SOCOM: Confrontation

SOCOM: Confrontation was the first entry in the popular tactical series for PlayStation 3, and also the first built as a purely online game without any single-player campaign. Instead of a classic story mode, it offers a set of team multiplayer modes in which two four-member squads face off in realistically portrayed firefights emphasizing tactics, cover, slower movement, and headset communication. The game continues the tradition of the series founded on PlayStation 2, but carries it into the new console generation, where the online connection is the main and only content of the game, not merely an add-on to a single-player mode.

Both development and launch were plagued by complications – after release, the game suffered from technical server problems, long loading times, and somewhat clunky controls, which developer Slant Six Games gradually addressed with a series of extensive patches over the following months. Nevertheless, the title gradually found a core of loyal players thanks to its slower, thoughtful tactical gameplay, which noticeably differed from the faster arcade shooters more popular on the market at the time. It featured an elaborate rank and equipment-unlocking system motivating players to return to online matches again and again, and the game was also among the first to support peripherals like a headset or the later-added special SOCOM Sharp Shooter controller.

As a purely network-based game with no campaign, bots, or AI, Confrontation was entirely dependent on active servers, which years later made it a hard-to-access title – as online services were gradually shut down, the vast majority of its content disappeared, since no offline alternative ever existed. This very trait makes Confrontation a typical, and by now somewhat cautionary, example of an entire generation of games built exclusively around online multiplayer.

Why play: SOCOM: Confrontation will appeal to players interested in the history of tactical shooters and in what the established series' risky transition to purely online multiplayer looked like on PS3. Today it makes sense mainly as a piece of genre history, not as a title with lasting standalone content to try.