The Socom franchise was an integral piece in the development of tactical shooters ever since it first graced the PS2 all those years ago. Furthermore, it has expanded to an important exclusive title for Sony and gamers have waited patiently for the first iteration in the next generation. Rivals like Ghost Recon and Rainbow 6 have made the transition very smoothly; has Socom done the same? While the game has amazing potential, gamers are left wanting more and will have to wait a little longer before all the bugs are fixed.

Socom: Confrontation follows the ideal that Warhawk made very popular: make an online only game that is absolutely engrossing. Instead of giving a half-assed campaign and multiplayer, the game is multi only and with a $39.99 price tag, you really can’t beat that premise. The glaring issue here is that the game has awesome ideas. They just don’t work.  The game is supposed to be this 32 player tactical battle, but a lot of things just don’t pan out. First, the servers were non-functional. Then the game was patched. Then there were more glitches. Then the game was patched, again. The rankings were broken, but apparently were patched. It feels like you were promised all these great features, but all we get are promises and patches.

Graphically, the game is good. Not great, but the map textures are nice and the character models are better than most. You can totally customize your character which is absolutely badass. You can design everything from your camo to your weapons kit to your voice. This sets the bar that the game is going to be awesome. Then, you play it.

The big name multi shooters: Halo 3, Gears, CoD4, RB6:V2, all make it easy to get into a game. Not so much in Socom. You have to join rooms, which are capped at 256 players and are almost always full. After clearing that hurdle, you need to then manually get into a match. This is also easier said than done. THERE ARE NO RANKED MATCHES WITH INFINITE RESPAWN. Correct me if I am wrong here, but you cannot play ranked unless you play with no respawns. This blows. The games can last 10 minutes and if you get picked off in the first 2, you wait. I understand the game has a tactical nature, but why is ranked limited to that? Gamers want variety. If I want a frag fest, I have to play unranked, which defeats the purpose of having a ranking system. Furthermore, there is no explanation of the ranking system. Do you get more weapons? Do you get more camo? Do you get more equipment? If so, when and how long? Nothing.

The gameplay is good, but the controls are clunky. Having to press up on the D-pad to aim is a bitch. You can customize the controls, but that is easier said than done. There are way too many headshots, most of them just lucky. The guns are sometimes balls-on accurate, yet sometimes feels like you are shooting while you are going through heroin withdrawal. Everyone carries a rocket launcher which makes it insanely easy to kill someone from across the map. There are little tweaks that need to be made for this game to rock. It sucks that right now the gamer is enduring these.

I really wanted Socom: Confrontation to rock. I played it for a week straight. Sometimes the game was fun, other times I wanted to throw a controller. There is groundwork here for an awesome, awesome shooter. There are just so many issues that its unreasonable to recommend it in it’s current state. More patches are on the way, but for a finished product to be this marred, you have to scratch your head. If and when this game gets fixed, I will definitely revisit.  On a plus side, the $60 version comes with a great, and I mean great bluetooth headset with a cradle where you can play it in desktop mode.

Overall: 6.0 out of 10

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