PS2 Review: SOCOM 3: US Navy SEALs (2005)

Back when I played online more (meaning back when I played on PS2 and wasn't charged for XBOX Live) the series I played online most was SOCOM. It was different than your typical shooter in that instead of re-spawning instantly every time you bought the farm, you sat the rest out the rest of the round. I thought this was pretty cool (though also very frustrating); it felt a lot more tactical in that to win against a group of players that was any good, you had to coordinate with your teammates and learn from your mistakes. Unlike NBA Live, where the point of the mic was to hear opponents try to rap along with whatever was playing in their background while telling me how good they are, in SOCOM it felt like the mic was essential part of the experience.

$7 was the price of my admission to the dance with SOCOM II. There was a time when I was playing it for hours nearly every weekday. I even had the time to do homework between rounds as I probably spent much more time dead than playing. And then one day while playing my favorite map where the goal is to plant a bomb at the other team's base (or defuse the one they place at yours) people were talking about the features in SOCOM 3. It was to have much bigger maps, twice as many players per team, and vehicles. It did, in fact, have all of these things and more. It included customizable weapons and a slightly less frustrating campaign mode (in SOCOM II there was a glitch that if you stayed too close to an enemy for a second or two, they would kill you with the butt of their rifle even if you ran out of reach. SOCOM 3 fixed this by making it a devastating blow rather than instant death). Your SEAL team is slightly less stupid, but not by much. They will still step on mines you set, so be careful. The gun customization helps since you have a big advantage with silenced weapons and can add silencers to several different guns; in SOCOM II there were only a handful of guns that came with such an accessory. You also get in-mission check points so you don't have to play a whole mission over should you fail. The addition of vehicles was a necessary step in making the gameplay, in whatever small way, more like an actual SEAL operation. As was the inclusion of swimming (DUH!). I'm surprised it took 3 games to figure that out. Overall, though, I think I preferred the campaign mode of SOCOM II due to the greater challenge and variety of missions and environments.

As far as online goes, bigger isn't always better. With the much bigger environments, you inevitably get more wanna-be snipers and campers and thus spend much more time just trying to find enemies. I preferred the more urban, close-quarter maps and SOCOM 3 did not. Another problem was that, unlike II, your teammates names didn't appear over their heads automatically and clearly; you had to put your cross-hairs on them (or at least get close). I don't have to tell you how this can cause a greater number of friendly fire accidents. The vehicles definitely did increase the fun factor and were quite necessary considering how big the maps were. One could waste a lot of time just running around, hoping not to get hit by snipers. I think the online play lost part of its charm by being increased to such a large scale; SEALs are supposed to be small teams, not battalions. Unfortunately, the servers for this and other SOCOM games were shut down on August 31, 2012.

In sum, SOCOM 3 is a fairly solid third person shooter and offered a fun online experience (especially when compared to games like Ghost Recon, where next-gen systems got all the attention). It is apparently still worth playing the campaign mode, if my recent sale of my copy is any evidence. It will not make you feel like a SEAL, necessarily, but has more replay value than Modern Warfare's campaign mode, if not nearly as beautifully cinematic.

I'm convinced that Specter doesn't have a nose.