You like squad based shooters? You're a tactical thinker? Planning gunfights and watching them unfold is your thing? OK.
So if you enjoy the tactics on the battlefield - if you think you can outflank your enemies instead of simply outgunning them - this is your game.
Maybe you have heard of a game called Full Spectrum Warrior before? If you've actually played that and enjoyed it, you already know everything about this Socom title and you need not read on. Just know that you're in for a treat.
You control four soldiers. You give all the orders to either all four of them at the same time or to groups of two. Inbeetween missions you can use your earned experience points to beef up their various abilities, arm them, read info on the next mission, and proceed.
Once in the battlefield you decide wether you want to take the sneaking approach or run around guns blazing. Of course it helps to arm your soldiers with silenced guns if you'd rather enjoy the silence.
Steering your soldiers is not a hassle. The Gamespot review indicated that this is so, because your movement pointer is glued to the ground so you need to move it around the same way you'd move around yourself. You must use the stairs - you cannot drag that cursor over entire buildings and expect soldiers to climb and fall these heights. However, this is actually a good thing, because often you will navigate your teams using the ingame mini-map instead of the visible terrain.
Both the negative points the Gamespot review made about the game (reticle restriction and hard to spot enemies around corners) are both unrelevant when you make use of the mini-map to navigate and plan your tactics. You can see enemies on the map once spotted, and you can also look around corners if you just move your squad to the edge of that corner. You will not be seen if you move in sneak-mode, but you can move the camera to look around the corner just fine. It's worked for me every single time in the entire game.
Often it makes sense to split up the team to simulate moving in a staggered column formation. It helps outflanking enemies on the streets, and you'll spot them much sooner. When you clump all your men in the same spot, you'll be more easily exposed to enemy fire once spotted yourself. Keep that in mind.
Difficulty is a mixed bag in this game. Most of the time I could stealthily kill and pluck out enemies the smart way without getting into trouble. However, the game sometimes relies on scripts to bring the story forward, which often means new incoming enemies. So you could say, often times the game feels easy (or you're just really good at it), and then you are overwhelmed with an onslaught of enemies that, if you're slow, will take you out!
You might have cleared out an area sometimes, but once you get past a cutscene, chances are that there might be new baddies coming seemingly out of nowhere. Normally you'll get warned of new incoming enemies, but sometimes it's supposed to surprise you, making it almost feel like enemies just spawn randomly on rare occasions. However, that is never really true. With the right strategy, you will always have the upper hand, even if it means that you have to retreat *very* quickly just to try sniping every enemy from afar.
Overall, the game is really great! Don't miss out on it if you like real time strategy games!