SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Tactical Strike
Socom brings the experience of movies such as Black Hawk Down and Tom Clancy's Clear And Present Danger novel to the portable gaming screen. It's not about going in with guns blazing, so action junkies need not apply. Your mission is to guide four Sea, Air, Land or Seal commandos - picked from various countries including the United States, Britain and France - indirectly, by using a cursor-like pointer to move them around the stages. Which makes you like the manager of a football team like Arsenal, albeit with a team of actual gunners taking on "tangos" or terrorists. Pressing the various control buttons of the PSP gives contextual menu commands to the four Seals, to say, shoot nearby terrorists, throw grenades or shoot at selected targets from a long distance. It takes one mission to get to grips with the array of commands. The strategy remains the same throughout: Sneak around in each location, take cover in the best available position, and shoot to kill. Then, sneak around some more until you reach a designated location. Unlike Rambo, your four men are vulnerable - and mortal: If they are caught in the open or under inadequate cover, death is certain. Best survival tactic: hide the men behind objects like barrels or logs to shield them from unfriendly fire. Luckily, though, the Seals improve their skills after every mission, so they fight better even as the mission gets progressively tougher. The single-player game serves as a boot camp before you gain enough confidence to take on other Socom fans online. In terms of graphics and sound, the game delivers on both counts. The jungle locations and the terrorist bases look sharp and atmospheric, with PS2 console-like quality. The gunfire effects and the soldier talk among the Seals, sound as dynamic as in any war movie. The game's infrequent checkpoint save system is a killer, though. You might just throw your PSP like a grenade, in frustration when you need to replay the last 20 to 30 minutes - just because you die before reaching the next checkpoint to save the game. But on the whole, armchair generals with plenty of patience, should shoot for this game.
