Vision and Sound

Graphics

I’ll admit it. We are getting spoiled. 3D graphics with various filtering, fog effects, lighting effects -- that doesn’t really impress us much. Our expectations of graphics clearly follow Moore’s law. While console systems used to be excluded from this scrutiny, the advent of supercomputing consoles has changed all that.


The human figures are fairly realistic with anonymous faces, but very believable body movements. When the SEALs crouch or crawl across the terrain, it looks like you would expect it to look. Gently maneuver the analog stick and the player adroitly sneaks up on the enemy and around corners. The way the players hold their weapons and switch weapons is also very realistic. That said, the textures are not as high resolution as in PC games.

They can't shoot you if they don't see you

Backgrounds are well done, but a bit redundant due to the low texture sizes. There is very controlled popup with the use of fog effects. Lighting is generally previous generation, with nothing like what we have seen in Halo. If I had to draw a comparison, I would say the graphics are very similar to what we have seen in Rainbow Six or Rouge Spear but with better animation.

Hope you've got polarized glasses

There is just not as much eye candy as in Halo. With Halo, you would blow things up just for fun. SOCOM’s graphics are designed to be functional, not gimmicky. They focus on highlighting the movement of the characters and the physical interaction with the environment.

Thudda-thudda-dead

Pre-rendered cut scenes look great and are reminiscent of what we have seen with Metal Gear Solid 2. The CG characters themselves aren’t the best quality, but the camera work makes up for it. Also on the disc is a US Navy SEAL documentary, similar to what you’ve seen on the Discovery Channel. It is worth mentioning that there is no slowdown with SOCOM as there is with Halo.

Audio

The SOCOM box has the Dolby Pro-Logic II logo on it, meaning that it is a 2-channel source that was encoded in anticipation for Dolby Pro-Logic II decoding. This isn’t as good as games that have a discrete 5.1 DTS source. That said, the sound works well for the game. The background music is used sparingly with an occasional crescendo of music when something significant occurs. For the most part the soundtrack remains reserved, composed mostly of ambient noises and generally non-descript music. This actually works great as the sound effects are top-notch. Weapon sounds are recorded with reasonable amounts of subwoofer data, and if you are too close to a grenade when it goes off, you can only hear a high-pitched ringing tone for a short amount of time. This game is clearly more about business than show. Surround effects work well in controlling ambient sounds, but aren’t that good with helping you localize where the enemy is. For some reason, that seems to work better in multiplayer.

A unique feature is the integration of the headset into the game. Commands from headquarters or your other SEALs are directed only to the headset and not to your main speakers. This nice touch helps to clarify where the voices are coming from and gets you more involved in the game.

Voice recognition

Commands are generally composed of three parts: who, what, and where. Basically you call out to either Bravo group or Able, tell them what you want them to do, and then tell them where you want it to happen. Examples would be “Bravo, run to, crosshairs,” or “Team, follow me.” The great thing about this is that you do not need to pause between each part of the command. You can speak with normal pacing and rhythm. Commands are initiated by pressing and holding down the circle button while speaking. There are times when you may need to repeat yourself because you were speaking too softly or not clearly, but this can be done quickly. In addition to talking to the computer, you can also talk to your human teammates when playing online.

I feel that the voice commands add to the game play instead of making it more cumbersome. This is a technology that can make its way into many other games with the potential for increasing the interactivity of our games. To be honest, I was rather pleasantly surprised at how well the voice commands worked.