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I came late to the military shooter party. Truthfully, guns and fatigues have never really been my choice outfitting for gaming experiences. I actually upon further thought can't think of very many games with guns I grew up playing. There was spread gunning through Contra, holy water pistoling the undead in Zombies Ate My Neighbors, being weirded the heck out by the original Parasite Eve (PE2 lost me very quickly), and getting to the chopper in the EA Strike games (Desert, Jungle, Urban, Nuclear and Soviet). I didn't even touch a first-person shooter I enjoyed before Black last generation.
Believe me, I'm didn't grow up a gaming pacifist by any stretch of the imagination. My favorites sports games, in line with my favorite sport, represent the violent sport of football. I'm a life long WWF/E gamer. I constantly pine for a return to busting helmets open with steel pipes in Road Rash. My love for assassination predates the Animus having roots in feudal Japan with Tenchu. And while I generally bore quickly with fighting games, I was more than happy to slice and dice fools with Taki in Edge Master Mode on the Soul Blade with no pity. And don't even get me started on my love of systematic stabbing deaths of colossi.
Yet when 2002 hit, I had honest surprise in my instantly being hooked by SOCOM: US Navy SEALs. I can't for the life of me remember what got me to take a chance on the game, but SOCOM stuck with me through the PS2 era.
Part of it for me was not really ever playing a tactical shooter before that point. Having the team dynamic and directing soldiers into particular spots brought an element into things that make it a lot more interesting to me than the shooting gallery/monster closet shooters of my previous experience. It allowed for strategy I'd ever felt able to use in a shooter before. Above all, Boomer did a fairly good job of covering my backside as while I was getting adjusted to the game I lacked the awareness to notice some enemies and was slow to react often.
Another huge part of it for me was the pacing. Even to this day, there's only so much of the Call of Duty or Gears of War experience I can take at a time. I more enjoy the ability to look at a map, plan a course of action and direct an actualy strategy than be constantly led into set piece moment and battle arena after next along a directed path in a shooter. I don't mnd it in a JRPG or an action game but for how I perfer to play a shooter, the appraoch of a tactical shooter fits my personalty and play style perfectly.
If not for my SOCOM experience then, I probably wouldn't have gotten into loving the Rainbow Six Vegas games when I finally started adding shooters as a regular part of my gaming diet. I certainly wouldn't have the running inside joke between friends of yelling "We got to do this for Boomer" in climatic moments in games. While I often credit Black for finally opening first-person-shooters to me, SOCOM opened to shooter world enough for me to take a chance on Black.
Matter of fact, I'm going go and finally pushed through the rest of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Of course, I'm doing it for Boomer.
More of Gerren's Decade Diary: