The worst Socom ever, and a disgrace to armed forces everywhere. They should remove "US Navy Seals" from the cover.
The single player experience for Socom 4 is a drag. It's boring, repetitive, buggy, frustrating, annoying and typical all in one. For starters the camera is borderline broken and headache inducing. They patched the multiplayer camera, and improved it, but that fix wasn't implemented into the single player for whatever reason... I've never played a game where the camera induced claustrophobia and headaches. On top of that this game makes my eyes hurt as well. How this camera got approved and made it into the final build is beyond me. The story itself is a bore and missions feel more like a chore as they aren't remotely fun. Playing this game just feels like work. The characters are corny and typical, its the kind of stuff you'd expect from a much lower budgeted game. The cover says US Navy Seals but none are present, nor are the tactics Navy Seal worthy. Anyone in the armed forces will laugh at this games bad attempt at a war story.
All the missions are repetitive, its either go in and call airstrikes on armored vehicles, or stealth missions which suck because there too long and lack variety. There's a few different silent kill animations thankfully but by the second stealth mission you'll already be bored with them. To make matters worse the AI is so bad if one of them detects you all 20-30 npc's instantly fire at your direction.(More on the AI later) Also is stabbing a guy in the balls gonna kill him....these are "elite special forces"? More like arcadish baboons....
The AI is also some of the worst I've seen in a game. If one knows where you are the entire army instantly knows where you are and of course a barrage of bullets will be coming your way. Hiding behind cover helps, but when enemies can often shoot through it it kinda defeats the purpose and your screen constantly fills up with blood which again is annoying. Your team has very little options compared to past Socom's. In other games you could order your team to flash bang and clear rooms amongst a lot of other options, in Socom 4 nearly 10 years later none of those options are available. Kinda takes the word Tactical out of Tactical Shooter. Often your team mates will die and reviving them is border line retarded as you have to get your crosshairs in some magical hot spot in order for it to work often leading to your death. Keep in mind, I played the game on Easy. Trying this on Hard or Elite is a joke as the AI instantly knows where you are and kill you with 2-3 bullets. Trying to do this on any of the later missions in the game will make you want to throw your controller through your TV, especially when you have to call an airstrike on an armored vehicle.....
The Multiplayer in Socom 4 is the worst the series has ever had. The older Socom games(even Confrontation) had 6 or more game modes. Socom 4 has only four game modes, and only one of them is from its past which is Suppression which is arguably Socom's worst past game mode. It's basically Team Deathmatch, which is fine for Respawn, but in Classic mode its a camp fest. Other then that you have Uplink which is just a bad version of Capture The Flag, then you have Last Defense which makes pretty much no sense, and then you have Bomb Squad which is the games highlight but still isn't very good. Bomb Squad, Last Defense, and Uplink all pretty much play out the same as their all pretty much control points. You have to go to A, B, C, and either download data, direct a satelite, or defuse a bomb, the problem is on every map these locations are pretty much all in the same place so no matter what mode you play you find yourself doing the same thing... In past Socom's you'd have One Objective the entire team could focus on like Extracting Hostages or Escorting Hostages etc....none of that is present in Socom 4 and the game modes that are present are extremely repetitive.
On top of that the addition of Experience Points(XP) something thats never been in Socom before just seems retarded and tacked on. It's just a false sense of achievement, and the amount of XP required to unlock things are ridiculously high I doubt many players will get past level 15 because it just feels like a chore. The Multiplayer Maps aren't very good either, they are some of the worst maps I've seen in any game ever which amazes me considering how good past Socom's maps were. The camera has been patched but still often feels awkward and clunky, the controls could have been made so much simpler and on the beta feedback forum multiple control layouts were recommended, ones that would make the game play much easier and feel more natural yet Zipper pretty much ignored that. Calling in airstrikes just feels like a gimmick robbed from other big name games. The weapons lack variety, although they look different, and sound different, they all pretty much handle the same making kills come so easy its not even fun or a challenge. The newly implemented cover system is too easy and over powered, yet Zipper also ignored this feedback that was left in the beta forums.
Weapon sounds are hit or miss, on some guns they're good, on a lot of guns they're bad. Graphically however I thought the game was pretty good. If it wasn't for the lack of anti aliasing it'd look much better, there's a bunch of bland textures too, and again thats where the camera problem comes in. If the camera was done proper like in past games you wouldn't be looking so close at these textures and you'd be looking at them a little further back, but Zipper can't even seem to get that right so its just another nail in the coffin at this point.
The overall lack of multiplayer options really hurt this game. The lack of character customization makes the multiplayer feel like attack of the clones as there's too few character models and only very few of them are appealing on the eyes making people pick the same ones... There's very little clan options, you can promote clan members but whats the point... The fact that they left out lobbies makes it that much harder to find games and play with friends. To add insult to injury there is no party system although one is supposedly in the works I won't be around long enough to check it out. The lack of options here is just ridiculous this is 2011, not 1999, this game is missing a lot of the basics.
Co Op is more or less Single Player with friends, and its the highlight of the game for about 2 hours or so because after that its boring and very repetitive.
I can continue on and on about this game but at this point its just kicking a dead horse. Socom 4 is just plain bad. It's not just a bad Socom its just a bad game in general. To make matters worse the games only been out for two days and the multiplayer seems to be drawing thin. It's hard getting into games, I dont know if its a lack of players or it needs patches but I think its a lack of players because I didn't have any of these problems in the beta. I've never had trouble getting in a game in the beta however I try jumping into a Classic game and I'm sitting there for 10 minutes waiting for more players.....some jump out some jump in....still waiting. So I leave jump into a Respawn game and its the same thing, more waiting.
For my love of Socom I tried sticking it out and enjoying it as best as I could, but there's nothing keeping me here. The single player is terrible I'll never play it again. The Co Op lasted about two hours and I have no plans to play that again(even with 4 friends...). The multiplayer just isn't very enjoyable, in fact its the weakest in the entire Socom series.
I just can't understand Zipper's goal when they were creating this game. Usually a series sticks to its roots and improves. Socom 4 just feels like a game made by a second rate developer with hopes of dethroning Socom for its 3rd person shooter crown and failed miserably.
Even Slant Six did better then this and there game shipped completely broken for months....but at least its gameplay felt good when it worked. Even when Socom 4 works perfectly its just not entertaining. They should have focused on realism and authenticity like they did with the first 3 games instead they give us an arcade version of Socom which feels more like an arcade game(like "The Club") with more elements from other games then its own. On top of that it does all of those elements poorly and worse then the companies they stole them from.(From the Cover System to the Co Op to the XP system and more).
Overall 2.5 out of 10. Extremely disappointing, and overall just not enjoyable. I seriously hope you rent before buying because you will no doubt be disappointed.