SOCOM: Combined Assault -- Initial Impression.

I spent hundreds of hours playing SOCOM and SOCOM 2 online. The online versus gameplay was great for the PlayStation 2. It was the best thing the system had going as far as online was concerned. The offline game was decent fun, but filled with glitchy artificial intelligence. SOCOM three came along and made the offline game the most playable and fun it had been, and attempted to minimize the retarded AI. It couldn't hide all the retardation but it was a vast improvement over the previous titles. The strange thing was, the people I played the series with and myself didn't really care for the online game of SOCOM 3. We might have spent twenty hours with it in total. It was just off-putting. So here we are with SOCOM: Combined Assault. The game isn't truly the next game in the series, it isn't SOCOM 4. That's reserved for the PlayStation 3 debut. It's more of a stand alone expansion pack than anything. It has an offline mode, and it has the online versus of SOCOM 3, but they've added a new wrinkle that should help make the old new again. They've finally allowed for online co-op gameplay through the normally offline single-player campaign. Instead of having to deal with your shitty AI teammates against the glitchy AI enemies, you now get to take them on with real people. Magus and I went on last night just to sort of get our feet wet and fiddle around. We won't really begin playing until later on tonight when ZBo can join the fun. We played through the first two missions. A few things were initially apparent. It's SOCOM ugly. SOCOM has never been a pretty game, and Combined Assault isn't going to change that. Now that next generation is finally and officially current generation, the last generation PS2 games are looking especially dire. Secondly, the enemy AI is still retarded. However, the game is clearly going to be fun. It does work. And the co-op aspect does indeed breathe new life into what was old. Another thing is still very clear, and that is Sony's unstructured online format sucks. Zipper Interactive's online front end is miserable. The game forces you to patch before you can sign on. No problem. It asks if you want to download the patch without telling you how much space you'll need on the actual card. So you go through the download and find out you don't have enough space because you need three-thousand freaking blocks free. So you have to go out of the game to delete all those hard earned saves withunlockables opened from your card. You get back on, you trudge through all the damn screens they won't let you skip. You get through their crappy DNAS system. You patch. You restart, you trudge through it all again. You get on and you finally get to play. Granted, you only have to do it once, but it's truly a pain in the ass. I am not looking forward to playing games online with the PlayStation 3.