Perfect Stu |
07-28-2002 01:25 PM |
Impressions, continued...
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Gameplay
Blending militaristic stealth with run-and-gun gameplay, Zipper's third-person perspective game aims to be one of the most authentic games of its kind. With full backing from the US Navy Seals, from the admirals all the way down the line, SOCOM's selectable characters, like the Seals themselves, do not specialize in particular areas, but they rather cross-train in many areas. Seals do everything, training in explosives, sniping, technical work, intelligence, combat, and they work in small, deadly teams.
Unlike other games, here, there's a buddy system, and the main objective is to keep your teammates alive and with you. A dialog box appears on screen to convey messages between you and the team. You can mistakenly kill your teammates, and up to two can die, but after if any more die, the mission is a failure. In the mission I played, one teammate is a Russian, and he's kind of like the central communication member, so if he dies, the dialog box will disappear from the screen. Not good.
The first scenario I played placed the SOCOM team on a Russian cargo ship, in which one of the team's missions was to infiltrate the main compartments without detection. In the cover of night, I commanded my mates to stay under cover as I snooped around and quietly sniped off stationed guards along upper and lower locations, without notifying the other guards of their deaths. Only, this didn't work out perfectly the first time, and so I had to engage in straight-up combat, and I died pretty quickly.
Enemy AI acts intelligently, following the same basic military tactics you and your team follow. So, if you alert the enemy, they attack slowly, staying under cover, attacking in squads, using short, and using targeted bursts of gunfire. There are five levels of AI awareness, including direction awareness, specific awareness, and others. So, if you kill an enemy and his buddy walks by and sees the dead body, he'll take notice and act accordingly. Luckily, you can drag dead bodies into the foliage or behind crates. Enemies communicate with one another, so it's crucial to stay low and out of the open. Enemies react to obvious actions, such as breaking windows, but they also react to more subtle things, including footprints, corpses, and blood. Again, you may fail to remain undetected, the game gives you the chance to succeed, but you'll need to be a good shot and command your team to help you. Key elements in your missions to stay under cover, knock out lights and windows, and to lean around corners (oh, and yes, you can lean around corners).
Starting off, your squad is each given two weapons (one single-hand and one two-handed weapon), of which there are 36 total. To gain access to different weapons, kill an enemy to grab his. Players have use of submachine guns, handguns, sniper rifles, M16s, and other weapons. The game also offers satchels, smoke weapons, claymores, and all of them are weapons US Navy Seals would use in real life.
Visuals
The world of SOCOM is an interesting one, because it takes place offline and online, making texture work and things like lighting and camera work more challenging. The game is filled with sophisticated lighting techniques, detailed textures, motion captured work, and solid CG work.
Zipper aims to be very realistic with SOCOM, and has prepared the game with a phenomenal amount of authentic detail. Soldiers faces, their weapons, and their clothing have all been scanned in and texture mapped. Using Sony's motion capture studio in Foster City, Zipper has captured soldiers in numerous positions, such as walking, running, rolling, ducking, crawling, aiming, and many others.
The level of detail should be excellent in the final version, with small incidental items, such as belt loops, belt buckles and canteens have been paid attention to. Zipper claims there is three times the amount of typical textures in SOCOM than in the average game of this kind. The Seal camouflage outfits are also totally authentic, realistic and accurate.
The art and design team has constructed the game with full screen anti-aliasing and a texture-paging system that enables many kinds of textures to be used, but efficiently without causing slowdown or glitching. What's normally called LOD, or Level of Detail, Zipper calls DLD, dynamic level of detail. What it means is that, simplistically, the level of detail that's required is called up when needed. So, the engine is calling up every last little for an enemy that's on the other side of the screen, but if you use a sniper rifle to zoom in on him, the detail will appear.
Zipper plans to lock the framerate to 30 fps, in single player and in multiplayer modes, and the versions we played generally stayed in the 30 fps area, give or take.
All in all, SOCOM should challenge hardcore online and entice regular console gamers with a whole new third-person shooter, which at this point in the game, looks like a huge undertaking that should be well worth the effort. Zipper has done an excellent job with the visuals and the gameplay looks to engage gamers in a stealthy, authentic military set of missions, online with up to 15 other players, or in a single mission against the computer. SOCOM should be a breakthrough game for SCEA and its online campaign, and we're hoping the game reaches Zipper's high goals in the end.
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-From IGN
I, myself am very excited about SOCOM. The controls sound like they will be tight, the visuals pretty, and most importantly, the gameplay seems to be very sim-driven and fun at the same time. Hiding behind tall grass, trees, and other parts of the environment sounds like a blast. I can't wait to see some of you online at the end of August.
Screenshots

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