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SOCOM: Special Forces hands-on
Posted by Adam Shepherd on Oct 5, 2010
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Although I initially couldn't’ find any consoles that had Socom: Special Forces hooked up to Sony’s Move controller, using the normal pad I did find a rather decent shooter. The Socom demo I played didn’t get off to a good start as the demo froze on me whilst I was waiting for the loading screen to end, so the game had to be rebooted before I could play.
Thankfully the second attempt to get the game running was successful and I was dropped into the Special Forces team. You and your AI controlled buddies start off in a building and thanks to the glass being shattered in front of me we could get out of the building and on to the streets, just outside the building in its car park some enemy forces engaged us with their guns.
Enemies, whilst being smart enough to take cover, are not that intelligent it seems as their attempts at trying to flank your team seem pretty half hearted, also enemy military units although attacking in a group, don’t actually work together by sticking close to each other, in fact they are more prone to keeping a good distance from one of their comrades, making it easy for me to single out an enemy and take him down.
Whether my game was set on an easy difficulty wasn’t clear but it sure seemed as if it was, a few well placed shots landing on your target will make them go down, and throughout my time it wasn’t necessary at all to swap the initial guns I was given, as they were more than powerful enough and there also seemed to be plenty of ammo.
There are also plenty of cover points, including vehicles that will blow up when you go near them, so as long as you stick to them you shouldn't find any trouble making your way through Socom, if you do die or come close to death it will usually be because you weren’t in cover. Most of the time I could keep my head well above a piece of cover and happily spray away without my head being taken off.
Spraying seems very much the name of the game with Socom’s shooting controls as the aiming doesn’t feel anywhere near as precise as you would want it to, aiming down the sights kind of remedies this but it is just as easy to spray close to an enemy and hit them anyway. Another part of Socom’s aiming could be a lot better is the grenade throwing arc, it resembles the line of direction that uncharted games give you when aiming a grenade but unfortunately you can’t seem to throw the grenades that far or quickly at all, meaning it would probably be quicker just to blast some dudes with your gun of choice.
Well at least one soldier is bothering to use cover.
Speaking of choice you are given the option in the game to control your few squadmates by telling them to stay put or move to a specific location, but this level of battlefield tactics wasn’t required at all during my playthrough as I happily mowed through the dumb AI without much assistance. The only time I did control my squadmates was when the demo told me to and they seemed to carry out my basic command okay.
Getting out of the car park your team then makes its way along the streets, shooting enemies as you go in order to move across a pretty busted up bridge. You have a reticule on screen that tells you how far you are from your objective but during the early stages your tasks don’t have you do much more than moving from one location to another and shooting enemies that get in your way.
Whilst crossing the high up bridge you are met with some footsoldiers below you as well as a tank that has you in its sight, unfortunately you don’t get the pleasure of blowing up the tank yourself as you get to call in an airstrike to take it down.
Weirdly the game was telling me that to call in an airstrike I had to use the l2 button but in reality this didn’t work and I had to fumble around before realising you use the r2 button to call some bombs down, which I did and of course the airstrike resulted in the tank being blown up in a decent enough explosion.
One tank down and one more piece of heavy duty weaponry to go, and that weapon is a large anti-aircraft machine gun. Of course it wasn’t going to be easy getting in position to call another airstrike as there was a long street with some more enemy soldiers dotted around to try and stop me from reaching my goal, they didn’t of course and only managed to slow me down a bit before getting in range to call in an aerial bombardment.
And with this explosion the demo ended and from what I can tell Socom: Special Forces looks like a very standard shooter with nothing all that interesting setting it out from its immediate competitors. The game looked fine, if a little rough around the edges and also didn’t feel all too accurate in the all important aspect of shooting. The enemy and buddy intelligence looked to be lacking but that could have been some noob setting my game to an easy difficulty before I jumped on. All in all Socom special forces was okay but it didn’t set my world on fire to say the least.
Alright Mr. tank, lets dance!
Source:E4G: Everything 4 Gamers
Posted by Adam Shepherd on Oct 5, 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although I initially couldn't’ find any consoles that had Socom: Special Forces hooked up to Sony’s Move controller, using the normal pad I did find a rather decent shooter. The Socom demo I played didn’t get off to a good start as the demo froze on me whilst I was waiting for the loading screen to end, so the game had to be rebooted before I could play.
Thankfully the second attempt to get the game running was successful and I was dropped into the Special Forces team. You and your AI controlled buddies start off in a building and thanks to the glass being shattered in front of me we could get out of the building and on to the streets, just outside the building in its car park some enemy forces engaged us with their guns.
Enemies, whilst being smart enough to take cover, are not that intelligent it seems as their attempts at trying to flank your team seem pretty half hearted, also enemy military units although attacking in a group, don’t actually work together by sticking close to each other, in fact they are more prone to keeping a good distance from one of their comrades, making it easy for me to single out an enemy and take him down.
Whether my game was set on an easy difficulty wasn’t clear but it sure seemed as if it was, a few well placed shots landing on your target will make them go down, and throughout my time it wasn’t necessary at all to swap the initial guns I was given, as they were more than powerful enough and there also seemed to be plenty of ammo.
There are also plenty of cover points, including vehicles that will blow up when you go near them, so as long as you stick to them you shouldn't find any trouble making your way through Socom, if you do die or come close to death it will usually be because you weren’t in cover. Most of the time I could keep my head well above a piece of cover and happily spray away without my head being taken off.
Spraying seems very much the name of the game with Socom’s shooting controls as the aiming doesn’t feel anywhere near as precise as you would want it to, aiming down the sights kind of remedies this but it is just as easy to spray close to an enemy and hit them anyway. Another part of Socom’s aiming could be a lot better is the grenade throwing arc, it resembles the line of direction that uncharted games give you when aiming a grenade but unfortunately you can’t seem to throw the grenades that far or quickly at all, meaning it would probably be quicker just to blast some dudes with your gun of choice.
Well at least one soldier is bothering to use cover.
Speaking of choice you are given the option in the game to control your few squadmates by telling them to stay put or move to a specific location, but this level of battlefield tactics wasn’t required at all during my playthrough as I happily mowed through the dumb AI without much assistance. The only time I did control my squadmates was when the demo told me to and they seemed to carry out my basic command okay.
Getting out of the car park your team then makes its way along the streets, shooting enemies as you go in order to move across a pretty busted up bridge. You have a reticule on screen that tells you how far you are from your objective but during the early stages your tasks don’t have you do much more than moving from one location to another and shooting enemies that get in your way.
Whilst crossing the high up bridge you are met with some footsoldiers below you as well as a tank that has you in its sight, unfortunately you don’t get the pleasure of blowing up the tank yourself as you get to call in an airstrike to take it down.
Weirdly the game was telling me that to call in an airstrike I had to use the l2 button but in reality this didn’t work and I had to fumble around before realising you use the r2 button to call some bombs down, which I did and of course the airstrike resulted in the tank being blown up in a decent enough explosion.
One tank down and one more piece of heavy duty weaponry to go, and that weapon is a large anti-aircraft machine gun. Of course it wasn’t going to be easy getting in position to call another airstrike as there was a long street with some more enemy soldiers dotted around to try and stop me from reaching my goal, they didn’t of course and only managed to slow me down a bit before getting in range to call in an aerial bombardment.
And with this explosion the demo ended and from what I can tell Socom: Special Forces looks like a very standard shooter with nothing all that interesting setting it out from its immediate competitors. The game looked fine, if a little rough around the edges and also didn’t feel all too accurate in the all important aspect of shooting. The enemy and buddy intelligence looked to be lacking but that could have been some noob setting my game to an easy difficulty before I jumped on. All in all Socom special forces was okay but it didn’t set my world on fire to say the least.
Alright Mr. tank, lets dance!
Source:E4G: Everything 4 Gamers
