I was fortunate to get picked as part of Sony's beta testing efforts for the first SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo game. My expectations - based on the awful FPS Coded Arms - were pretty low. But I have always been looking for that elusive 'great handheld shooter', so I was willing to give it a shot. I couldn't have been much more pleasantly surprised - the developers actually 'got it'; they knew what made a good shooter and worked around the limitations of the PSP to produce a game that was fun and playable. The game sold very well - just over a million copies as of the end of 2006 - so a sequel was a fairly easy prediction. Once again tasking Zipper Interactive with development duties, Sony has come up with a winner that has improved on every limitation of the original and keeps pace with the best looking games and best shooter controls on the PSP system.

Producing a shooter with good controls on the PSP is no simple task - even new release continues to struggle, with Medal of Honor: Heroes needing significant tweaking to produce the fast paced action familiar to fans of the PC and console versions. And the recent port of the Brothers In Arms shooter games has a terrible control set that seemed impossible to ever get adjusted to the point that it was comfortable. The original SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo had very good controls, but it was fairly easy to let the PSP do all of the aiming for you - which was particularly problematic in multiplayer matches. Too many online battles were filled with people who found decent hiding places and hammered repeatedly on the auto-aim button to find new targets and then quickly shoot them. That was the biggest overall complaint with the game - there were minor issues with graphics quality and occasional lag, but the game was solid as a single player and multiplayer experience. The sequel has taken all criticisms to heart and is better in every way than the original, producing a fun and challenging shooter that is a blast to play online or off.

Bravo 2 plays like a hybrid third person/first person shooter, and is effective in both modes; the seamless switching between modes pairs with a very well integrated free-look for fine aiming, which is particularly effective for using a sniper rifle at long distances. Let's start by digging into the controls - as has become fairly standard for PSP shooters, the analog stick is used to move your character around. But unlike some, moving left or right on the stick makes you turn - to strafe you hold the L button while moving. This is generally more limiting than the method used in Medal of Honor, but the game design takes it into account fully, so it never becomes an issue. The R shoulder button is the auto-aim trigger, but as mentioned this works much differently than in the original game. When you are within range of an enemy - in terms of both distance and field of view - you can lock onto them by holding the R button while firing. Tapping the L button switches between available targets. Most buttons serve more than one purpose - you issue tactical commands with a quick tap of the circle button or hold it to issue the context-appropriate command. It is a powerful and intuitive system that becomes immediately familiar and very useful in getting the best possible rank on a mission.

When you start a mission, you are given a set of objectives and rewards. There are two types of rewards - local influence and command equity. Command equity (CE) is your currency in the game - you can use it to buy supply drops and air strikes, as well as weapons and other items (but you really should never buy weapons in single player with CE … trust me on this one!) You gain CE by completing objectives - primary objectives gain the most CE, but secondary and bonus objectives can all add up to a considerable amount over the course of a few missions. Bonus objectives are ones not listed at the start of a mission - for example, you might be on a mission to take out a local militia leader and discover some generators to sabotage to hinder the militia's efforts. Finding and sabotaging a single generator gains you some CE, but getting all of the generators gives an even bigger boost. Local influence is gained by completing missions - but this varies by how much impact a particular mission has on the lives of local residents. Also, using non-lethal means of taking out enemies results in local influence rewards, since it shows that you are interested in more than just killing the population to achieve your goals. Increasing local influence gives you access to some pretty cool weapons - even some from the black market. Again, these really aren't worth buying, but some of them are cool and the overall ability to grab just about any weapon you want is a nice touch. I particularly liked the crossbow.

The mission structure in single player is another great feature - as you progress in an area you get campaign missions for each new location, and then as you complete them dynamic missions become available. These are smaller missions that earn you less CE and local influence, but can be quite a bit of fun. They use the same maps as the campaign missions, but the objectives are different and the placement of enemies around the map is changed. This can also be very helpful for learning the maps before heading into multiplayer sessions. At the end of a mission you are graded based on your stealth, objectives completed, accuracy and command usage. The challenge is to score as highly as possible in each area - but it isn't easy. The catch 'em all nature of the missions gives a feeling of nonlinearity and freedom, while also heaping on rewards in terms of experience and CE. Another reward you can obtain while completing missions is completing crosstalk objectives - these allow you to unlock items and characters for use on the PS2 game SOCOM: Combined Assault. Of course, there are objectives on the PS2 game that allow you to unlock objectives on the PSP - and you can simply transfer save files to pick up and play between versions.

This is not a 'run-n-gun' shooter, nor is it a strict tactical shooter - it falls somewhere in between, with relatively slow pacing that favors crouched movements and thinning enemies with a sniper rifle before sending in your squad mate to mop up the rest of the crowd. You are not meant to be a bullet-sponge just running through the open field - such behavior will get you dead fast. But the game does allow you to take a fairly large amount of hits before dying and features health kits to replenish yourself or your squad mate during the course of a mission. For example, once you have sent your buddy into harm's way, you can patch him up before ordering him to scope out the next room. Damage indicators show the direction of incoming fire, which can be extremely helpful in heavy vegetation or dense buildings. Of course you still have to locate them, since the game got rid of the 'auto-hunt' portion of auto-aim. I know I have mentioned that before - but it is impossible to overstate the positive impact this has had on gameplay.

It can be hard to find enemies, despite the improvement in the graphics - too many of the areas are dark and indistinct, particularly indoors. Fortunately, most of the game takes place outdoors, which shows definite signs of improvement. The environments look crisper and the weather effects are more realistic. Particularly well done are the models and animations for the allied and enemy characters - it is no longer indistinct graphics making enemies invisible, but a lack of variety in the color scheme in some locations. Something that surprised me in the first game was the music - the soundtrack didn't leave you humming the tunes, but it was wonderfully sweeping and evocative stuff that you'd expect from a story-based shooter rather than a multiplayer focused game. Beyond the still excellent music, the environmental sounds have definitely improved. Your squad mate still chatters and lets loose some wisecracks now and then, and the contact at command plays wonderfully - her exasperated chiding when you fail a mission is quite convincing (and somewhat humiliating). The weapon sounds are very well done and the overall sound density really shows off the quality of the PSP sound system.

I have had steam coming out of my ears on many occasions because of multiplayer implementations in PSP games - either a game that cries out for Internet multiplayer only has local play, or games with Internet multiplayer implement it in such a ham-handed way as not to be worth playing. SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 2 feels like it was built from the ground up to excel at Internet multiplayer. Your profile is saved between single player and multiplayer, finding games is very easy, and there is even a friends list to help you locate games with people you actually want to play with! Headsets are once again supported, which is a great benefit for playing in team modes. Finding a game is also very easy - I have never been online and found fewer than 3000 players engaged in battle somewhere around the world. Performance is also typically very good - I never once got disconnected and only rarely experienced any lag in games containing a full complement of 16 players!

This all sounds pretty great, right - so what is the catch? If you have read any of my PSP reviews, you know that I typically launch fairly quickly into a raging litany of 'controls, camera and load times'. I commented on the controls - only to say that they are quite good - mind you, this comes with the typical 'for a handheld shooter'. But the gameplay has been very well optimized for the control set, so you don't wander around thinking "if only I could play this with a keyboard and mouse." The camera is a non-issue because of the first person/third person perspective. Unlike typical third person action games with variable camera angles, Bravo 2 has an over-the-shoulder perspective that keeps you in control at all times without ever compromising the view. It just works. I would categorize the load times as acceptable - you aren't going to think you are playing a GBA or DS game, as there is plenty of UMD access going on and you still have to wait for missions to begin, but you will never sit for frustrated minutes watching load screen after load screen. Perhaps the longest wait times are when leaving a multiplayer game to get back to campaign mode - each multiplayer lobby has a wait time, and then the game needs to reload the main game. But even that is tolerable - you will occasionally wish for an "I just want to play single player now" button, but it is a minor hassle.

SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 2 is a great game, and more importantly it knows what kind of game it wants to be; it's not trying to be every game for every player - it's a mission-based, moderately-paced, thinly-plotted and multiplayer-focused shooter. And it hits that goal so well that it makes the shooter landscape for the PSP clear - if you are looking for a deep single player shooter experience, get Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror, but if you want great multiplayer grab this game and train up in single player before trying your luck online. Once you hit multiplayer you'll be hooked - the maps are solid, the weapons are balanced, and there are plenty of players of all skill levels out there to keep things challenging.

Reviewed by Michael Anderson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).