This SOCOM game has to be up there with all of the best psp games, capturing a true to life experience, its quite simply
The menus in this game are presented exquisitely, conveying a military look anf feel. From the radio beeps when scrolling through options and a gun cocking sound when selecting weapons, its great to see this in a top-tier game, where it should really be as standard.
The single-player campaign (while i have not played through it all as yet) isn't reaaly what i expected. I'm not saying that it is numb-skullingly boring, but as Simon Cowell would say 'mediocre'. The campaign takes you throughout the planet, defeating whole rebel armies, y'know the save-the-world type game we all are used to seeing these days, so SOCOM dosen't break away from the norm.
What this game really shines at is its infrastructure method of play, it is simply genius, bringing console-quality online gaming to the handheld. You'll encounter the normal things with this, select a server, then select a game, run-of-the mill stuff. Gameplay holds up beautifully when your popping a cap in a new yorkers ass, virtually indentical to its offline brethren.
When you talk about graphics in this game, we encounter another Simon Cowell moment, on the whole they aren't amazing. The look and texture of you player is great, with its detail of everything your carrying. But when it comes to your enviroment, its a different story. Trees look like cardboard cut-outs and other features just look like a muddled mess. While this dosen't deter from your enjoyment of the game too badly, it just detracts from the overall quality of theis otherwise fantastic game.
What you really have to give to Zipper on the developement of this game is that they brought a near-PS2 SOCOM to the PSP. Virtually everything in this game impressed, notably the online aspect. For anyone who hates lock-on systems steer clear of this game. But anyone who is open to a game that holds a fresh experience, as Intel says, leap ahead to Fireteam Bravo.