SOCOM: Confrontation Beta

I was lucky enough to snag a beta code from the local Gamestop. The code came on the back of a card that you had to scratch to reveal it. It was kind of like those scratch and win tickets from the gas station except I knew I already won.

Once I finally downloaded and installed the game, the first thing I did was customized my character. There's a character customization for two factions you can play as, commandos and mercenaries.

The only unique thing about the customization was what you can do to the head. The body and legs can only switch armor types between light, medium, and heavy. There's no styles to choose from like in Rainbow 6 Vegas.

The head portion however, has more features, You can pick a face to match your ethnicity, choose facial hair, have scars, and face paint. There's also the optional head gear you can choose from. They have beanies to hats to helmets and different eyewear.

There were some things that I noticed that were greyed out. They were not available until I started a clan. Once I made a clan, you can add a mic/headset and a mask. Think they were called baclava or something like that. It also seemed that additional helmets were available as well. I don't know at this point if you have to make a clan to get additional headgear. You might actually could just join a clan for it to be available. Otherwise, that wouldn't seem to fair.

Once I was finally done customizing, I decided to try to get in a match while the rest of the 6Cent crew was downloading the beta. Please keep in mind that this is in beta. There will be problems. It took me almost five minutes to join my first match. I though my PS3 froze while waiting. When I finally got in, the game felt pretty smooth. It didn't seem like I was experiencing any lag.

My first match went like this... headshot. owned, naded, headshot, owned and pwned. No. I was not doing that... that's how I was being killed. I had never played a multiplayer SOCOM game before and I have only played maybe half way through the first SOCOM game.

So I finally decided to open the options and see what the controls were like. Movement and firing were like any other FPS now a days, but everything else wasn't. Maybe I'm just too used to Call of Duty 4, but it took me a while to adjust to how you zoom or scope. To zoom in or out, you had to press up or down on the D-pad.

Two things I thought were unique was being able to switch views to the left or right side of over your shoulder and the SIXAXIS feature. If you are behind a wall, you can tilt the controller to peak around the corner of the wall.

So far, gameplay has been pretty fun... if you can get into a game. The rest of the experience seemed to be problematic, at least for me anyways. The problems I've had were long load times to join a match, sometimes I had to quit of the game because it took so long, and the friend invite seems to be broken or something. Me and the rest of the crew received invite notices, but then the message wasn't there when we looked.

I really hope all or most of these problems can be fixed by the time the game is released. Is this what we get for not paying for an online service? Hey, at least I'm still grateful for not having to pay to play online.

Stay tuned... we all will probably post our adventures in the beta.

- Smoof

UPDATE: It seems that Slant Six has been listening to our cries. This morning they released a patch (1.10) that corrects some of the issues that have been plaguing the beta for a couple of days, most noticeably "long loading times". I booted up my PS3 when I got home, welcomed by the patch, which I proceeded to download and install. I can say, first hand, that the patch really did the trick. Character customization still is kind of clunky, but getting into a game is quick (1-2 minutes) compared to the dreadful 7-15 minutes. I tip my hat off to Slant Six for making a prompt fix. Just remember kids, we are playing a beta, so this is expected.

-Maverick