi-surroundy goodness is scarce but there, James Dooley's score is as bombastic and stirring as the best Navy recruiting video and the radio chatter with familiar voices like Jennifer Hale and the ubiquitous Steve Blum is all solid stuff. Weapons fire seems a little on the muted and passive side, but there were an impressive number of weapons recorded (either that or my untrained ear just thinks they sound different) and the beefed up loadout screen at the start of missions means that you'll have ample opportunity to sample plenty of different loadouts.
Combined Assault exists in a curious state of development flux, where Zipper finally got the itch to buckle down and create something that returned to the series' roots after creating a game that has snared hundreds of thousands of folks online. It's an admirable attempt to thicken up what was quickly becoming a stagnant single-player game, and provided you have the recent PSP game, it's actually pretty damned cool.
Is it as solid a story or sound in level design as earlier games? Nope, not really, but it is a step in the right direction, and when things inevitably continue on the PS3, I'm hoping that we see more of both the crosstalk feature between the PS3 and PSP, and a renewed attention to making the offline game just as good as the online one. As it stands now, though, this is more of an experiment, a stepping stone toward a game that really does play across two different platforms.
If you're a fan of the series, it's a no-brainer, but if you've been turned off in the past by the focus on the multiplayer aspect, the buggy AI and questionable graphics aren't going to sell you very much. There's still fun to be had here, but you'll have to slog through a bit of experimental wonkiness to get to it. Here's hoping SOCOM 4 will be deserving of that number.
