Visually, SOCOM is not impressive, but it's still a pretty looking game. The graphic engine is up to the job of rendering a 3D world with a good dose of realism, but without the high polygon count and the fancy stuff that is possible to find in many other Playstation 2 games.

The character models are built with a decent number of polygons, and with good attention to details; according to the mission you're playing, your soldiers will wear different suits that let them move stealthily in the environment. Animations are smooth, varied, and first of all extremely realistic; they are the good result of many motion capture sessions in which the developers had the support of SEAL consultants. During the missions your character will communicate silently with his team-mates not only with his voice, but also with gestures that make the team interaction even more believable.

The environments recreate 12 locations from four very different parts of the world - Alaska, Congo, Thailand, and Turkmenistan; each of the levels puts you in unique weather and environmental conditions that varies from rains in a dark tropical forest to snow in the cold white of Alaska, where it's extremely difficult to hide. Lighting and shadow effects look good, but they really set the mood and define the way to play in the missions that take place on structures like a ship or an oil platform. Anyhow, the texture quality is at best of average quality, and this occasionally gives SOCOM colors that seem closer to the visual quality offered by a good PsOne game than to one of the last-generation Playstation 2 games.

The truth is that apparently SOCOM does little to use the power of the console; textures quality, character models, and also special effects like the ones used for weather look always in the average. But overall, the graphic engine of the game has the merit of supporting the gameplay smoothly and flawlessly. After the loading time at the beginning of each level, the gaming experience is continue, with no transition between outdoor and indoor environments, and the framerate remains solid throughout the game - two necessary points for an action game that's supposed to be played online.

Good sound effects, a classic soundtrack, and the brilliant use of the headset help absorbing the player into the gaming experience. If you decide to use your headset, you'll hear the comments and the voices of your teammates through it, while the other sound effects and the soundtrack are pumped through the TV speakers. The soundtrack is made of a series of orchestral tunes that have become typical of good quality military games, and that adds the sufficient - even if sometimes blindly "heroic", if you understand what I'm saying - emotional background to the missions.

A necessary note should be made for the use of the headset when playing online; the possibility to communicate with your friends and to hear their voices adds a dose of realism to the experience that couldn't be achieved by any pre-registered voice acting dialogue. It's a feature that team-based action online games should absolutely include in the future.

In single player mode, SOCOM is longer than you would expect. The missions are just 12, but many of them can keep you glued to the monitor for a good number of hours; besides, the depth of the gaming experience will probably make all fans of stealth action games want to complete the game more than once.

The online mode adds a virtually endless replay value. Once you've started playing the game, you just want to play again and again; things get better (or worse, if you prefer) if you create your own online clan, which could lead you to play the online game for an insane amount of hours. The only drawback is the limited number of game modes featured for the online game - just three - but the vastness of the levels, and the solid realistic structure of the game should be enough to make of you a SOCOM addict.