Bravo! Fireteam...
Slant Six Games' third effort in the SOCOM franchise turns out to be quite the pleasant surprise.
Published: February 18, 2010
The way the missions play out is both FB3's biggest strength and weakness. You start each mission trying to stay stealthy for as long as possible (a secondary objective for most of the eight missions), sneak and choke your way into some sort of enemy complex, only to realize that the whole operation turned out differently than expected which forces you and your team to fight your way guns blazing out of the mess you've gotten yourself into. That might not sound very exciting nor original, however there are a number of secret secondary bonus objectives that don't show up on your objectives screen until you've actually completed them. Once you've completed the campaign, you can go back to each mission and find out how many of those bonus objectives you've discovered. And then you can of course try and find the ones you've missed the first time around.
In the end, despite the great team AI, the best and most exciting way to play through the campaign is via co-op with up to three friends. As mentioned before, this can be done through ad-hoc or even infrastructure mode, though due to a technical issue (which turns out to be Sony's new anti-piracy protection – we promise we didn't hack our PSPs, really) we weren't able to try out how reliably the latter option behaved.
Because of the same technical issues, our review is strictly based upon the single-player and ad-hoc portions of the game. As soon as those issues have been resolved, we will add our opinions of the multiplayer to the bottom of this review.
Now let's get to the technical and performance side of things. To keep it brief; FB3 looks great for a handheld title. The eight missions are set in a number of different environments, including snowy mountain villages. The only real gripe I have with the graphics are that explosions tend to look a little weak. But that's a small issue that shouldn't really bother anyone not to mention spoil the experience. What's more important is that the performance holds up well even when there's a lot of action going on.
Fireteam Bravo 3 is far from a perfect game, but that doesn't mess with the fun it all is. Whether you play solo or with a bunch of friends - the campaign is fast paced and exciting, something few handheld shooters are. Yes, the missions all play out in almost identical manner, the squad tactics are rarely ever needed to succeed in a mission, the campaign is fairly short with something around five hours on normal, the ending comes about rather abruptly and the story loses a lot of its early momentum towards the end. All of that prevents FB3 from truly exceeding greatness. However, what remains is a fun, and to some extent unique, shooter that stands out thanks to its squad mechanics and the solid multiplayer offerings that fans of action will most definitely be able to appreciate.
And then there's competitive multiplayer. We've heard it's good, but of course we wouldn't be TPS if we didn't want to see it for ourselves. But even if you don't have access to a wi-fi connection or can consider yourself lucky enough to have a bunch of friends around willing to bring their PSPs with their own copy of the game over, and you end up getting FB3 strictly for its solo offerings, you will not be disappointed.
