So far I play SOCOM for few days now. And I am freaking amazed seems SOCOM is most realistic next gen shooter out there!!! This is no COD4, you run and shoot don't think you going to hit anything. So far the main aspect of warfare seems to be right on, you need to stop and shoot to be most accurate, but sometimes you may get lucky when you move a bit and shoot but slowly. I love how the Motion Controls are incorporated in game. When you move behind a cover, you can use the tilt action to move side to side, or get lower or higher behind a cover. I like you can just pop out from a cover just a bit with tilt action so you don't expose entire body out and still be able to shoot. When you are next to a wall, you're weapon goes down, that I love, in other action games, you're guns poke through walls, and you can still shoot, in this one you need to either move to the side or TILT to the side to stick out a weapon. So the controlls and scheme mechanics of the game are RIGHT ON!!
SOUND for guns, music, mic talk, is just amazing. And well done,you can hear enemy talking over the mic, and with 5.1, you can pin point exact location just like in real life, in small allies there are ECHOS! just amazing. I remeber playing on a server with only few people, was sniping, one of my buddies sneak behind me and reloaded his weapon, I was thinking by brother bought a gun and reloaded it behind me!! I mean thats how good of a sound it is, in other games you can hear reload sounds and are just off, I am mentioning this because of the attention to sound detain and realism.
Graphics, they seem fine but seems like there are many low res skins. I think since the BETA is HUGE, 1.5 gigs, and only offers one map with two variations, seems like they wanted to give you beta with low res skins so that download would be smaller. So i can imagine that graphics will change a bit and more sharper looking with DISC version comes out.
Guns feel like they should feel. AK-47 is really really powerful but really inaccurate in auto fire mode, yet small SMG are really accurate but do not offer the power punch and accuracy in long ranges. I know many games does that, but this game has a RIGHT feeling to it, if you play it you will know it.
People on my friends list told me there will be a LOT of lag, they somehow got beta before me, so I was bit scared that game will be laggy and unplayable. My first few servers were 4 vs 4, Only lag I get is that there is a split seconds delay for everyone from time to time, but its rare, or at least once a game. After a while, I went to 32 people server, same thing but its only happens once or twice a game. It is very playable online, NO BAD lag, only worst lag I had was some guy was jumping really bad from screen to screen, but that was hiss connection speed since everyone could see him. Already there are hundreds of servers, just amazed its only beta and so many people play it as well a lot of clan warfare is happening.
Do not expect to run and gun at the same time and get 5 kills, or even one kill.
So far for me socom gets 9/10 since.