Though Socom has enjoyed success the past few years, Tactical Strike takes all of that, crumples it up, and garbages it.
If you have been keeping up to date with your Socom games, you'll know that recently the series has dominated on the PSP. There has always been a great campaign the takes you across various locations, and the fast paced shooting action was so revolutionary and it was almost amazing how it could be done. The best part of the game, however was the fully featured online. This time around, the campaign puts you in a very similar situation, and once again there are some great cut scenes. The big problem it the new strategy take on the game. The game moves extremely slow and you are less connected with the characters since you don't even control one directly. And really all the commands you give are awkward, there isn't many of them and when you move a character it's hard to see his arrow, because the camera is poor. Some missions take an hour or more to complete and that's actually not good because of the game's boring play. Online has also been ruined by this new take on the series, although it is fully featured, it is very glitchy and the online only supports 4 players as you command your slow moving squad around to victory. There are a great deal of modes and it is similar to FTB2, but again the strategy concept just doesn't work.
The graphics are much improved from FTB2. They are highly detailed and look a whole lot smoother. The cut scenes again have the most amazing look and they fit the game well. Scenery is very detailed and it's amazing that it can look so good even though the map sizes are huge. Your men also look great, and their movements are very real. The camera is mostly awkward and doesn't help you command, however the cool thing is that if your player gets shot while he's running, the camera will go into this view where it chases him and shakes very much like a shooting movie, this is a really cool thing that they've done. The frame rate is also good in single player play, it never skips around.
Sound wise the game goes above and beyond again, with great voice acting the suits every character and different nations actually have different languages. The guns also sound good, they are not washed out at all and there is some variety as to which guns make which sounds.
Socom's long run of success has certainly been put to rest with Tactical Strike. It is the exact opposite of what it should have been and it will be hard to find somebody that will enjoy the gameplay in this one. The graphics are improved and sound is much the same as the last one. However, along with the single player mode the online is ruined too. A 6 out of 10.