Socom U.S. Navy Seal's: Combined Assault Review

SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Combined Assault for the Playstation 2 is not the first "SOCOM" game. Zipper Interactive has developed many SOCOM titles, even a couple for the PSP. It is a third-person tactical shooter and used to be very addictive and loads of fun. In the next few paragraphs I will be discussing the pros and cons of this game.

Combined Assault, for short, is in my opinion, the worst of the SOCOM games for the Playstation 2. It includes all of the online maps and weapons from SOCOM 3, and introduces 10 new online maps, plus co-op. Co-op is where you can play the single player campaign online with 3 other real people. You may be saying, "That sounds great! Why do you think the game is so bad?" Well, we will save the bad parts for later. In the next section, I will discuss a few good parts about the game.

To start off, the single player has greatly improved over SOCOM 3's single player. It is by far more fun, plus the enemy A.I. (artificial intelligence, or how smart they act) has become better. That is good, and the time I spent playing the single player was fun. I really enjoyed this part. Something else I liked was the "Instant Action." This is where you pick a level, a difficulty, a game type, and play. It adds a lot to the replay value. The graphics also seemed to be improved over SOCOM 3's, but still are nothing to brag about.

Now for the bad parts! My biggest complaint is the frame rate of online play. It often falls considerably, making it annoying, rather than fun, to play. You can also notice "slowdown" (where the frame rate drops) in the co-op game mode. I cannot stand frame rate problems. There is also no blood! Every SOCOM game on the Playstation 2 before Combined Assault has had blood to help indicate whether you hit an enemy. Now there is a white powder that is given off when you hit someone, and most of the times it's hard to determine if you hit them.

In addition to this, any SOCOM game requires communication. That is what the headset, or mic, is for. I would say a good 50% of the time when playing a game, the mics will cut out making it so you cannot talk to teammates. That is another huge issue that plagues this game. Along with dozens of other bugs (for example, when you fire one bullet from your gun, almost every time it sounds like you're firing two) this makes the game un-playable at times.

If I were you and were interested in Combined Assault, I would rent it first. This game has many problems, and unless a future update can fix them, it doesn't look like it will get any better.