Socom 4 BETA: Keep your PSP close.

I have been playing the Socom 4 beta for about 2 days now. First off I have to say I am having a blast, Most of the time....

Maps: There are two maps in this beta. One that's on a naval ship yard, and one that's in an insurgence base in the jungle. Both Maps are large with multiple levels to them. However right off the start there are two choke points per map, on opposite sides. The Spec Ops have one easy to reach choke point, and the Insurgents have one. Most of the kills take place at either of these choke points. If they add a standard team death match (respawning allowed) these choke points would lead to extreme camping.

Guns: There are a ton of weapons. Shotguns, Assault Rifles, SMGs, LMGs, and Sniper rifles, with something like 4 or 5 guns per category. While there is a noticeable difference between say an LMG and an SMG there really isn't much difference between an MP5 and a KRIS. As far as modification of guns goes, the more you use a weapon the more mods you get for it. The ACR (first assault rifle has 5 levels of modification. 0 has a reflex sight on it, 1 has an extended magazine, 2 has a acog scope, 3 has a silencer, and 4 has a grip. So the more you use a gun the better it gets. I'm not sure if I like this yet. When I first jumped into a game I was playing against some people that were rank 20+. If the game doesn't have some sort of balancing brand new players could get put into a game where a more experienced player has a fully maxed out gun. Side note: I'm not sure what good the silencers really do. Even guns without silencers don't appear on radar. It seems that silencers are only good against people playing with gaming headsets.

Graphics: I don't need to say much here. You can go look up videos or pictures of this and see. However I can say the game looks, and sound better than in the videos.

Gameplay: This is where the game both shines and falters. The gameplay can be both fast and energetic, but slow and monotonous. The maps are big and right at the start when the gun play starts it's exciting and fun. But once it comes down to 1 or 2 people left on the other team it can take forever to find them. My biggest problem with the gameplay in the beta is that there isn't just a standard respawn allowed team death match. When you die it can take up to five minuets before the next round starts and you can respawn. This is really where the game drags. Watching someone else run around looking for that one person on the enemy team so you can win the round is just mind-bendingly boring. Thankfully I had my PSP with me and could play that when I died.

Bugs: I didn't really encounter to many bugs when playing. In fact, I only encountered one, twice. The next round would start and, but only 4 people would spawn. So i was stuck watching an entire round and didn't even get to play. This bug happened twice in one game of 16v16. I'm not mad, it's a beta. Bugs are suppose to happen. That's what a beta's for.

Overall: The game is fun, but lacking. There wasn't really much difference in the weapons, an ACR felt like an AK103 felt like a Famas felt like a Scar and the balancing could be a problem in the real game. My biggest concern is that if the real game doesn't have a respawn allowed DTM it's not going to reach levels of success that it has the potential to. Only the Hardcore gamers are really going to find enjoyment in this game.

FINAL: 7.5/10 C+

(Look for my next blog post: Death of video game journalism on April 24th. I'm going to release statistics about the number of Troll, or flamebait articles, on N4G, compared to real journalism.)