Opening words: If you need a good wireless head set(recently ruined by firmware 2.8 and 3.0- it wont let you change the in put mic volume from the xmb accessories settings- complete bs, so now i am always too loud and i didn’t used to be) that normally costs 50 dollars, you can spend 10 more and get Socom Confrontation with the head set, that is the one I bought. I reviewed this a year ago, and it was so buggy and shitty I pulled my review, because I was waiting for the patches, and almost a year later, here we are. When it launched half the things listed on the box were not in the game, trophies, clan ladder matches, and it was hard to join friends games, always turning into a game of where’s waldo. But now, most of the bugs have been fixed and all of the stuff on the box is finally in the game. So I feel like now, the game is finally out, before 1.5 it was a 10 dollar beta.

Multiplayer: 10
I have been playing this since the beta, and I had not played any socom prior to this one. I recently have gone back and played combined assault, and socom 2. Over all those have a more arcade like feel to them and are great. This one plays slower and less arcade like. Saying that, there is this team element to the game. Play as a team, communicate, and call things out, or perish and suck forever. Run in packs and win, groups of 3 or 4 work best, cover all sides, and move as a unit. This yields the best results. This is what makes me play this game over all other online games. Team. There is no respawn in ranked rooms, so when you die, you sit and watch the rest of the match from another players camera on your team. You can talk in the death lobby to other dead people on your team, you would think, this sucks, I want to play, but you end up talking to your team about anything and everything, this leads to friendships. Seriously. No other game is like this. Some would see this as a flaw, but honestly, if I don’t feel like talking, I can work on my blog, or anything online as I wait to play again. So this game allows me to get work done while I am dead in the game. But you can sit and watch and learn as well. Socom is like Socrack. I play this every night for at least an hour. The most team oriented game I have ever played online, and yes, counter strike can’t touch this. no FPS can.

Presentation: 5.0
The menus suck, kind of laggy and slow. It is ugly. Kind of confusing at first, made for the old socom hardcore, but the old socoms had a better front end for sure. They had text chat in the lobby as well as voice. The look and feel of this is super generic, in fact this is what puts a lot of people off at first, they boot it and go, is this a ps3 title? it feels and looks more like a ps2 title. But they made this game with a ps2 budget, so what can you expect. You can customize your looks, this is limited, there are too few face types, wish you could do it from the ground up like most other games these days, can only change armor type, light, heavy, medium, from the main menu and not in the game, stupid!!!!! The clan ladder match making system is ok, it’s cool that there is an event calendar in the community menus.

Visuals: 7.1
The world is detailed, debris and cars, the buildings, everything looks ok once you are in the game. But man, there are frame rate issues, especially in 16v16 maps, not as bad in 8v8 maps, but best in 4v4 maps. If a lot of action gets on the screen, this thing crawls. I am pissed, they should of taken the call of duty 4 engine and made this game with that, or hell even the unreal engine. Then it would play faster and look way better than this. But graphics are not what make this game so addictive and good. If that were the case, I would not play this game based on it’s looks alone. There is a lot of detail on the models though. The best thing about socom is the classic cam view, so make sure when you first start, you change the camera settings in the menus, they default to over the shoulder where your big fat head takes up half the screen. So be sure you use classic cam. After playing this in classic cam, I hate all other fps shooters now, on normal fps it feels like you have a box on your head with a limited view, running into shit all the time. Not the case in this view, and it’s why I prefer the classic socom camera for all shooters now.

Audio: 9.7
In surround sound, this is simply amazing, the detail in the sound is amazing, the best, I mean, the best out of any game. I love the passive chat, if you have a headset on, its active all the time in the environment, so if people are next to you and you talk, they can hear you, but as they move away they cannot hear you as well until the range runs out. Enemies can hear you as well, so if you are on the phone, or skype, or have a crying baby in the room, they will hear you and hunt you down. This makes the game really cool in my opinion, I love sneaking up on people and yelling, boo right as I kill them and scare the shit out of them. LOL. The gun sounds are spot on, if you buy the Blueray version of this game, there are videos on the disc about how they recorded the sounds the detail they put into it, it’s amazing. The one thing they nailed SPOT ON! The music is annoying, fitting, but as much as I play this, I had to turn this off. There is only like 2 songs that repeat over and over. LAME. custom sound track would rule, but nope.

Game Mechanics: 8.2:
The default control scheme will throw people for a loop if they are used to call of duty or any normal fps. Thanks to patch 1.5 you can finally put the controls like Call of Duty 4 for the most part. Once you get used to the controls and set up the sensitivity to your liking(this is really important to getting the hang of the controls- look speed, dead zone, and acceleration settings make a huge difference). There are many game modes, elimination which is team death match where you must kill everyone on the other team to win. Demolition which is get the bomb, plant the bomb, or defuse the bomb. Then there are Medleys which are a mish mash of modes cycling through breach which is blow your way into the base and plant the bomb, extract which is run and get the hostages then take them to the helicopter pick up and prevent the mercenaries from taking them away. Escort where the seals start off with the hostages and the mercenaries are trying to kill the hostages, you must take them to the helicopter extractions with out getting them killed. and finally, suppression which is which ever team has the most kills. In all of these modes, you must use team work to win. Especially in the escort and extract modes, the hostages are still totally stupid. The guns in the game are amazing, and pretty realistic. I still wish it wasn’t so hard to kill people with the heavy machine guns, I find that a little stupid. I also find it unbalanced, the seals get the better assault rifles. The mercs get the one better shot gun, and then one high powered assault rifle the kicks like a horse the ak47, and the rest of them are bb guns. I prefer the stg 77 the most though. I mostly stick to the assault rifles, and shot guns. I have tried the sub machine guns and heavy machine guns, but to sloppy or to weak for my tastes. There are faction guns, but you have to be in a clan to access those. Out of all those, I like the french famas g2 the best. The british iw-80 is ok, the spanish AMELI is a heavy machine gun with like 300 rounds, you can shoot it for like a minute and a half with out it stopping, its super loud and scares the crap out of people LOL. The german GMP is like a hk 7 with more power and silent. The american SCAR is great as well. For sure it’s the automatic Shot gun on the mercs side that brings me the most joy!!!

Replay:10
If you get a clan set up with a bunch of buddies, get into clan ladder matches, this is really fun, but only when you play as a team, call stuff out, and watch out for each other, if you get on a team with a bunch of krztov’s err I mean, RAMBO types, your team will lose for sure. Rushing out fast will usually end in a quick death, hiding and waiting and advancing slowly in packs will let you win the most. Lunggravy is more of a team player than krztov lately. We are looking for people to join the toxic coma clan, my clan. So if you have a ps3, and are a team player, and have a good sense of humor, that is what it takes to put up with our antics.

Total Score: 7.7 out of 10:
I play this more than any game I own, and I have owned most of the AAA titles on this platform. I can honestly say I like socom more than all of them, even with its bugs and even though I have scored it lower than many other games. This is a must buy if you are into tactical shooters that are based on team work and are multiplayer online. I love socom. This is a poor mans socom. I hope socom 4 is way better than this, then i will score it higher. There is no other game like socom. Nothing. I like this game so much. No other console has a game like this. PS3 and socom!! You can buy this from the playstation network for like 29.99, or get the blueray with some extra videos(no big deal) and the headset for 59.99 by Clicking Here.

Gripes: It still has bugs, like laser sights go through walls. Stupid can’t switch sides in the lobby glitch(hit select, then back out with circle then you can switch sides). Cant switch armor with out leaving the game and going to the main menu(STUPID!!!!!!). CAN’T SWITCH WEAPON AT THE END OF THE ROUND IF YOU ARE LAST ALIVE. Sometimes get stuck running. Grenade mechanics are still fucking terrible, they do not throw to where the marker is, totally shitty, explosions are stupid too, sometimes killing people far away and not killing people by the explosion. Still a lot of work to fix this game to make it right. NO TEXT CHAT IN THE LOBBY!!!!!!!!!! SOCOM 2 HAD IT, WTF. Why is sony selling the text pad and not having text chat in socom? WTF. Three attachment glitch still works!!!! Can still sink into parts of the map and cheat! I hate that you must switch clans to use certain guns, and it ruins your clan rank.

PS: Toxic Coma Is back(toxic coma is VAC’s funny super secret side project that is meant to fuck with your head and make you laugh). Inspired by this funny dude who makes all these socom videos. Click Here to see them all. Watch em, he rips on socom, and as much as I agree with him, i still play it, because my friends do, and there is still nothing else on the market out there like it and its challenging. There is a new patch for socom coming out that might fix a lot of the problems and make me not hate it as much, but we shall see.

http://www.velvetacidchrist.com/ToxicComa-Suckmyturbin.mp3. So click on the image or the link to hear the new toxic coma track I did over the weekend. Toxic is trippy funny head fuck music. It’s not VAC. Peace out, Have fun. l8s. He also has admitted now that the 1.5 is out, the game is playable and much better.

GO BUY A PS3 NOW, ONLY $299 and it does everything! and Slim!