SOCOM2 came along, quite probably the best in the series - if not for the copious amounts of cheaters it'd probably still be stupid fun as well.
SOCOM3 held our attention for the longest time, mainly because of the community features... Seriously, InfinityWard take note - SOCOM3 and/or Combined Assault is more or less exactly how a console FPS community system should work.
SOCOM: Confrontation made headlines, with screen-shots of the glorious maps making prior fans of the series swoon... and then? Nothing. It was buggy, aggravating, and then other shooters came along. CoD4 is notable, but there are plenty others... Confrontation sits basically empty at the moment, at any given time I can find around 7,000 players at any given time... compared to I'm sure there's at least a quarter mil players still on Combined Assault right at this very minute.
Even with the hideously expensive Sony Bluetooth Headsets, it's not even really a very attractive bundle any more. You're better off hitting up discount stores looking for a $10-$15 copy of Warhawk if you want a cheap BT headset (though honestly you can find headsets for that cheap anyway).
So what's the result? From my experience the majority of the bugs are fixed now - I didn't have any annoying experiences with the game despite a server outage. The game plays really well - basically like vintage SOCOM. The vehicles are gone, the maps are small enough to keep the action reasonably hot but not a giant cluster-fuck. The game looks positively gorgeous, though on my 19" SDTV I'm left squinting as with every other PS3 shooter - looks like I'll be heading in for wrinkle treatment at a young age unless I can pick up an HDTV sometime soon.
So if your copy of SOCOM: Confrontation is one of the many, many copies on half.com right now I suggest you take it off and give it another shot. If you never picked it up because you heard it's junk, go search for a good copy on half - you can grab it for as low as ten bucks, and I personally think it's well worth it.
