My SOCOM Impressions

[gekko]

Ok, been playing SOCOM for a few days now, and I felt obligated to post my impressions. Although, ironically it seems the stuff I worried about before I played the game, is the stuff I have problems with. Anyway.

To start off, let me say that the AI in this game really sucks. If 2 guys are standing next to each other, you can shoot on of them and the other won't notice. If you shoot a guy from a distance, he'll move around like he got hit, then stand up in the same spot again. For people who are supposed to be gaurding a ship, if you get shot, you know people are onboard and should run for an alarm, or to warn someone. And the AI for my teammates isn't the greatest either. Boomer always gets in the way, and crawls around in the open, and since he's your partner you can't tell him to back off.

Now onto the offline game. I read the previews saying it would require a lot of stealth, and teamwork, etc. It doesn't. It's no different than any FPS like it. Realistic? Far from it. Stealth is not required to complete these missions by any means. Walk in shadows and behind objects to keep hidden, well duh, in any similar FPS it would be the same thing. But that stuff is hardly needed. I can run around and will never get noticed for the noise I make. I can walk around in the middle of an open area and the enemy doesn't always notice me. All I need to do is run around using cover like I would in any FPS, and I'm fine. Nothing special, nothing remotely close to realistic. It was supposed to be moving slowly through the shadows and not leaving footprints behind, it ends up being run through the board, shoot people as you go. As for teamwork? Give me a break, it doesn't require any teamwork. I feel like I'm playing as Bond more than a SEAL. I could easily shoot boomer in the head, and order Bravo team to stay put, and complete the mission solo. The team does nothing but get spotted, and teamwork is not necessary.

As for online, quake players need not adjust. Teamwork again isn't required when playing online. In fact, the game wouldn't change if the headset didn't exist. You definetly don't need the headset, because you don't need to communicate with your team to be successful. It might possible play a little more of a role in bombing run and hostage rescue, but I haven't got a chance to play them yet, check the next paragraph. But I doubt that too. SOCOM isn't a game where teamwork prevails any more than Counter-Strike. They keep saying they'll make you work as a team, and if you don't you'll fail. Actually, we don't need to work as a team.

Now for how much SOCOM online sucks right now. First off, there is beta testers for a reason. Either Sony didn't listen to the beta testers, or they had ****ty beta testers, because the whole online experience right now is ****. When you log on, many times my clan name doesn't pop up because it can't retrieve it from the server, the latest news message rarely pops up, hell, sometimes I can't even get the user agreement to come on. Then I can join and a lot of times I see 0 people online, and the top ten rankings not up. That is sad. As for joining a room or a game, it freezes a bunch. All of this resulting in a disconnect. And the morons who developed SOCOM decided that they really found it to be fun to basically reset the entire game after that happens. So for the 10+ times it froze, it goes back to the loading screen, takes me out of progressive scan so I need to change the channel on my TV, makes me watch some stupid intro movie, or at least some before I can skip it, then loads my settings, asks 2 questions (why?) on whether I want to turn it on, so then I need to switch back. Then I get back to the main screen and need to connect again. All of that because Sony's ****ty servers are horrible, at least right now. Now let's pretend the servers are working...

The setup is still bad. I can now appreciate Xbox Live's buddy list (unless MS ****s that up, wouldn't surprise me). I go online yesterday to play with Perfect Stu. the servers are ****ty, after like 5 tries I get on. I see his name on the player list. Send a message through the chat, and no reply. So he's in a game. Now I'm stuck going through every game and quitting out of it trying to find him because Stu got off AIM. I never did. Player list but no way to see what game they're in or send them a message. How incredibly stupid. I ended up giving up (sorry Stu). And the clan thing sounded nice at first, but it seems all I can do is write clan messages, and send invites. Clan name only appears on my screen, and I haven't created a game yet, but aside from inviting people are so on, I haven't seen another use for it yet, like finding clan members, or inviting them. Right now it seems stupid.

Anyway, SOCOM is quite fun but I was promised a lot more and I expected a lot more. Like I said in a previous post, I can understand why the stealth is ****ty, team work really isn't required, and stuff like that. People want a game they can win, not need to play for 6 months before they're good enough to complete a mission. I understand that, but I am not happy about the way they made the game. But maybe it was just stupid of me to expect more in the first place. Either way, the game is still fun, but disapointing. I expected perfection. And this still should support keyboard/mouse controls. The controller, as good as it is, still sucks. I would be easily 50x better if they gave me some real controls.

[Jonbo298]

Heh, from what you have said. I guess the game was a little "over-hyped". But this is just the beginning. Sony is probably in the works of "trying" to get everything a little smoother. Call Sony up and bitch them out about it (Unless you have alread). I would.