Co-Op in SOCOM 4 allows up to five players to team up to take on individual missions that are set in the maps of the single player game. There’s no story here but players can “create” a campaign by choosing several maps, mission types, difficulty and enemy count and adding it to a queue of missions to play. The co-op mission types have players either capturing a few pieces of intel spread around and then uploading it to a computer or marking and killing enemy VIPs.
By far I had the most fun in co-op for SOCOM despite the lack of any story - the mode immediately reminded me of Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter’s co-op options that allowed players to take on enemies in quick scenarios. The matches though for SOCOM can take 15 to 20 minutes to complete, especially on the harder difficulties where players must communicate, call out targets and move with ease. The game made it almost a necessity to use smoke grenades to cover your approach to fallen teammates before revival and trust me - you’re going to die a lot on the hardest difficulty - the AI is relentless.
Co-Op allows players to drop in and out of play, so stringing together a series of 5 or 6 missions which might take an hour to complete won’t be ruined if one player decides to leave. Even when players are down they can control the camera and call out targets for their friends who are en route for survival. The game also seems to auto balance for the number of players active. All of these touches really made for a satisfying co-op experience, especially when you get with a group of guys using headsets and communicating.
Finally the game offers 3D support, something we weren’t able to test, as well as Move support with the Sharp Shooter. Using the Sharp Shooter worked well enough, but I still don’t think its an ideal control method - its simply a nice distraction or something that adds some replayability to the game
SOCOM 4 offers a complete feature set for any type of gamer - single player, versus and co-op. While the single player was a bit on the weak side for us, we greatly enjoyed both the versus and especially co-op gameplay. We hope to see further support from Zipper on the title - further adding to the 6 co-op maps. While the overall game may veer a bit from the SOCOM formula, which may turn the hardcore off, the core of whats there is still satisyfing enough.
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: SOCOM 4 will feature a 5 player co-op mode, though the details of it are unknown.
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.