Not only can you kill people by shooting or blowing them up, but also by running opponents over in a Hummer while driving through a school zone.

Socom 3: US Navy Seal

Playstation

Suggested $49.95

“SOCOM: Navy Seal” games have been the biggest successes for Sony online since its launch. Tens of thousands of players are online every night.

When I heard that “SOCOM 3” would focus more on the one-player game, I was declaring shenanigans against those evil game developers.

Once I got the game, I could see the focusing on the one-player mode was a bunch of BS. Again, the game is all about the multiplayer online experience and how they brought that to the next level.

The best new feature in both single and multiplayer is the addition of vehicles to the SOCOM universe. Not only can you kill people by shooting or blowing them up, but also by running opponents over in a Hummer while driving through a school zone.

The Seals get an assortment of dune buggies, Hummers, tanks and boats, while terrorists have trucks, tanks and speedboats. Each vehicle has some mounted weapon and spots for other passengers.

Because of the addition of vehicles, the online game maps are huge. It is rare that a match finishes with one side being completely dead. The team with more players in the end wins the five-minute match.

The guys from development also threw two new types of matches into the online warfare: Convoy and Control.

In a Convoy mission, the terrorist team tries to take a convoy of vehicles to pick up crates of either weapons or bananas. They proceed to the extraction point. The Seal team tries to stop them by destroying the trucks that carry the crates.

In Control matches, the map has a certain number of locations and each team has to compete to secure locations the fastest. This creates an interesting point because if neither team controls all locations, the team with the most wins.

So what is all that talk about the game focusing on the one player? Well, in this SOCOM game, unlocking the best costumes is not the only thing completing the one-player game gets you. The best weapons are also unlocked by completing one-player mode in different difficulties.

SOCOM has also put a lot of effort into stopping players from cheating, being offensive or harassing others online. Now to be registered online (in other words, move up in rank and keep track of statistics), a player must fill out an online form and submit evidence of this via a credit card.

The card is only used to verify the information a player gave — no money is ever charged. A disadvantage to this system is that it keeps younger players from being able to register their profiles.

So what if a player is caught or turned in breaking SOCOM’s list of online rules? That character and credit card are banned from the game for life. No second chance here.

Only a player with a wallet full of credit cards can be a true rule breaker.

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