Carlos

So, today, I saw someone I know online on PS3, asking what he's dooing today. Then I get a message saying there are two invites to SOCOM Confrontation Public Beta, which can be found if you pre-ordered the full game at participating GameStops. He asked me if I wanted the beta code, I obliged. I wanted to try it out. And its not the first Online Beta I've participated in.

I thank d3adcell86 for making this beta my second one after Metal Gear Online.

Graphics:
I haven't paid too much attention to the graphics....But from what I can tell, the graphics has a lot of detail. The levels themselves pack a lot of detail everything from the buildings, to the objects, and the vehicles. Tho, I can't get over how basic the textures are. There isn't even a special effect that hasn't been used in other games thus far. But I CAN say, that the levels are HUGE, no fog, a longer distance. I like the level design for its ability to give you much room for you to move in. It isn't just a one way street, either. There are places that it will allow you to snipe from atop of a building. And on top of that, the buildings are integrated with one another. I can't imagine how 20 - 40 players playing at once in the levels that SOCOM is offering.

I hope you know how to modify your monitor's brightness, because the game is.....DARK. And I mean worse than COD4 dark. It seems impossible to locate your enemies in the dark, unless your crosshair signifies that it has recognized a character - the crosshair will turn from blue to red.

The explosions while "basic" look detailed. That's only with grenades, I wonder how it looks when it touches a car, and blows it up.

Controls & Gameplay:
The controls feel well... different. The gameplay is slow, and clumsy at this point. Crouching doesn't feel right, it just feels like the soldier doesn't want to crouch. I want to crouch a little lower, so that I can tell if he's crouching or not. That's just the thing, with the third person perspective - I mean, the camera's position that its in - you can't tell what's happening. MGS4 doesn't have this problem, because Snake crouches to a level where WE all can see the action, and on top of that, the camera changes a bit for that kind of situation. That's something companies like Sony should take note of.

Turning around may seem slow from the controller side, and the camera will move at the same time, but it feels like a disconnect because it doesn't feel like the camera is picking up the pace. Throwing bombs is even wierder. I like that I can see where it'll go, but once you try to move it further by changing the camera position, a bit. What I don't like about it is that it feels like its shrinking instead of expanding its reach. That's only from what I tried of the bomb.

Weapon changing isn't even quick, you actually have to manually move the cursor to the weapon of choice in order to change weapons. However, I like the customization of the weapons which is taking cues from MGO, and COD4. I like the character creation system, too. It seems a whole lot deeper than MGO in that every detail gets to be changed. However, the amount of time it takes to change attributes, is a long time - loading times kind of long.

The control configuration isn't even right. Some of the buttons is useless. And the actions are in the wrong places. It doesn't even have a cover system in place from what I saw.

This article is a copyright of CarlosX360 Co. Ltd., any use of this article without the author's permission is liable for a lawsuit.

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