EGM article - Main points

There is a great topic on the playstation.com boards which details a ton of new information from the EGM article. Keep in mind that I'm still treating this as speculation until my own issue arrives. And even though these are the main points, you'll still want to pick up the EGM issue to read the entire 10 page piece, as well as the 15 new screen shots.

Anyways, enjoy:

GAMEPLAY

-You can roll or underhand a grenade with real physics

-You can lean your guy with the six-axis instead of the d-pad

-There is proximity chat

-Your clan can talk via open chat, but you can L2 to chat to everyone on your team. Or if you have proximity chat then you chat with who ever is around you.

-Audio has changed. Sounds around a corner sound muffled.

-There is now a run/sprint mode. You can run/sprint but you can’t shoot and your gun will not be accurate after running. So basically just use this too avoid snipers.

-Tilt with the six-axis can be tweaked for sensitivity

-There are exploding barrels and cars.

-View distance is big, so no more fog like SOCOM 2

-Smoke looks dark gray

-They talk about the 3rd person view. They said because the new widescreen TVs have a different ratio, there was too much space on each side of the classic view.

-"Sony's Seth Luisi says, "Because it was more centered towards 4:3 TVs, and now going to 16:9, we have a lot more area off to the sides."

-You can go up on roofs

GAME SETUP & INFO

-Crossroads is bigger than the original

-They are bringing back a new game mode. "Elimination" its like SOCOM 2, kill the whole other team or take a draw

-Crossroads (ps3) has an extra outer ring that the ps2 didn't have. There are two towers now.

-Confrontation is 32 players but you can make smaller maps for 16 players total.

-Improved clan support

-Ranked matches are automated. If you want to set up your own room with specifics (no grenades, etc) it won’t be ranked. This stops cheaters and rank ups.

-"You can no longer set up a match exactly defined to your team’s exact strengths and create a honeypot to raise your clan ranking. For your clan to have a global ranking you now have to be a rounded team with good strategies for dealing with all the maps. Now, you can build all the custom games you want - the room system is still there, which I know is really important to SOCOM fans. You can do all your clan tryouts and training in those rooms, and even playing within those games aggregates different stats, because we track a lot of information about the player. But it doesn't directly go into the global clan ladder." –Seth Luisi

-There will be 7 maps total at launch. All maps will be based in North Africa

-There is an underground map that has a collapse parttriggered by the enemy

-Clan support will be available on socom.com where the leader can change their clan, add players etc.

-There will be a party system so your clan will join the same game.

-The other map that is shown in the article is called URBAN WASTELAND it takes place around a high rise hotel, but it mentions you have access to just the first few stories. It has an underground tunnel network and has some bridges and stuff. There is a multileveled parking garage. This is the same one that was shown in previous screenshots released on the web.

MISC DETAILS

-They are planning on having a new headset for SOCOM.

-It also shows the online numbers of the SOCOM franchise aswell as 2 screenshots from SOCOM 1 & 2

-THERE WILL BE A CLOSED BETA. I think it said they will seekpeople out through SOCOM.com

-Closed beta going on "right now or May"

-Open beta after that.