SOCOM: Special Forces
Saving the World One country at a time…
T
he SOCOM franchise has a fairly long and well established history. The series has managed to bring a number of tactical shooter games to the market, and was responsible (in its earlier days) for establishing a number of trends in the genre. These days, the SOCOM games aren’t really trend setters anymore. Rather, they deliver a good tactical shooter experience. The latest in the series, SOCOM: Special Forces, is no different. The game delivers moreor-less exactly what is expected, in terms of squad-based tactical combat. There are a few things, though, that may have some gamers grumbling. Some of them are related to this newer title, while others are the reason that people either love SOCOM, or not. This time around, the player is in command of a multinational team. Well, two nations, anyway. The game leaves the US military behind and puts the player in the role of Cullen Gray, an Operations Commander for NATO. Gray is sent to a small country in Southeast Asia, where he must lead a team to prevent a crack-pot expirate from endangering the entire world’s economy.
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by Walt Pretorius Initially, the player gets to command two of Gray’s countrymen – Australians, mind you – but the team expands to a full five member squad before too long. The Aussies are joined by two Korean operatives, adding a stealth component to the fire team. In controlling Gray, the player will get to issue various commands to the teams. Although the controls for these commands are really simple (they are all issued via the D-Pad) clever implementation of the scheme allows for a fair variety of orders to be given. And they need to be given – the player cannot approach this game like a one man army, particularly not at higher difficulty levels. Rather, he will need to issue move orders, get his team to provide cover and suppressive fire, order them to target specific enemies, and so on. The two two-man teams act independently of each other, so the tactical options are quite varied. The player will possibly find that their teams are a little too good, and the enemy AI a little too weak. The ally teams can wipe out swathes of the enemy, leaving little for the player to do, other than issue more orders. This isn’t always the case, though – sometimes the game will
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