SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation Release Date [SOCOM]

If you think Quarantine looks nice, hit the jump for Crossroads - definitely my favorite of the two.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing. A developer doesn't always have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to hardcore shooters, and SOCOM is about as hardcore as they come.

The team did talk up a few of the changes coming to this latest iteration while they were showing SOCOM Confrontation off during last Friday's SCEA Pre-E3 Judges Day held by Sony in Hollywood.

In SOCOM Confrontation, you can now fully customize your character, tweaking the look of your character head to toe, with the type of special force unit a gamer chooses providing them access to different bits of customizable gear. Customization includes the ability to add armor to your character, though the more body armor you wear the slower they move.

Players can now sprint in game. Running, something that long ago became a mainstay of most shooters, has somehow never shown up in SOCOM titles before. Now that it's in the game, I'm not super impressed with the way it's being implemented, mostly because it doesn't allow you to change directions as you run. It's an odd choice, one that seems to indicates that Slant Six isn't really behind adding sprinting to the game.

The biggest change to actual SOCOM game play would have to be Slant Six Games' use of the Sixaxis motion controls in the game. While you're never forced to use them, you can use tilting and up-and-down motions to go prone, squat or lean. Leaning with the Sixaxis took a little getting used to, but seemed to work well. It was a little unsettling that players don't lock to cover, as with most games that use a cover system, but the end result felt far more organic, and, I suspect, true to life.

These few changes, Sixaxis controls, character customization and running, are so slight that they're not really noticeable. Instead the chief focus of the team, it seems, is to create a next-gen version of the popular PlayStation franchise that emphasizes graphics over any significant shift in gameplay.

And the graphics are a significant step up from the PS2 entries in the series. They don't however leave other PlayStation 3 titles in the dust; instead they seem to be about on par with some of the better titles I've seen hitting the console recently.

The thirty minutes I spent with SOCOM Confrontation was liquid fast, interrupted only occasionally by in-progress bugs. The map I played on, a next-gen version of classic "Crossroads," is as deep as I remember it, with the ability to go through most doors, access most rooftops, and create choke points by blowing select access points. The map is packed with nuance, lots of tiny little details that breath life into it.

But most of the changes I noticed on the map and in the game were cosmetic, changes to the look and, perhaps, the depth of the game, but nothing that really changes the way you play the game, for good or bad.

I think this, coupled with the fact that SOCOM Confrontation is online, multiplayer only, will feel more like a title meant to tide SOCOM fans over until the next full installment hits, rather then quench their thirst for some Playstation 3 SOCOM gaming.

Check out the jump for details on some of the screens taking from the Crossroads and Urban Wasteland maps. I can't wait till this game hits, looks like it's going to be a total blast.

On the Crossroads map:

Three on one? All’s fair in love and war.

I’m a huge fan of architecture and the way cities look. I took a trip to New York City a couple weeks ago and came home with more pictures of random buildings and streets than I did of the actual thing I went there to see.

So, there’s a lot for me to like in this one screen. The way that the tile gives way to basic dirt, the street lamps, and the brick work are all pushing my buttons over here. It’s pretty cool, isn’t it?

Do you see that lion in the background, just to the left of center?

If you wanted to, you could travel all the way over there. Same thing with the tall building in the center, and the rooftops to the left, front, and center.

Two more bits. First, if you have a proper weapon, you can snipe from this position and pick people off from across the map. Second, do you see the birds flying in the air? You can shoot them. We don’t encourage that sort of thing, and you’re really better off shooting at the enemy, but hey... you can shoot them.

This is an image from the same angle as the post from the other day, but a bit lower to the ground and more detailed. You can see some things that were blocked or covered before. The bicycle, the garbage bags (there are two), and the fuel can, for example. There’s even a transformer on the electrical tower.

For those of you who don’t speak French, “Bain pour hommes" translates to, “Men’s Bath.”

On the Urban Wasteland map:

This is a shot from Urban Wasteland. We can get a good look at the wrecked building, and can probably figure out some decent working strategies for this specific point. There are pretty clearly four levels at work here— the beginning of the stairs (off-screen), the first landing, the second landing (off-screen to the left and top), and then the walkway in the top right.

It seems like it’d be pretty easy to pick people off from any level of the staircase, which means that you’ve got to stay on your toes when ascending or descending. The real question is what’s in the rooms that the staircase comes from and goes to?

SOCOM Confrontation Marching Out on September 16 [1UP]

* Navy Sea, Air, and Land (SEALs, United States)
* Special Air Service (SAS, United Kingdom)
* Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK, Germany)
* Unidad de Operaciones Especiales (UOE, Spain)
* 1er Régiment de Parachutistes d'Infanterie de Marine (1er RPIMa, France)

Interesting way to try and push gamers to team up more permanently.

SOCOM Confrontation Special Forces Unveiled [1Up]

While talking to SCEA Marketing Maven Peter Dille earlier this month, we slipped onto the topic of SOCOM Confrontations, the online only PS3 shooter that will be sold as a downloadable title in the Sony store. I told him I was surprised that such a strong franchise would make its Playstation 3 debut in a form that didn't include a single-player campaign. Dille said Confrontation was a chance for the developers to focus on a specific type of play for a specific type of player and that it wouldn't be the only SOCOM game coming to the PS3.

"In the case of SOCOM: Confrontation, the SOCOM franchise has been around for awhile and (the developers) were focused on a style of play that hasn't been tapped yet," Dille said. "I don't think people should conclude that it will be the be all and end all of the SOCOM franchise."

The idea that SOCOM 4 or something like it will be coming to the Playstation 3 is sort of a no-brainer, but it does the heart good to hear that coming straight from SCEA's mouth. Brian Crecente

By: Brian Crecente

The Xbox Live Arcade wasn't just what helped define the Xbox 360, the Xbox 360 defined what gamers and developers thought of downloadable titles.

They were, according to the 360, smaller, less fully featured games, sometimes retro titles, that sold for much less than a full game. And for the most part Nintendo followed suit when their Wii came to market.

But Sony had a different idea in mind, and now they have an uphill battle as they try to redefine what downloadable games mean to both the people who play the games and those who make them.

"The assumptions you laid out are correct," Peter Dille, Sony Computer Entertainment's Senior Vice President of Marketing, told me in a recent interview. "Because Live has been around for awhile people assumed that Sony would create a service that has checked the box in every case, if Microsoft is doing something we will too, but we are doing a lot of things differently. "

Chief among them is what sorts of games make it to the Playstation Store. While the store is already home to the sorts of demos and short-play experience games that you find on the 360's Arcade, soon it will also be home to a pair of titles that will be instrumental in Sony's battle to reshape how people think of downloadable games.

"Live Arcade offers something for people who want a certain thing," Dille said. "But a lot of the products you have seen on arcade are 'been there, done that', some feel like PC shareware practically. Our strategy was to develop games specifically for the PS3 that would show off our console."

"The games you play via Live Arcade, are those really next gen games? We are using an online distribution network in a very different way, we are not delivering yesterday's games. Online can be many things, but when it is used as a distribution vehicle it shouldn't change the game design."

While you could argue that games like Blast Factor, which plays in 1080p, and flOw, which supports the SIXAXIS motion controls, aren't really that different than games like Geometry Wars Retro Evolved, that argument starts to fall apart when you look at the Playstation Store's upcoming line-up which includes Warhawk, SOCOM: Confrontation and Pain.

In Pain, gamers have to launch a character imbued with rag-doll physics into a cityscape where they inflict damage to both the environment and the person they've just launched from a giant slingshot. While the basic game seems to include enough features to give it quite a bit of life, developer Idol Minds plans to release periodic content for the game to expand both how and where you play the game.

"Pain shows off the Playstation 3 and lends itself to episodic content delivery," Dille said.

To me, Pain represents perhaps a half step forward in online distributed console games, but Warhawk and SOCOM, they represent a leap. Both games promise to feature robust online environments, large multiplayer gatherings and both the graphics and mechanics of a game you'd expect to find sitting on a store shelf, rather than available for download from an online store. But when news first hit that Warhawk was going to be a downloadable game, most gamers seemed to view that as a step down for the title.

"We didn't make any announcement about Warhawk, all of these expectations were based on rumor or innuendo," Dille said. "We clarified our strategy at Gamer's Day."

Not only did they confirm that Warhawk would be an online-only downloadable title, but they also unveiled another interesting twist on Sony's take on Playstation Store games, that the game would also be available in stores. The Blu-Ray version will be a sort of Director's Cut or Special Edition of the Warhawk purchased online. It will come with a slew of behind the scenes and making of videos as well as a Bluetooth headset. While not yet finalized, Dille said the same will likely be true for SOCOM: Confrontation when it comes out.

"We want to use the network store to offer choice, if you don't want to leave your couch or get in your car you can just download it," Dille said. "We give people a choice and give our retail partners a chance to participate in Warhawk."

While I still think Sony faces an uphill battle in changing the notion of what a downloadable game is, Dille believes they've already won over gamers and developers.

"I think gamers got it before (last month's) Gamers Day," he said. "Six months in we had about one million seven hundred thousand users online," Dille said. Six million pieces of content have been downloaded since the launch. "We feel like people got it. We think our 44 percent attach rate will ramp up very, very quickly, as more people understand what we are doing and with the coming of Home."

"Internally, people are very, very excited about developing for the network. We are seeing a ton of great products coming for the PSN," he said. "I think there has been an education process. Our third party partners had certain assumptions about what we would offer on the PSN. They probably didn't start imagining what they could do. Did any of them imagine we would be developing games like flOw or Pain? Now we're evangelizing a different type of experience."

One that is different from the 360, in part, because of differences in the two consoles' hardware, Dille says.

"We happen to have a hard disk drive in every Playstation 3.," he said. Microsoft "is selling to a fragmented user base. We can talk to the developers and say there are no limitations on what you make for us."

And changing gamers' and developers' preconceived notions of what makes a downloadable title is just the beginning for Sony, their next big nut to crack is true episodic content.

"I don't think anyone has done episodic content in gaming well," Dille said. "Currently episodic content means delivering content periodically. Whether or not it has that story line is the missing ingredient. When you contrast that to things like TV with Lost and the Sopranos. I think as an industry we haven't tapped (episodic content) yet. We want to get people to stand around the water cooler and talk about games they way they talk about TV, 'Did you install the latest content of this game that explained a plot or cliff hanger?'"

"You have to separate a distribution vehicle from a game experience."

Of course, the down side is that five of those are for Sony's own MLB 07: The Show. The other two are for the stunning Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and SOE's port of Championship Sprint, which I can only assume indicates a May 31 release of the arcade racer.

Now, for the Weekly Bitching Update. There are new trailers for Folklore, LittleBigPlanet, Heavenly Sword, Lair and SOCOM Confrontation from Gamers Day that we PLAYSTATION 3 owners would just love to see on the Store, yet they're still not up. They should be. Maybe I'm just bitter about not getting into the Warhawk beta. Michael McWhertor

Sony Computer Entertainment of America this week unveiled a new SOCOM Navy Seals headed to the Playstation 3's online store. A trailer for SOCOM Confrontation, an online only game, was shown during SCEA's Gamers Day at their Santa Monica Studios.

The game will support up to 32 people and be sold both online and on a blu-ray disc. Gamers will be able to form clans in the game and customize their uniforms, the developers said. It will also feature a number of playable special forces units from around the world.

The game, due out this holiday, will be host to lots of online events and regularly scheduled tournaments, the developers said. Brian Crecente

SOCOM Confrontation
FACT SHEET

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America
Developer: Slant Six Games
Platform: PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3 ) computer entertainment system
Genre: 3rd Person Shooter (Online Only)
Players: Multi-player (32 players)
Launch Date: November 2007
Rating: ESRB M, PEGI 16+
OVERVIEW

Following its success as the number one online PlayStation 2 franchise,
SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs breaches onto the PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3 ) computer entertainment system in high-definition this holiday-season. SOCOM Confrontation delivers the ultimate next-generation online combat experience made possible by the power of PS3.

SOCOM Confrontation focuses on online play and the global community and clans that support it. With support for Tournaments, Clan Ladders, Leader Boards, this latest title in the multi-million unit selling franchise is exactly what SOCOM fans have been clamoring for. Additionally, players will be able to modify their appearance through facial and physical customization.

A global-scale experience, SOCOM Confrontation gives players the opportunity to battle against the best and brightest from the U.S., Europe and Asia.

SOCOM Confrontation deploys with five new North African themed maps, including a 32-player version of "Crossroads." Additional themed packs for SOCOM Confrontation will be made available for download via the PLAYSTATION Store.