The SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs testing pool is about to get even bigger! Starting tomorrow, at 12:00am Pacific, the SOCOM 4 voucher codes that were included as giveaways with Killzone 3 (and at our PAX East 2011 booth) become active. This new influx of players will join the existing crowd of previously introduced PlayStation Plus and Private beta testers, and will have all the same privileges as the one-week and two-week vets.
If you didn’t receive an early access voucher or don’t have a PlayStation Plus account, don’t fret! Starting April 5th, the all-access beta will be openly available for download through the PlayStation Store. While the beta download will be removed from the Store with the April 12th PlayStation Store publish, SOCOM 4 Beta servers will be up and running until April 13th.
Though our servers are open all day, every day we do limit what modes are available so that we can keep our testing focused. Here’s how the schedule looks this week:
- Tuesday (3/29) – Uplink, Classic Uplink, Suppression, Classic Suppression
- Wednesday (3/30) – Last Defense, Classic Last Defense, Uplink, Classic Uplink
- Thursday (3/31) – Bomb Squad, Classic Bomb Squad, Last Defense, Classic Last Defense
- Friday (4/1) – Sniper Alley (Custom), Last Defense Run ‘n Gun (Custom), Bomb Squad, Classic Bomb Squad
- Saturday (4/2) – Scrum (Classic), Sniper Alley (Custom), Last Defense Run ‘n Gun (Custom)
- Sunday (4/3) – Suppression, Classic Suppression, Scrum (Custom)
- Monday (4/4) – Uplink, Classic Uplink, Suppression, Classic Suppression
As always, our multiplayer beta includes two maps, Port Authority and Assault & Battery, and offers a variety of built-in game-types and custom game-types. Here’s a reminder of what’s what:
Suppression: SOCOM 4’s version of “team deathmatch.”
Last Defense: Capture controls points, discover the enemy base and destroy it.
Uplink: Steal enemy data and deliver it to your base.
Bomb Squad: Defend your bomb technician while he disarms enemy explosives.
Sniper Alley (Custom): An 8 vs. 8 version of Classic Suppression with higher damage. Weapons are limited to sniper rifles, shotguns, smoke grenades and poison gas.
Last Defense Run ‘n Gun (Custom): Faster movement speed and reduced damage are applied to 16 vs. 16 Last Defense with weapons restricted to only shotguns and SMGs.
Scrum (Custom): Suppression is given rule tweaks of no respawn, faster movement and higher damage, while sniper rifles, frag grenades, concussion grenades and poison gas are disallowed.
As seen in the schedule above, all built-in game-types (i.e. anything not listed as “Custom”) are playable in both the Standard and Classic variations. Standard mode is similar to the single-player experience, while Classic mode is similar to older SOCOM titles with increased movement speeds, round-based play, no player respawns and the lack of health regeneration. Our Custom types mix and match a number of game settings, delivering fresh takes on our core rule sets.
As before, after you’ve had a chance to play the beta, we’d love to hear your feedback! Once you’ve downloaded the beta and played a complete match, you’ll then gain access to our private beta forums on SOCOM.com where you can share your stories with other players and leave us your feedback. SOCOM has always been a very player-driven franchise and your opinions are very important to us, so please let us know what you think! We’ll see you again next week on the SOCOM blog with an updated schedule, or you can keep updated on our latest agenda through our in-game news feed.
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