Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Solid"

Graphics - 7
Graphics were good. No strangely flopping bodies or pixelated textures. Nothing amazing but I'd still say they were better than an average game.

Sound - 6
Rather average sound, not too much to stick out.

Story - 7
Very typical story line, but there's a couple major twists to keep it interesting. However, it has a quite abrupt ending.

Gameplay - 9
Third Person Shooter game. It's great to use stealth to move around enemies without them seeing you, and it's awesome to get the stealth kills. Also I love the fact that you can order your team around, tell them where to go, who to shoot etc. It's also nice that you can cling to cover.

Replay Value - 8
It's a good game, quite fun. I played it through twice, it was still pretty fun the 2nd time around. There is also 2 different endings if you'd care to watch both of them.

Multiplayer - 7
Large player matches, up to 32 players. Unlockable weapon customizations as you level up and typical game modes. But you never have to wait for a match to start, you can always jump right into the action. And there's plenty of weapons & attachments to choose from. The maps were good: big and plenty of stuff to take cover behind. It's a good game to play to get away from the run-and-gun madness of Call of Duty.

Pros: Great gameplay, has some replay value. Decent graphics. The game is also compatable with PlayStation Move (which I don't have), but it's a nice Pro for anybody out there who does have it.
Cons: I miss the serious, realisticness of the old SOCOM games for PS2. There was less stealth than I would have liked.
Trophy Difficulty: 6
Completing the game on Elite was crazy but the other trophies weren't bad.

Overall - 7.5
Not the greatest ending but the gameplay was great and there was a decent storyline. I enjoyed it anyway; enough to play through it again. Multiplayer is fun, it's just not anything over the top. Overall SOCOM 4 is a solid game. Worth the buy.