IT’S been a bad week for Sony after the announcement that its network had been hacked caused the electronics giant to warn that the user details of up to 77 million people have been stolen.
Alarmingly those details also included credit card numbers for anyone who has purchased anything from the PlayStation Store. You might wonder what any of this has to do with Socom: Special Forces. Well the answer is that because of the hack the PlayStation Network has been unavailable since Wednesday, April 20, as Sony works desperately to fix the Grand Canyon sized hole unveiled in its security.
Anyone who’s familiar with the Socom series will know that a large part of the game is the ability to play online. So given that the network has been unavailable in recent days I can tell you absolutely nothing about the game’s performance in its online mode.
Obviously that’s a minor frustration compared to the thought that your credit card details are being shared by god knows who but for the sake of this review it’s a bit of a problem.
Anyway, in terms of the single player campaign Zipper interactive have produced a solid if not spectacular tactical shooter.
Given the pacing of tactical shooters (usually very slow and methodical, punishing even the slightest slip up), it’s important that they look particularly good and also provide a wealth of different options for accomplishing your mission.
Unfortunately Socom feels very much like a number of its predecessors. The options available to use cover or order your squad around feel sluggish and imprecise compared to the slick hurtling into cover available in a title like Crysis 2 or the ease with which your team respond to instructions in Mass Effect 2.
Visually it looks great when standing still but some of the animations on vehicles, large explosions and characters seem stilted.
The controls can be a little awkward, something that’s pretty important in any game that supposedly relies on precision tactics.
All these things don’t make it a bad game they just give it a slightly dated feel. As a tactical shooter goes it’s a passable effort, just one that could have done with a little more time in development.