As the title of the game suggests,
SOCOM puts you into the role of one of America's top Special Forces teams - the US NAVY SEALS. During the game's single player missions you take the role as Kahuna and lead your team of four SEALS through missions ranging from hostage extractions to bombing a ship full of contraband, to retrieving suitcase nukes from a group of terrorists. At the beginning of each mission, you are given a brief mission outline about your objectives. This not only gives you a good idea of what is going on in the mission (like why you're on the mission in the first place), but it also informs you of what mission parameters must be completed in order to proceed. Trying to describe the actual dynamics of the game is rough because they are always changing. You can never be quite sure when a guard will go on patrol or what your teammates will do. This is especially true for one team member in particular - Boomer.
I know recruitment has been on something of a downslide in recent years, but after teaming with Boomer, I am convinced that Uncle Sam will let any buffoon into the armed services. Both of your other squad mates, Jester and Specter, are competent soldiers who know how to follow orders to the letter. But Boomer, well something just is not right with that boy. Throughout the game he is constantly disobeying orders and opening fire when ordered not to and standing in open areas when he needs to be hidden. In some missions he is a good soldier and follows orders, but more times than not you just want to pull out you pistol and unload a few slugs into the back of his skull for his ineptitude (what can I say - I run a tight ship?).
Online, SOCOM is a totally different ballgame. Players can team up and compete with players from all around the world in three different games: Suppression, a fancy way to say 'kill everyone on the other team; Demolition, where one team has to place a bomb in the other's base; and Hostage, where SEALS have to rescue and extract hostages while the Terrorists try to prevent them. I could not even begin to tell you how many hours I have spent playing online. As much fun as I have had playing, a few issues popped up that took away from the experience.
The biggest issue I had was that the servers are less than reliable and tend to lag/drop out often. While this is a good indicator as to how successful the game is, it's a major stumbling block and Sony should have been better prepared to handle the massive droves of people going online. Between the time I started playing and when it came time to write this review, I noticed some improvement - but there is still work to be done.
In order to clear up something that has become a major issue, online play is available only to those with a broadband connection. What this means is that if you use the phone line to get online, you cannot play the game.
