The final major piece of Zipper Interactive's plan to put SOCOM back on the map -- five-player co-op -- has been fully declassified and I've given the latest Navy SEALs game, due April 19, a shakedown. Sony revealed at an event Tuesday evening that the cooperative mode will eschew a traditional "play through the main campaign together" setup in favor of letting players create their own full, multi-stage campaigns using a set of six maps and the ability to randomize normally scripted events on each play-through.
I experienced some of this when playing through the same map more than once, with various difficulty and enemy density settings in effect. It was easy to tell that, while your group of friends might get used to the map layouts, the challenge you'll face will never be a known quantity.