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GUIDES: SOCOM TACTICAL STRIKE Video Game Walkthrough (Brutal Legend STRATEGY GUIDE PSP)

I was lucky enough to receive some PSP review games in the mail just before going away for the long weekend.  One of which was Socom Tactical Strike.  It was a great way to get my gaming fix while removed from my consoles.  Tactical Strike is a completely new take on the now well established Socom franchise.  It is very much a strategy based game.  Not a shooter with some strategy thrown in, but rather a strategy game with some shooter thrown in.  Don’t read that as a negative, because it is a design choice that lends itself incredibly well to this title.

The game controls are simple, but have a great level of depth.  Imagine a game such as Ghost Recon, or Rainbow Six’s squad command system.  Only without controlling one guy and commanding the rest from him, you are commanding all four team mates as an external entity from the third person perspective.  You do not move them around directly, but order them to move to whatever location or perform certain actions much in the way that you would order your team mates in the console games mentioned above, with the “ghost” system showing you how your guys will stack up before sending them to their doom destination.  Considering the somewhat limited control scheme inherent to the PSP, this system works brilliantly.

You can control your squad as one unit, or you can split your team into two teams of two.  You can assign a target to individual team mates, two man squads, or your entire team and they will wait for your command before taking action.  You can order them to snipe, grenade, provide cover, hold a certain area, perform stealth kills, hold fire and fire at will.

 In addition you can order them to perform the usual door breaching, breach and clear commands, or combine them with the attack commands above.  For example, you can stack one team up against the door, and send your other team around the corner to the back of the same room.  They can then crack the glass distracting the bad guys inside.  You other team simultaneously gets the breach and clear command, and Bob’s your uncle.  That may sound complicated but it is quite simple in practice.  It may take a little bit of time to get used to the new controls, but that is due more to the huge departure from previous titles than any great complexity in the controls itself.

The game as a whole consists of nine missions which take place in a variety of terrain types (cities, jungles, docks, etc), each consisting of multiple objectives.  Though nine missions may not seem like a lot, each can easily take more than an hour to complete depending on your approach and the difficulty setting.  Don’t fear though, each level is broken into a number of chunks, and each objective is more like a mini-mission.  This is a great plus on a portable platform.

 Lastly, there is a myriad of customisation options available.  Before each mission you can outfit your team on a soldier per soldier basis.  As you play through the game, you unlock more weapons as well as the ability to upgrade your team.

 All in all, this is a brilliant title for the PSP and the developer (Slant Six) should be proud.  This is an invigorating new take on the Socom franchise that is perfectly suited for the handheld platform.  If you have been looking for a new game to take away with you on holiday or on your way to hell work then this is it.