Right off the bat this is no ordinary SOCOM title, and those familiar with the others such as the NAVY SEALS on PS2 will be disappointed. THe game takes a more action heavy approach rather than being all about stealth and tactics.
You still have control of team mates and can order them to do a variety of things, no where near as in-depth as in previous games, but more simply just "blue team over there", "gold team over there", "target enemies", "attack" and "return to me" all done using the D-Pad to make life easier.
The gameplay as mentioned before is far more action heavy than what we usually expect from SOCOM titles. There is some stealth missions and you can TRY to avoid detection on nearly all of them but i use the word TRY sparingly. This is because most levels have no way of remaning un-detected and no matter how careful you are, either you will have to get spotted to progress or your team will wonder out of cover and get you spotted. Another silly thing i encountered on almost all the levels is when your detected in one area, kill the enemies and move round the corner, the enemies are oblivious to the massive gun fight that just occured. Surely they would hear the gun fire? Plus, due to the intended realism of the game, you die very easily whilst your team members take a beating. Seriously, three to four lucky shots and your down whereas your team can survive direct rocket hits.
The camera is over the shoulder but more like on the shoulder as it is ridiculously close to your character. Even without using the sights (which is really cool) your character often drifts down off the screen especially when entering cover or spriting around, the camera overtakes the character.
The graphics are beautiful and the terrain, especially in the jungle levels looks incredibly real. But with short gameplay, only 14 missions (no spoiler, it tells you on the box how many there are)with each mission taking around half an hour with there really isnt much to come back for. To combat this there is a custom mission mode where you choose your map, gametype either espionage and take-down, difficulty and number of enemies. There is however only a few levels, that change depending on the game type varying from different parts of the level to just making it dark. But again, not much to come back for.
The weapons in the game however is the most genius ive seen in a while. Before each mission you choose a maain, secondary and throwables with attachments such as sights, silences etc. To unlock more weapons all you ahve to do is find them in-game and pick them up, simple. And to unlock further attachments just requires use of the weapon to level up the MOD bar, when filled, you earn a mod. To mix things up, out of the five catagories; Snipers, Shotguns, SMG's, LMG's and Assault rfles, the mods vary. By this i mean not all assault rifles have the same attachments. Plus the stats for each weapon is different, some a louder than others etc. And the sheer amoung of weapins is crazy, as a guess i estimate around 50, more than most other shooters.
Overall it is a fun game to play but once finished there really isnt much to come back for. Part of the fun for me was the custom missions with a friend to see who could do it without being spotted.
4/5