Memorable Gaming Moment 2003: SOCOM II

My most memorable gaming experience of 2003 is SOCOM II: U.S. Navy SEALs. The reason for this is because SOCOM II was the first online game I played that wasn’t an MMO. My wife at the time had a coworker who was playing it every night, along with another coworker’s husband, and they would talk about how much fun it was all the time. At the time we didn’t have broadband, but the more I heard about SOCOM II, I quickly gained much interest. We eventually broke down and bought a high-speed connection, the PS2 Network Adapter, and a hundred foot kit to create our own Cat-6 cable, which was the most miserable experience ever; the cables never worked.

I was hooked on SOCOM II from the moment we had everything set up and the wife quickly became interested in it as well, but the problem was we only had one PS2. Just like EverQuest, we decided that one PS2 was not going to cut it and our PS2 family soon grew by one. SOCOM II would also be my introduction to the world of Clans. A couple of guys quickly adopted my wife into their clan but did not extend the invite to me, which annoyed me to no end, but they changed their minds when I got three MVP awards in a row.

SOCOM II was also the game that introduced me to the very common “internet asshole.” Jason and I were playing together on one team and I mentioned something about my wife playing on the other team. After that was said, some jerk (the internet asshole) kept asking Jason if my wife was “fuckable”; I didn’t know how to take it. If it wasn’t for SOCOM II, I don’t think I would have ever made the jump to true online console gaming, but I don’t regret it one bit. (Editor’s Note: I bet he regrets sir internet asshole, but I guess that’s why they call it the blues – Rob’s real father.)