SOCOM: Confrontation Catch-All [1.50 = Finally OUT!]

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Next-gen SOCOM is finally here!

Well, it's here tomorrow. But the new catch-all thread is here now.

We've got a group of people who have been anxiously awaiting SOCOM's glorious non-respawn tactical team shooter action.

I've created a clan named Squishy Brain, and all GWJ players are welcome to join. A number of beta players are already there. If you'd like an invite, just say so. Casual and hardcore players alike are invited. I'll do some officer delegating and all of that good stuff once I get the retail copy in my hands, tomorrow night.

Stay tuned to this here thread as we figure out some SOCOM nights, clan stuff, etc.

What's SOCOM? Who's Legion? WHERE AM I!?

I'll be there, but I'll probably suck.

This is where I usually comfort someone by pointing out that my wife will often be playing in groups with me, and she's not any good either.

But when I do that, I end up in a conversation like this...

WIFE: "I'm not any good, I don't want anyone to be mad at me! Did you warn them that I suck?"
ME: "Yeah, don't sweat it, I told them."
WIFE: "You told them I suck?!?"

The switch from concern to indignation gives me whiplash.

You've never seen "not any good" till you've seen my play a shooter online.

Socom is more about tactics, communication, and teamwork then racking up kills like in those "other shooters" so don't worry about your skill level. The game is all about completing the objectives and working together and everyone can play a vital role.

By the way, send me an invite Legion.

Thanks for the trailer link. Very nice! ...Ready up everyone!

I might be in for this, I definitely Want the new headset, it looks amazing but I haven't tried socom yet and there's so many games coming out but I wouldn't mind to get this.

I went against my better judgment and secured a copy for myself today. I'll be joining in on the festivities until something else comes along and takes my attention.

Good to hear that you guys are on board. I'd suggest the bundled version and then if you don't like the game you can sell it and recoup some of the $60 and you'll still have the headset.

1. It's different. Socom is a tactical, third-person shooter that focuses more on non-respawn game modes like rescuing hostages, breaching fortresses, and destroying bases. The Socom community is much, much more civil than COD4, Halo, etc. and people genuinely work together as almost every player has a mic (and uses it!). It's much less about ranking up and personal achievements than COD4.

2. It would have been a system seller for me but I can't say it's a system seller for the mass market because Socom doesn't have the latest, and greatest graphics, physics, etc.

3. Probably. I would only get the PS3 is there are other exclusives that you definitely want to play such as Uncharted, MGS4, GoW3, etc. I'll be playing GoW2 on the Xbox 360 right along with you but I'll always be jumping back to Socom!

I have several practical questions:

1. Is this game "better" or "worse" than CoD4 on 360?
2. Combined with definitely-coming God of War 3, is it a "system seller" for PS3?
3. If spent money on P3 and SOCOM3, will I only regret it because in one month all I'll be playing will be Gears of War 2 anyway?

Whenever i get around to picking up a PS3 this will be the game i pick up with it

I'll jump in with some answers myself.

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

1. Is this game "better" or "worse" than CoD4 on 360?

The comparison is like comparing Starcraft to Sins of a Solar Empire. Yes, they're both technically RTS games in space, but the gameplay experience couldn't be much more different.

COD4 is a visceral, fast-paced twitch shooter. In many ways, it's Quake/UT with real guns and no bunny hopping. (That's a bit reductionist, and I did love COD4, but taking a step back, it's true)

SOCOM exists somewhere in the space between the old Rainbow Six games and Counterstrike: less twitchy than the latter, not quite as slow as the former. The game moves at a measured pace, much more so than COD. Of course, the big game-defining trait is non-respawn (custom respawn rooms are possible in SOCOM but it's not the "real" game, so to speak).

The design of SOCOM really puts a heavy emphasis on teamplay, and the kind of community that flocks to the game reflects that.

2. Combined with definitely-coming God of War 3, is it a "system seller" for PS3?

Well, it's the reason I bought my PS3. It's a seller to the type of player that wants the SOCOM style of game, because there's really nothing else on the market anymore that provides a similar experience. Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon have drifted, to different degrees, from their more tactical (and non-respawn) roots.

For me, the PS3 is an easy sell this fall: SOCOM, LittleBigPlanet, Wipeout HD, and Buzz ensure that my PS3s pretty much stay on constantly. MGS4, Ratchet & Clank, and Gran Turismo: Prologue have been enjoyable too. And if Resistance 2 provides anything worthwhile, bonus.

3. If spent money on P3 and SOCOM3, will I only regret it because in one month all I'll be playing will be Gears of War 2 anyway?

That depends on if you've been craving the tactical shooter experience or not. I plan to play a good bit of Gears of War 2, certainly with the GWJ crowd, but for pub games, there's no question, I'd go play with SOCOM's community a million times over before subjecting myself to more of the unwashed Gears masses.

The thing you can count on with SOCOM is that the servers will be packed even a full two-plus years from now (or however long it takes for the next SOCOM game to come out). It took a crazy long time to get the player base to migrate away from SOCOM II, and few were satisfied with the direction SOCOM III took. Everyone is ready to jump into SOCOM: Confrontation and set roots.

SOCOM is never the prettiest or most flashy game. In the past, it was downright ugly, even compared to its peers at the time. It'll never be the media darling for those reasons. But it's probably the deepest shooter you'll find (certainly on consoles, anyway), and that depth is why a very large community sticks with the game for years after release.

Plus, you gotta have something to play when the 360 red rings.

My favorite shooter has been Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter 2. Reason: you really needed team work to get things done. More so then other shooters. (even if those shooters 'said' teamplay was best, most people did their own thing). However, if you don't know the group your in for MP play, it again turns into every person for themself. (and respawns most of the time).

And even tho' I'm not great at shooters, and will usually be the first to die (souldaddy and 'haiku can attest to that), I still enjoy no respawn and real, honest to gawd teamplay. And even tho' my experience with SOCOM is minimal, the beta backed up what '93 and *Legion* have said. I.e. team play is the essence of the game, AND 9 times out of 10 (I would say 10 out of 10, but I can never bring myself to absolutes) you'll get folks who are decent, serious team players that try and work things out for themselves. Sure, if you make clumsy mistakes time after time, pub folks will flash a few words your way to get your head out of .... well you know:>) But I guess I'm one of the few that like to watch folks play a good, tactical games. I learn allot if I die early by watching and enjoying folks play the game well. And for the most part, I need time to learn what is going on. (even tho' I can be in the mood for mindless infinite respawns, it's just that, I rarely learn much) And hearing old SOCOM'ers emphase team play and good folks to play with(as I've read thru the years), only get's me more and more excited to experience this. (of course I know RL really has me on an very unpredictable gaming schedule and scheduling is always a problem, but here's hoping I can hook-up more often then not).

One neat thing about SOCOM and voice chat: if you hold the voice chat button, you transmit voice chat to your team. But if you DON'T hold it, you transmit voice chat only to your "party" (the party system was absent from the beta, but I trust it is in the final version as promised, it's been demoed to press types).

It will be nice when playing as a small group in a larger pub game.

EDIT: Initial impression thread at PS boards confirm the aforementioned party system. Didn't understand why Slant Six hadn't spoken about it for so long, but they never said it was cut, either.

It is sounding like GameStop won't have it today, which sucks. Of course, SOCOM II released in November 2003 and I've been waiting since then, I can handle one more day.

I've been trying to get the game all day and every store I called said it would be 10/15. I happened to stumble onto a post in the PS forums about [url=http://www.gamecrazy.com/Game Crazy[/url] and it turns out my local shop has a boatload of the bundled version in stock. I just got back with a copy!

By the way, the bluetooth headset is about 1/2 the size I thought it would be. I'll post all impressions later on.

93_confirmed wrote:

By the way, the bluetooth headset is about 1/2 the size I thought it would be. I'll post all impressions later on.

I'm very interested in hearing what the headset is like. Might not get to pick up a copy of SOCOM until later this week or even next.

*Legion* wrote:

It is sounding like GameStop won't have it today, which sucks. Of course, SOCOM II released in November 2003 and I've been waiting since then, I can handle one more day. :D

Who is that masked man? Does that sound like any *Legion* you know? I didn't think so!

I hopped on GameCrazy's website, and found a GameCrazy that's about 5 miles from where I work. So I bolted over there during my lunch hour, and sure enough, they had 'em stacked up in a little pyramid behind the counter. I got mine.

So now I'll have to go to GameStop tomorrow and transfer one of my preorders to something else, but that's OK.

93! Post! Right now!

And no bickering about missing weapons!

I'm not getting mine till tomorrow unfortunately. However from reading the forums, it appears they have left out the feature of being able to join friends from your friends list. Or to be able to tell where they are in game. Some mentioned the 'Home' feature is for this, but that means one would have to leave the game, check Home to see where your friends are, then back to the game. (evidently this was a main MP feature in the previous SOCOMS, except 1). Lame. Hopefully I'm reading this wrong.

Yeah, it seems to be up in the air as to what's going on with being able to join friends.

It looks like it might be that the game's waiting on functionality provided by PlayStation Home, which is supposedly out next month.

I'm itching to get home to try the game out myself and see what's going on.

The PSN status page now says the maintenance will go until 8pm Pacific.

Quite a coincidence. Makes me wonder if there's going to be a new SOCOM patch on the other side of the maintenance.

I am on the fence with this one. (I already own a PS3) I've never done much SOCOM, but I love tactical shooters. Is there a demo already? Do I need this game? Get to work you filthy enablers!

jakeleg wrote:

I am on the fence with this one. (I already own a PS3) I've never done much SOCOM, but I love tactical shooters. Is there a demo already? Do I need this game? Get to work you filthy enablers! :-)

In order asked: No, Yes.

*Legion* wrote:

93! Post! Right now!

And no bickering about missing weapons! ;)

I only played for about an hour (off-peak) and here are my brief observations. The downloads and install took about 20 minutes, which wasn't bad at all. The menu doesn't lag as much but it's still a little slow. I didn't get any error messages and the first game started pretty quickly. The first map, ironically, was Crossroads and it played well with just a few stutters here and there. The game functions and has all of the same features, weapons, etc. as the beta so there's nothing new to report that I could see. I didn't get to try the mic because the PS 2.50 update isn't out yet and I'm still charging it up. After Crossroads I played some Desert Glory. The map is WAY to dark IMO (yes, it's daytime) and I found it difficult to spot people. Aside from that, the map is dead on with the original except with the addition of trees and vehicles.The last map I played briefly was Urban Wasteland, which reminds me of Gridlock from Gears.

The main negatives for me are the missing weapons. I'm REALLY disappointed that they left out the PMN mines and the .50 cal sniper rifle for terrorists. Those were the two main weapons I used in S2 and they inexpicabily left them out of the game (probably to charge later as DLC). On top of that, I'm having near-game-breaking issues with the lighting system. I'm never had any problems with TV, movies, DVDs, or games so I know it's not a TV issue. The lighting it too bright and the shadows are too dark. It looks like they went overboard with HDR and unfortunately there's no way to adjust the brightness, contrast, etc. in the game. *sigh* I really need to find a way to work around this because I'm getting owned by people in obvious spots that I literally just can't see.

93_confirmed wrote:

On top of that, I'm having near-game-breaking issues with the lighting system. I'm never had any problems with TV, movies, DVDs, or games so I know it's not a TV issue. The lighting it too bright and the shadows are too dark. It looks like they went overboard with HDR and unfortunately there's no way to adjust the brightness, contrast, etc. in the game. *sigh* I really need to find a way to work around this because I'm getting owned by people in obvious spots that I literally just can't see.

What are your HDMI settings on the PS3? Depending on the TV, setting the HDMI range option to Limited or Full can cause black crush, which would make it hard to see d00dz in dark areas.

I'm not having any serious problem seeing guys. I sat down with my PS3 and a copy of Digital Video Essentials and made sure that I had my TV settings decently tuned for that specific input.

I've got an older 46' bulky, flat-screen. So, what option did you set for the HDMI range. My TV doesn't have a lot of settings to tweak (plus everything else on it looks great and I don't want to jack that up). Do you have any other PS3 setting suggestions?

EDIT: It was set to Full so I changed to Limited. Also, I've got the Super White option on the bottom set to No and the Cross-Color filter on yes.

I'm not sure what I ultimately set my HDMI range to, but you need to just toggle it and look for any difference. It just switches between Full and Limited, so you're not going to get to a point where you can't go back to what you had it at before.

But my #1 suggestion is the Blu-Ray version of Digital Video Essentials. Every TV needs decent calibration, and being calibrated on one input doesn't mean jack for a different input (if the TV has separate settings for separate inputs, which it should). It's remarkable what some very small changes can do for picture quality.

I just set it to Limited for the range and it looks slightly better. When you get a chance, let me know what you have for the other two Display options. Also, are you running the res as 1080i?

I have a 1080p LCD TV, so that's what my resolution is set to (don't remember if SOCOM drops to 720p or not, a lot of games do).

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