Mike Benner: Almost Accurate Tactical Strike

Almost Accurate Tactical Strike

Dec 17 by Michael Benner

So with the punishing amount of travel I have had lately I picked up a few games for the PSP. The one I want to talk about today (also the one to consume most of my airtime) is Socom Navy Seals Tactical Strike.

This game takes a departure from 2 things previous PSP Socom titles have had. First is the lack of a Playstation 2 (or my hopes PS3) title that has Cross Talk objectives and secondly is the first/third person shooter aspect. This is a big change and a risky one that I was excited to see.

The games almost puts you in a more tactical mission planning role, with much less on the emphasis of you controlling the actions of the men. This is a welcome change for me on the PSP as the lack of a second analog stick makes FPS a little clumsy. This was pulled off ALMOST perfectly. If it weren't for the navigation system it would have been perfect. The fact that your camera zooms all over while you are positioning the waypoint for your team can be distracting and actually gave me a headache after an hour or so.

The actions are dictated through the different buttons pulling up option menus. I had some success using individual characters sequentially, as well as, giving the whole team the same command. But the game really opened up when I started using the "On My Signal" command and setup actual routines. One character would snipe, another breach, a third through smoke and a fourth lay down cover fire. Things really started moving the more I used it.

Also, I liked the ability to "power up" my characters and tailor their abilities to how I was using them. This became a moot point around mission 6 or 7 when they were all maxed out, but was nice up until then.

All in all, I thought it was a great game and will become a permanent addition to my travel case (replacing Every Extend Extra) and is a welcome change of pace. I recommend anyone want some skirmish level RTS to check this out.