The commendable SOCOM series went FUBAR when it hit the PS3 with Confrontation back in 2008, but the tactical squad-based shooter is back for active duty with a flawed though fairly enjoyable campaign tour and a superb host of multiplayer modes guaranteed to make you happily discharge your weapon.

The story goes back to narrative boot camp with a trite yarn full of predictable twists and one-liners, but there’s enough main character development to string you along through the 14 quick missions as your ragtag band attempts to topple an evil revolutionary dictator and his countless grunts.

Gameplay sees your hero, a suitably-grizzled Ops Commander, directing a pair of two-man squads through the genre staples of jungles, rural villages and war-ravaged city streets of a nameless Southeast Asian country and using barebones strategy to make it out alive. The teams, one covert sniper and the other heavy gunners, can be directed to set up ambushes or flank the enemy but careful spray-and-pray from cover to cover usually suffices for most missions, a missed opportunity in my opinion since the few moments you do pull off a sneaky ambush against a force that outnumbers you are very satisfying.

Dotted between the team missions are stealth levels headed by Forty Five, a female operative from the covert team on your squad. Armed with only a silenced weapon and a filthy mouth, your heroine is sent in to infiltrate enemy areas and steal information or disable some crucial piece of bad guy hardware.

While these are a pleasant break from the guns-blazing gangbangs found in the other missions the stealth mechanic is fundamentally broken, with Forty Five often being detected when she shouldn’t be, or remaining hidden in what appears on screen to be a well lit area. Still, these levels serve as decent character development scenarios and the change of pace is often welcome when blasting everything that moves becomes overwhelming.

SOCOM 4 really whips out the big guns in multiplayer though and features a good selection of game modes all fought out on some well designed maps. Up to 32 players can duke it out with team deathmatch, CTF and point defence modes, or with the brilliant Bomb Squad mode where one player goes all Hurt Locker and has to trudge along in a Kevlar fat suit while his teammates protect him.

Each of these game types can be given the traditional SOCOM twist of disabling in-match respawns, a challenging though exciting addition which really drives the use of tactical cover use and patient play, and there’s a lot of other fiddling that can be done to create your own perfect matches.

There’s also co-op for up to five players, and though the selection of mission types is minimal there’s a ton of fun to be had working through them with your mates in that kind of militaristic, camaraderie-driven way not far removed from the co-op in Modern Warfare 2.

Visuals are fairly average for a modern title but the art direction isn’t bad at all, and all the environments are impressive enough for immersion purposes without sacrificing framerate. There’s also some pop-in and some scarily chunky bits of scenery on occasion, but fortunately you’ll be too busy dodging bullets to notice. The audio is superb with an excellent score by reputable composer Bear McCreary of The Walking Dead and Battlestar Galactica fame, and coupled with above average voice acting there’s a great feeling of polish on the audio front.

And the Playstation Move support? Honestly, it’s not even worth mentioning, and whoever thought that a cover-based shooter can be played properly with a daft nunchuck should be dragged out into the jungle and shot.

So, should you rush out and buy SOCOM 4, or is the fourth outing for the franchise doomed to the brig? Well, if it’s a lengthy, fresh and involving campaign you’re after then you can lop 10% from the final score and head off to loiter around your local bargain bin, but if you’re keen to rock some awesome multiplayer (with some not-too-bad single player on the side) then SOCOM 4 will make you feel like a decorated general on shore leave.

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