Socom 4 is a real treat for people who can appreciate a fun, well-designed, aesthetically pleasing video game. It's also adjustable so that a seasoned vet or a newcomer to the military shooter genre can enjoy what Socom 4 has to offer. Personally, Socom 4 is (finally!!) a third person military shooter that I can get into.PROS:--GRAPHICS: EXCELLENT. Beautiful environments from hillsides of a South Asian country to a port with battleships or even jungle ruins and old WWII bunkers. Rich colors, good layout, great lighting. Really immerses the player into the game. Really great designs for enemy and ally characters.--SOUND: EXCELLENT. The enemies shout at you or talk about you. They talk to each other in English or in a native language. The sound of the weapons in this game is prominent, each with its own unique sound; distinct, clear. Sometimes you can hear a sniper in the distance, other times you hear the enemies' footsteps in the mud approaching. Do yourself a favor and get headphones for this game, or good speakers because then you can really enjoy some environmental sounds. You can hear a subtle breeze, or the mosquitoes by your ear as you stealth through vegetation, or listen to the cry of elephants in a jungle canyon as you walk atop a hill towards a bombed out bridge, or crackling from the flames of a crashed airplane.--MUSIC: EXCELLENT. The guy who did the score for this game, Bear McCreary, studied with the famous film composer Elmer Bernstein. And it shows. The music sounds almost like an old western movie like the Magnificent Seven, but then quickly embodies something of a superhero movie feel combined with a military campaign, similar to Nathan Drake's Uncharted theme. The score also makes use of instruments (that I guess are of Asian origin) and the game keeps an Asian ambiance but also the military bravado necessary for combat. Even in quiet parts of the game, an occasional flute or a touch of eerie music lends to the suspense. The music also appears and disappears in just the right way to keep the mood suspenseful, thrilling, or heroic.--VIEWPOINT: THIRD PERSON. EXCELLENT. I had tons of fun playing this game. After playing Uncharted, I really enjoyed the third person action/adventure/shooter type games. I know a lot of people complained about this Socom being a third person game when what they wanted was a first person shooter (I think the other Socom games were all first person). Personally, I prefer third person over first person. Third person is more realistic because you see the character get hit and fall and get up and fight. In first person games, it always looks like you're looking through a window from the front seat of a car, and sometimes your windshield gets splotches of blood, and I feel like turning on a set of wipers. Anyway, third person is just a personal preference, and this game did well with it. So on to the play itself.--CAMPAIGN: EXCELLENT. My only complaint is that it was too short, but only because I enjoyed it so much. You are accompanied by four other AI teammates, a BLUE team and a GOLD team, each made of two members. The Blue team is better at close range combat, and the Gold team is better at sniping. So you can point your crosshairs anywhere in the environment and simply press left or right on the directional pad to assign teammates to strategic points. When I first played, I would die at certain points in the game until I learned how to assign teammates to strategic areas. This is easy to learn. As for your character (Cullen Gray), you get to use two weapons per mission (which you select before the mission). You choose from Assault rifles, machine guns, sub-machine guns, and sniper rifles. You also have a selection of grenade type weapons to choose from as well. You always have a knife handy too, in case you want to stealth to an enemy and do a take down with the knife, or during close combat, sometimes when the enemy rushes you or you have to reload you can press the R3 button (on PS3) to stab and slash the enemy. I like how you can feel the weight of the weapons--heavier weapons have loud sounds, recoil, and you feel it on the dual shock controllers, and if you pick up a grenade launcher, then you move slower. The sounds are great in battle, and the bullets follow real world physics where you have to anticipate AI enemy movement, and shoot a little bit ahead of where they are stepping, since bullets take time to travel. I won't talk about all the guns here, but there's PLENTY to choose from, and as you use each weapon more in battle, the more you will unlock Mods which makes the weapon itself better (some fitted with scopes, muzzles, capacity, or even grenade launcher in the gun itself). The game has varied missions where you battle your way through tons of enemies, and sometimes this involves gathering intel, or stealth missions where you must move undetected, in nighttime and rain settings. There's even another part of the game where you escort allies while being ambushed by hordes of enemies and a helicopter bombs your team through a wetland village. The settings range from a bombed civil war strife city, to rural village areas where you can hear cattle and farm animals; and then the action takes place in another urban area where you must find a warlord and then escape to an airlift location to get your team out of there before time runs out. And there's the WWII bunkers strewn about a hilly landscape and even a mission with ancient ruins and another mission on the ocean shores where your mission is to destroy enemy tanks on the sands of the beach.MULTI-PLAYER: I won't comment too much on the multiplayer only because I have yet to play more of it. From what I've seen so far, Socom 4 includes classic and standard versions of multiplayer game types, and even custom I believe. There's also variations for clan vs. clan type games. It looks promising though.--CO-OP: EXCELLENT. There is no local co-op (two people in your living room playing together). However, you can meet up with friends online, and create a private party, or customize a set of up to four missions, and launch it publicly so anyone can join you on the missions against AI enemy. You can even join a random online co-op already in progress. There are three game types offered:(1) Espionage - which is to find intel scattered throughout the level, and once all the intel is gathered, your team has to find and deactivate devices elsewhere, all while fighting many enemies.(2) Takedown - which is to fight your way through a level to find and kill either a commander and his top henchmen, or kill multiple commanders.(3) Evac - this one is an add-on, but loads of fun. You have to fight through waves of enemies, and keep moving, until you reach a designated area for evacuation pick up by aircraft. At that point you will have to hold your ground and defend against swarms of enemies, until the air pick up arrives. Even then, you have to clear out enemies and then get to your air lift.--Additionally, you can set the difficulty level Easy, Normal, Hard, (Elite), and the amount enemy AI can be set to Low, Normal, High.--I should mention that all these types of games are presented on about six of the levels from the game (and a seventh with the evac download). Different parts of the environments are used depending on the type of game played, so that each three game types feel like different environments, even if you use only one environment.--Also, you can customize these missions and just play on your own until someone joins you.CON:I guess I should mention a con: --STORY: DRY. The story isn't bad. It just is what it is. I mean, they did try. The Ops Commander is Cullen Gray, with a mysterious past and some connection to the mission in the Asian country. I really liked Cullen Gray for his stoic and heroic personality--a man who will get the job done at any cost against any odds, sort of like Altair from the first Assassin's Creed. But the story never rises beyond simple. But it's good enough to let you shoot a bunch of enemies.OVERALL:I really love Socom 4. No one recommended it to me, I got it on my own. I really wanted to play a military game, so I tried out the first person Call of Duties, and Battlefield. I could see why people like Call of Duty, they try to do some really cool stuff, but the first person perspective and the over the top arcade feel of the games just didn't work for me. I even tried another third person military game demo (I can't remember which one, sorry) and that wasn't very good with game mechanics or graphics. I finally decided to pick up Socom 4 based on reviews by people who weren't angry about it being third person, and I was surprised to find myself enjoying a really beautiful game. Sony, and Zipper put a lot of thought into the dynamics of the game and the look and sound of the game. I keep talking about how it looks and sounds, but it really works so well that it puts the player into the environment. The fine music was added finesse to an already good game.Additionally, the game only froze up on me once (during online co-op). Otherwise the multi-player, the co-op, and the campaign all are very fluid in action, with quick loading times, and easy controls for even beginning gamers.As for online play, there's always many players in multi-player, and co-op may require a little bit of waiting (rare occasions) but you can always find enough people to play a co-op mission.If you enjoyed Uncharted and want to try a military shooter, pick up this game.For anyone else, try this game for its aesthetic beauty in sound (and sound effects), music, graphics, design, environment, and easy to control yet challenging game play.**** I think one thing that may be overlooked about this game is its fantastic CO-OP game. I was never really into the online stuff, so I didn't expect to really play this co-op mode. But once I tried it, I was hooked by how much fun it was. It's so fascinating to watch selfish players run out into the fray without regard to the other members of the team, only to get themselves killed (and sometimes get other teammates killed). The real thrilling part of Co-op though is when you play with people who play like a real soldier, which means caring about your team, and working as a team to defeat the enemy AI. I actually made some friends by playing this Co-op mode. You WILL meet really good honorable players who will become your friends. One of the best things about Socom 4 is the ability to HEAL incapacitated members of your team. Now I've played with selfish people who never even tried to revive me when I've fallen, however, it's the real team players that make this co-op so enjoyable. If you ever get hit by a bullet and lie there incapacitated, and one of your teammates fights their way to come and revive you, trust me, you will have respect for them....and if they ever get struck down by an enemy, trust me, you will have such motivation to put a bullet in a hundred enemies, endure grenades, and fight elite armored enemy guards just to make your way to revive your fallen buddy. And it's this dynamics of the game which is more motivating than any story could offer in a campaign that makes Socom 4 so addicting.******I don't usually write reviews, but I wanted to tell everyone about how much fun this game is, and the replay value is beyond expectation. I hope Sony will finance another Socom game, and I hope it follows in the tradition of Socom 4.***** 5 out of 5 stars *****