Review by Adam Stephen Kelly
UK Certification 16+ | UK RRP £49.99 | Region PAL | Dev Zipper Interactive | Publisher Sony Computer Entertainment
The latest first-party release to hit the PlayStation 3 is the long-awaited third official sequel to SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs from all the way back in 2002. A revolutionary game for its time, the follow-ups have never quite managed to live up to the innovative might of the original, and so perhaps it will not come as much of a shock to learn that while it is one of the better instalments, SOCOM: Special Forces fails to make much of an impact.
You play as Ops Commander Cullen Gray, the leader of a five-person team of NATO special forces soldiers who are deployed in Malaysia to put a stop to an army of indigenous revolutionaries collectively known as the Naga. No, your eyes do not deceive you: you do not actually play as U.S. Navy SEALs despite the game's heritage and subtitle in the States. Depending on your region, Gray and two of his team-mates will either be British, American or Australian. As for living in the UK, the battle cries of your brothers in arms do not sound quite so threatening in Geordie dialect.
It is identifiable as a SOCOM game thanks to the return of squad-based tactical combat, with the player using D-pad commands to navigate the team through missions by orchestrating ambushes and highlighting specific targets and kill-orders, but the system simply isn't robust enough to carry the weight of the entire game. Between the PlayStation 2 classic and this new chapter nearly a decade on, there doesn't seem to be much evolution apart from the visuals, and even they are not too impressive. Character models look great in cut-scenes, but gameplay feels a little outdated graphically and the animation stiff. Heck, the fire effects look like they've been ported from the original.
SOCOM: Special Forces provides some decent action in the single-player campaign, but it takes up until around the halfway mark for the fire-fights to get intense, so the earlier missions are a little lacking in the warfare department. You could argue that it makes sense to mix the 14 operations up this way given the nature of the series, but most of them are so short and easy that the game is an absolute breeze to get through, and offers no incentives for single-player re-playability other than the various difficulties and a couple of Trophies.
At the beginning of the fast-unfolding story, Gray's team is joined by two South Korean soldiers – Chung and Forty-Five – who assist in the six-day Malaysian campaign. Players are given a few breaks from commanding the squad and take control of Forty-Five, a female sniper, as she infiltrates enemy encampments on sabotage and reconnaissance ops. These lone, stealth-based interludes keep the proceedings relatively fresh, but the game does suffer from feeling overly reliant on these missions as they keep cropping up.
The rather weak and uninteresting story just about hangs in there due to its length (a twist towards the end comes over as insignificant and doesn't add any drama) as it barely binds the campaign experience, and so this is a release where the gameplay needed to speak volumes for it to outright succeed, which it unfortunately doesn't. It's not that it isn't fun, mildly entertaining and even a respectable effort with intuitive AI, the problem is the game's inability to deliver an improved-upon entry to what feels like a tired franchise. Is it good? Yes. But is it also incredibly generic with an archaic aura about it? Absolutely.
The most enjoyment you'll have from SOCOM: Special Forces can be found in the multiplayer modes. The usual suspects are all here like Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, but by far the most compelling of all is the implementation of five-person co-operative play in customisable campaigns based on the single-player missions. This is precisely where the goldmine of potential that is squad-based tactical action is unearthed. What you wish you could do throughout those 14 operations offline you can do with your buddies in Cyberspace. This just about saves the game form being totally lacklustre.
If this was to be the last in the series, I wouldn't be disappointed not to see another SOCOM game released in the next couple of years or so. Special Forces is annoyingly safe, and until they decide to pick up the key and unlock the potential that the current generation of consoles has given video games like this, then I'm really not bothered about seeing it continued.