SOCOM Confrontation

Bored with the single-player campaign life? Want to skip through the painful cut scenes and the terrible, fake-sounding voice acting once and for all? Well, we might just have what the game doctor ordered because SOCOM: Confrontation is multiplayer-only.

It’s difficult to pick apart a game that is multiplayer-only when so many games released these days focus on driving home the majority of the game content via story-driven, single-player campaign. SOCOM doesn’t have any characters to degrade or revere; it’s simply a no-holds-barred, in-your-face, online multiplayer fragfest.

What’s good about it? Well, it’s SOCOM, although admittedly, I am not a huge fan of the franchise myself. That aside, I like guns, I like warfare and I like killing, so as long as you put ticks in all three of those boxes, you shouldn’t have any problems playing this either.

You connect via the Playstation Network and you’re given a rank depending on your skill (basically, if you’ve played a lot, you’ll have a higher rank). There are different game type options, but by pressing ‘Quick Match’ you’ll be instantly thrown into a game without delay.

As with every multiplayer online experience, your opponents are real and therefore there’s no fixed skill level to adjust to; you simply aim and fire. SOCOM is excessively realistic and well known for its ‘one hit, one kill’ gameplay.

The game supports eight players, so four on each side. The only gripe I do have, however, is that no matter how much I fiddled with the brightness and contrast settings (both in the game and on my TV), the game seemed really dark. It made killing people particularly difficult because I just couldn’t see them until they were right up in my face.

SOCOM: Confrontation does have its share of problems, but for what it represents, it can be a hell of a lot of fun, especially if you have a headset attached for voice input.