If you were paying close attention to the internet last night, you might have noticed an explosion of silence, a colossal wave of nothingness that swept from one corner of the globe to the other. The epicentre of that great non-event was Sony’s announcement of SOCOM 4, an “all-new SOCOM coded from the ground up for PlayStation 3” in which you lead “an elite, five-man squad” armed with the “latest weaponry” into combat with an “army of rebel fighters” in the midst of “inhospitable jungles, crumbling city streets and urban ruins”. We think we’ve seen this movie before. The black dude dies, right?
We don’t have a particular problem with SOCOM in itself – the Americans quite like it, apparently, and we enjoyed the PSP versions – but we do have a problem with SOCOM when it’s the “surprise Sony sequel” lurking behind several days’ worth of PR cock-teasing. SOCOM, let’s be clear, is far from surprising. Perhaps Zipper Interactive’s new game will take the franchise to unimagined heights, but for the moment at least you’ll forgive us not getting all hot and bothered at the idea of exploding jeeps, glued-down haircuts and people yelling “GOLD TEAM” into earmikes. Bad Company 2′s out today, chaps. This gutsy militaristic shizzle is ten-a-penny.
This iteration's major new feature? Women with guns. Lara Croft says hi.
You know what isn’t ten-a-penny? Space dogfighting games. Non-combat-centric, third-person action-adventures. Old school Zelda killers. Sony’s back catalogue is stuffed with landmark IPs, elderly gems craving another lease of life on PS3. Here are a few of the names the publisher could and should have mentioned yesterday evening. (Bear in mind that we’re operating in the realm of wishful thinking here, and thus far, far away from any tedious commercial realities.)
Just another sleepy little village caught up in Save-The-World shenanigans.
Alundra
Long before the now defunct Clover Studios rattled Link’s cage with the wonderful Okami, Matrix Software was kicking the yelping little twerp into touch with the sumptuous, plainly derivative but masterful Alundra. Beneath its large, crisp sprites and layered backdrops dwells a surprisingly mature storyline – players step into the boots of a Releaser, entering people’s nightmares to cure them of demonically inflicted psychological maladies – and some cracking, level-wide puzzles (think teleportation pads and movable blocks, lanterns and ice pits). You can get it on PSN these days. No excuses. The sequel’s funnier, but more of a trial and error experience.
Satoru Iwata Video Interview - the late Nintendo president spoke with Kikizo in 2004 as 'Nintendo Revolution' loomed.
Kaz Hirai Video Interview - the first of Kikizo's interviews with the man who went on to become global head of Sony.
Ed Fries Video Interview - one of Xbox's founders discusses an epic journey from Excel to Xbox.
Yu Suzuki, the Kikizo Interview - we spend time with one of gaming's most revered creators.
Tetris - The Making of an Icon: Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Rogers reveal the fascinating story behind Tetris
Rare founders, Chris and Tim Stamper - their only interview? Genuinely 'rare' sit down with founders of the legendary studio.
The History of First-Person Shooters - a retrospective, from Maze War to Modern Warfare
Wow.. Are you kidding me??… this is the biggest news Playstation people have had since the launch of the PS3… Who gives a crap anout Alundra?… The PS3 is a gaming machine for serious, and hardcore gamers, socom gamers!… Tactial, Smart groups of people that win by not only being able to shoot with accuracy, but also defeat with tactical supremacy!… That is socom, that was playstation, that will be playstation in the fall 2010!
Go Zip.. Thank goodness the greatest game ever is back in the hands of the greatest developers ever.
SOCOM sucks and we all know it, the people who like it are probably the same people with a tattoo of I love my Mom on there arm.
It was totally underwhelming when they said this is the surprise game. Oh wow look another WAR game with dumb soldiers to appeal to dumb minded people who cant be arsed to actually join the army.
The simply fact is if the game industry carrys on with these war games or 3rd person shooters and rubbish then they might as well call it a day.
The games industry crashed once before because of the amount of shite that was out there and its heading that way again.
wow… whoever the ignorant person is who complains about a game with “dumb soldiers” needs some serious help. soldiers lay their life on the line while you play video games all day.
Who is this guy and has he ever picked up a controller and played a shooter. I have been playing PlayStation for over 10 years and i have never heard of any of the games he mentioned they all look like they are for six year olds.
Maybe open your mind and play something other then SHOOTER then.
g-police and colony wars ? can´t belive someone remembered about thoses 2 games.congratulations on the article
Mate, G-Police and Colony Wars are two of the best games ever on psone! There both owned by Sony and would be awesome to play this generation!!!
Nice to see some fellow Psygnosis fans out there
I love shooters, by the way, and having played MAG I’m sure Zipper will make something decent out of SOCOM 4, but I really don’t need to play another military FPS or 3PS this year. There are too many of the fricking things. Like pigeons in city centres.
Yeah pygnosis were great! just give me a space sim, Coloney Wars would be perfect and would look beautiful on PS3/Xbox!
I remember both of those games and thought I was the only one that wanted a sequel. Especially for Colony wars.
Oh, shut up!
It’s a great announcement, try being satisfied for ones, you lame bastards! There are other games to be announced as well, you might as well be happy with Socom 4. The alternative was not announcing anything before GDC. It’s like getting to open a present before christmas, maybe it’s not the thing you wanted most of all, but it’s still great.
Goddamn hypocrats.
you mustve never played socom if you called it a FPS…
My mistake
effin right. I’d rather see Demon’s Souls 2 or sequel to Siren. WTF is the point of socom if mag already there.
the reason why they are making socom 4 is because ppl were complaining about the graphical output of mag. they also realized that the bandwith from the ps3 could have been expanded to more than 256. prolly double that. so that means that they can push out mw2 graphics or better—- so imagine this: 256 ppl, mw2 graphics, battle fields destructable levels, and mag sized levels. ppl, this game will be biblical, aka epic.
ummm no, socom 4 and MAG went into production around the same time, Zipper has been making socom 4 for about 3 years now. socom 4 in no way is a response to the reaction to MAG.
This is ridiculous. I’ve never been a fan of the SOCOM games, but to call it an FPS or compare it to a COMPLETELY different game like MAG is just stupid.
SOCOM is a tactical 3PS where the focus is more on executing the perfect planned assault. I’ve seen far too many games like MW2 and MAG which are just a way for mindless gamers to get their daily quota of violence and it’s actually pretty refreshing to have that mixed up a bit.
For the record, I love FPS games, but there are far too many gamers who think that no other games even deserve to exist. I miss the good ol’ PS1 days with games like Tombi and Rollcage. They were fun…
“Wow.. Are you kidding me??… this is the biggest news Playstation people have had since the launch of the PS3… Who gives a crap anout Alundra?… ”
QFT. What a stupid article. MAG is amazing, and SOCOM was THE shooter franchise of the PS2. Now we get news that the REAL team behind SOCOM is going to make a game next year instead of that crappy SOCOM knockoff from last year, that’s HUGE news to FPS fans.
It’s comparable to when it was announced that IW was doing modern warfare 2 – fans were happy that the right people were doing it (of course they put out the most overrated online cheatfest ever, but that’s another story).
I don’t expect much from developers from now until E3. Why epic game announcments now when you can get all the press in June/July or whenever E3 is. All I know it is good to see that the SOCOM series is back into Zippers hands and not that travesty that Slant 6 games tried to pawn off as SOCOM Confrontation. If your expecting a Sly Cooper or Killzone 3 or some other PS3 hotness. It’ll probably be during or around E3. I actually thought it may be something to get me to check Home out again. I haven’t been there in a year.
Thank you for saying you want another Alundra game. I have wanted one for years. Plus get Victor Ireland to work on it too. Alundra 2 was alright but did not have the magic of the first.
I would also say yes to another Colony Wars and G-Police.
I would add to your list Jet Moto, Legend of Dragoon 2, Tomba!3, Arc the Lad, PaRappa the Rapper, Vib-Ribbon & a new Wild Arms.
Wow this is the worst list of sequels i have ever seen… How about these…
SYPHON FILTER? SSX? COOLBOARDERS? SPYRO? CRASH??
Don’t blame Sony. It was not they who hyped this, ffs.
I don’t know about you guys, but I played the hell out of SOCOM 3. A return to the development house that made SOCOM great is nothing but good news, especially after the sour taste of Confrontation.
Furthermore, while most of SOCOM’s heritage came from the multiplayer side, many still enjoyed the single player gameplay. The SOCOM community is fierce, loyal, and more than a little vocal when it comes to the things they like, and trust me when they say they like this.