While Microsoft - with the original Xbox and more recently on the Xbox 360 - has shown the entire world exactly what an online gaming service for consoles can and indeed should entail, Sony's online service on the PlayStation 2 has and likely always will play second fiddle to the almighty Friends List, chit-chattering, content downloading tyranny of Xbox Live. However, one title that went a long way in offering a far friendlier and more intimate online gaming experience on the PlayStation 2 was SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs, which came bundled with a headset that allowed players to talk tactics with online team mates. SOCOM proved insanely popular; so much so that it spawned a second and third iteration on the PS2 with a fourth currently in the works, along with SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo on the PSP, which is inarguably the handheld's most impressive online game to date and will likely remain so for a good while, along with being an entertaining and pleasingly robust package overall.

Fireteam Bravo's plot is the usual "terrorists scheming to overthrow a government" affair and, unless you're the sort of person who stalks the likes of Dale Brown and Tom Clancy on a frighteningly regular basis, will prove largely uninteresting to a lot of people. Still, it does intertwine with the plot of SOCOM 3: U.S. Navy SEALs on the PS2, which actually plays quite a big part in the gameplay of both games, but I'll shed more light on that a little later. You take control of a soldier codenamed Sandman and in the game's Campaign mode you're deployed on a total of fourteen missions in four areas the world (Chile, Morocco, South Asia and Poland) where a terrorist organisation is plotting the aforementioned overthrowing of a government - Chile in this case.

Before each mission you're presented with a briefing and a set of objectives, as well as various snippets of intelligence in the form of maps, reconnaissance photos and the like. On a few occasions it can help a bit to read through the plethora of intel you're presented with, but for the most part it's perfectly feasible to just skip it all and work out what you're supposed to be doing once you've been deployed. After the intel screens, you get to choose your various weapons and equipment, as well as what your partner, Lonestar, will be carrying. There's a pleasing amount of militaristic goodies on offer; a wide variety of sniper rifles, assault rifles and sub-machine guns, as well as grenades, suppressers and viewing scopes. There are three difficulty settings in Fireteam Bravo: Ensign (easy), Commander (normal) and Admiral (hard), although playing through the harder settings usually does little more than boost the amount of shots your enemies can take before biting the dust, while simultaneously limiting the endurance of Sandman and Lonestar. The missions themselves aren't particularly varied, as you spend the majority of your time gathering intel, clearing areas of enemy forces, stealthily following and/or rescuing key characters and blowing stuff up, or more often a combination of all of these. Nonetheless, they are entertaining and do become progressively challenging, especially on the harder difficulty settings.

So, overall, Fireteam Bravo plays almost identically to its PS2 brethren. The main difference, however, comes in the controls. As is the case with the majority of PSP shooters (whether they're adapted from PS2 games or not), the lack of a second analogue stick on the handheld poses a problem in formulating a user-friendly control scheme and Fireteam Bravo, for the most part, succeeds admirably in overcoming these limitations. Ordinarily the PSP's analogue stick is used to move Sandman forwards and backwards, aim up and down, as well as turn on the spot, all carried out from a third person perspective. Alternatively, to compensate for the lack of the second analogue stick, holding down the L button allows you to strafe (or sidestep, for those of you who don't speak videogame) rather than turn, which is useful for avoiding enemy gunfire. Also available is a first person view, accessed by tapping up on the D-pad, and through further button taps you can switch to different first person views depending on what scopes you have equipped, including low and high magnification, as well as night and thermal vision, plus you can stand, crouch or lay prone, which comes in very handy at times.

In addition to directly controlling Sandman, you also can (and frequently must) issue orders to Lonestar, such as to regroup and hold his position, as well as context sensitive commands like opening doors, killing or protecting a specific target, deploying satchel charges and a myriad of other commands, all of which are carried out by moving your crosshair over a certain object or enemy and holding down the circle button for a second or two.

Another factor in the controls is the presence of a lock-on feature. Provided you're within adequate range - determined by both the weapon you're carrying and the scope you have equipped - holding down the R button automatically locks onto an enemy, allowing you to fire away until they drop dead, or switch to the first person view and take them out with a well placed headshot. This feature could be seen as both a lifesaver and a hindrance, depending on your point of view. On the one hand, using lock-on to automatically pick out enemies that you otherwise wouldn't have spotted does serve to make the game more accessible to rookie players and further accommodates for play using the singular analogue stick. However, once you've locked onto an enemy, you have the option to stay locked onto them no matter how much they run about and this same option comes into effect in the game's multiplayer modes, allowing for countless situations where players who insist on repeatedly tapping the R button can score nauseatingly cheap victories. An option for players hosting online sessions in Fireteam Bravo to disable the lock-on feature would have effectively rendered this gripe well and truly mute, but unfortunately no such option exists, so online players are free to grab as many cheap lock-on kills as they like while the rest of us have to suffer and persevere in the knowledge that eventually our skills will develop enough to show those cheap sods a thing or two about fair online gaming.

On top of the Campaign mode, Fireteam Bravo also offers a mode called Instant Action, which allows you to pick any level you've unlocked and attempt to fulfil any one of five objectives, which you get to choose yourself; Hostage Extract requires you to find a hostage and escort them to an extract point before enemy forces kill him; Stealth Extract requires you to do this without being spotted; Sweep and Clear has you simply clearing the entire level of enemy soldiers; Sabotage sees you locating a radio transmitter before having Lonestar fiddle with and wreck it; Stealth Sabotage has you doing the same while once again remaining unseen to the trigger happy terrorists. As in the Campaign mode, you can alter the difficulty, which now also tightens your time limit for completion on the harder settings. Enemy placement in Instant Action is also entirely random, so it remains challenging and offers up a large serving of extra gameplay for when you completely overcome the campaign.

In addition to the single player modes, Fireteam Bravo includes a substantial multiplayer game that never falls short of impressive. You have access to five different game types: Free For All is a straight-up deathmatch mode between terrorists, Suppression sees the Navy SEALs and the terrorists trying to take each other down in a team Deathmatch, in Extraction the SEALs win by killing all the terrorists or rescuing enough hostages, while the terrorists win by eliminating the SEALs or preventing the hostages' release, Demolition has the opposing SEALs and terrorists attempting to plant and detonate bombs in each other's bases and Captive is a variant of the team deathmatch mode, except players have the ability to revive fallen team mates.

All modes are playable with 2-16 players (all of whom need to own their own copy of the game), both in ad-hoc and infrastructure. It's an absolutely joy to behold and an even greater joy to experience for yourself; there's rarely any lag and the ability to use the microphone/earpiece headset (which handily comes bundled with the game itself, at minimal extra cost I might add) makes talking tactics with your team mates an easy and vital part of overcoming the opposition and rising victorious. Let me say that playing this game online is likely to be one of those things that will steal weeks of your life, as it's every bit as frantic, engaging and thoroughly entertaining as both its PS2 counterparts and most other online console shooters, the realisation of which will have you wondering how the hell the folks at Zipper Interactive managed to pull the whole thing off. It's an incredibly well crafted mode that serves to round off the Fireteam Bravo package sublimely. If it weren't for that irritating lock-on feature remaining present (mocking me! MOCKING ME!!!) then I might even go as far as to say that the online mode was perfect. But unfortunately, I can't. Hopefully sufficient whinging on the fans' part will prompt Zipper to release an update and fix it once and for all.

Pleasingly, the lock-on in multiplayer is one of the only two major flaws I could possibly point out in Fireteam Bravo. Unfortunately, the second big flaw lies in the game's graphics. For the most part, Fireteam Bravo is more than a tad on the ugly side. The characters throughout the game are blocky, while the various landscapes, buildings, inanimate objects and foliage you encounter on the way remain muddy looking and consistently low on any kind of detail. Maybe it was a necessary evil; scaling down the detail allowing the developers to squeeze the fourteen amply sized single player mission environments (along with the thirteen or so multiplayer maps) onto the UMD. Whatever the reason, Fireteam Bravo almost goes as far as to deter players immediately with its visuals. The rest of the game's presentation, however, is top-notch. The FMV sequences that unravel key plot points are absolutely gorgeous, while the sound quality during gameplay remains impressive throughout; gunshots and explosions all have an aural meatiness to them, while there's a pleasing amount of ambient sound in each environment. Sadly, the stellar sound also serves to further point out how average Fireteam Bravo is visually. Additionally, the music isn't anything too compelling; it's the usual dramatic militaristic themes, similar to those heard in countless instalments of SOCOM, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell and every other tactical shooter you can think of.

Last and by no means least (provided you own SOCOM 3 for the PS2), Fireteam Bravo includes a feature called Crosstalk. What this basically does is keeps track of any special objectives you've completed or intel you've gathered in both Fireteam Bravo and SOCOM 3, which can be used to influence and alter the gameplay in the opposite title. This is done by selecting Crosstalk in both games and then synchronising all the intel via a USB cable. For example, by blowing up two bridges in a certain mission in Fireteam Bravo, you'll effectively cripple the supply of vehicles and firearms to another terrorist cell, which subsequently has you going up against far weaker (in terms of weaponry) enemies in a certain mission in SOCOM 3. It's a handy little feature that could make life a lot easier for you, provided you own both games. Also, fulfilling certain objectives in SOCOM 3 can unlock additional firearms and multiplayer characters to be used in Fireteam Bravo, so you'll never experience everything unless you pick up both games and have a USB cable handy, which you should if you own a PSP (unless of course, you ate it). This really is a fantastic and very thoughtful content addition and I hope that more publishers follow suit with similar ideas for cross-platform functionality in the future.

As tactical shooters and online multiplayer games go, SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo rarely disappoints in either area. The hugely substantial team based multiplayer, coupled with the headset support, is easily enough to warrant a purchase. The control scheme works well to compensate for the lack of dual analogue controls and the Crosstalk feature means there's a lot of extra stuff to see and do for completists who own both Fireteam Bravo and SOCOM 3. However, the lack of any visual polish whatsoever, combined with the annoying lock-on feature not being excluded from multiplayer, prevents the Navy SEALs' first PSP insertion from becoming a true classic (hopefully the recently announced sequel, supposedly available in Fall 2006, will improve upon both aspects). Nonetheless, if you have a wireless Internet connection you shouldn't hesitate to pick up this game, as it offers the most robust and comprehensive online PSP multiplayer game to date.

Reviewed by Mark Reece for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).