An article popped up over at PlayStation LifeStyle claiming that a slew of PSone hits will be coming to the North American PlayStation Store soon, including Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, and Resident Evil: Director’s Cut. It’s easy enough to believe Sony will eventually release these titles here — they were the bread and butter of the PSOne, after all, and all three are available in the Japanese store.  The part that makes me wonder is the mention of the director’s cut of Resident Evil. Would Sony really release that version instead of the original that most gamers experienced first? Maybe, maybe not. I guess we’ll see soon enough.

Back in December of 1992 Nintendo Power released it’s monthly magazine to it’s readers and inside was a little surprise…The Super Nintendo was going to compete with the Sega Genesis that was ever so popular and gaining steam on it’s competition with it’s Sega CD.  How was Nintendo going to do this?  They had formed a partnership with Sony to create the Super Nintendo CD-Rom system that would boast ” a custom 32-bit processor”.  The agreement with Sony didn’t last long as relations disintegrated. Nintendo was convinced that the world was not satisfied with 16 bits and that it was necessary to upgrade to the next generation of console gaming so they eventually partnered with Phillips to bring this new system.  Of course Nintendo didn’t announce it’s new partnership with Phillips until after Sony had announced their partnership with Nintendo, catching Sony off guard.

Sony and Nintendo did eventually patch things up and got back to work on the Super Nintendo CD but that didn’t last long. Nintendo decided that a CD-Rom based system would be impractical due to long load times and eventually dumped the idea.  Sony also saw the shelf life of the Super Nintendo as short and they too did not want to continue with their arrangement.

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Finally the PS3 has my attention.  I wasn’t a big fan of the Socom series before as I did not have a Playstation 2 however I heard some great things about the online play which prompted me to go ahead and buy Confrontation.

The Socom series could easily be compared to the Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (G.R.A.W.) series.  The game is played in the 3rd person view, soldier versus soldier combat.  The emphasis is on tactical maneuvering and working together as a team.  Socom Confrontation is an online only multiplayer game and can be downloaded via the Playstation Network or purchased at your local game store bundled with the Official Playstation bluetooth headset.

The graphics in Socom are decent, there is not much that is mind-blowing but it certainly is not sub-par either.  What is really well done is the sound and the ease of control.  Each gun sounds realistic and each shot feels as real as the sound it makes.  Socom also uses the rumble feature of the Dual Shock 3 so making the upgrade is recommended.

There are a total of 7 maps available, each map is scalable to the size of the party you are playing with.  Some game modes allow up to 16 players on each team while the comfortable games are played with 8 players on each team.  The Playstation Network does host the ranked games while a player match is hosted by the game creator.

There is also clan support which allows you to recruit and fire players in your clan and of course play clan matches.  Socom Confrontation is an exciting and addicting experience.  It certainly is a reason for gamers to buy or keep their PS3′s.  There is a good amount of lifelike military violence and a very slight amount of language. 

This game is fantastic and is highly recommended for any PS3 owner looking for a good game for their Playstation 3.

Buy/Skip/Rent:

Buy