SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Tactical Strike

Tactical Strike is the most unusual spin-off in the entire SOCOM series. While every other entry was built around directly controlling a single soldier from a third-person perspective, Tactical Strike for the PlayStation Portable abandoned the classic action shooter and turned into a top-down tactical strategy game, where the player doesn't control a single character but issues orders to the entire unit at once from a bird's-eye view over the battlefield, similar to command-style games on PC.

The player places points of interest on the map and sets routes along which the SEAL units move and attack in real time, with the option to pause the game at any moment and issue new orders – a system much closer to the real-time tactics genre than the typical action shooters the SOCOM brand had been associated with among console players up to that point. This approach was a response to the PSP's technical limitations, which didn't allow for the kind of comfortable analog aiming a classic home console gamepad with a second stick offered, and the developers chose an entirely different way of playing instead of a compromised control scheme, one better suited to short play sessions on the go and control via a single analog element. Story-wise, the game loosely continues the conflict from previous entries, but plays out on a much smaller and clearer scale than the sprawling campaigns on PlayStation 2, with missions built for a few dozen minutes rather than long evening sessions – which fit well with how people actually used the PSP at the time, while traveling or during short breaks between other obligations.

Why play it: Tactical Strike is interesting more as a curiosity within the brand than as a typical SOCOM entry – it will appeal to players drawn to tactical unit command from a bird's-eye view, curious how a military console series fared in the transition to a more turn-based, strategic genre on a handheld, where it competed against a completely different pool of games than on home consoles.