SOCOM 4

With the sudden announcement of SOCOM 4 for the Playstation 3, I suddenly find myself with old wounds being reopened. These wounds, caused by the train-wreck of a game SOCOM: Confrontation developed by Slant 6 (instead of SOCOM creators Zipper), were in fact pretty deep.

SOCOM: Confrontation appeared at my local store from out of nowhere. I recall being aware that a SOCOM game was in the works for the PS3, however i was under the impression it's release date wasn't anytime soon. I was shocked to find the game on the shelf as well as shocked at the apparent lack of warning from the video gaming press (i'm willing to meet everyone half way on this point, there's a chance i simply didn't notice any press on the release)... and most importantly there were NO reviews of the title before it's release.

I was not about to let any of this bother me, because after all, this was SOCOM! A Playstation franchise that's an automatic buy for MANY people. So i proceeded to pick up 2 copies with the premium Sony Blue Tooth mic - one for myself and one to surprise a friend for his birthday. That's a $120 blind buy. Based on the SOCOM name alone.

That first night of it's release i was unable to actually try the game - the servers were simply overloaded. The 2nd night i actually managed to get into a game... and thus began a long road of broken game play, server instability, glitches, and many times - the inability to actually get into a game. Slant 6 promised patches - which never seemed to fix as many issues as promised, and always introduced NEW issues. Long story short - S:C was released 10/14/2008 and it's STILL broken. To add insult to injury, Sony and Slant 6 released a map pack (timed with yet another patch) for $15.

Good luck with that Slant 6.

So now, much to my surprise, Sony has announced SOCOM 4, and it's under development by Zipper (the team responsible for creating the first bunch of SOCOM games and building up all the good will for the franchise).

Look, SOCOM 4 will sell like crazy on it's name alone. There is a small percentage of SOCOM fans who claim S:C is a great game. But i am not one of them. SOCOM 4 will not be a title i will purchase after the hell that was S:C. I am fully aware that one sale won't make a difference one way or another, but whatever, I'm done with SOCOM.

(HOWEVER - I'd be more than happy to do a 1:1 trade of S:C for a SOCOM 4 disk. You shipped me a broken game that still doesn't work, how about you replace it with a working game?)