What a great fun game, especially the online whatsit!
The basic premise is that you are a SEAL commander, charged with leading your team of 4 on a number of sorties against those nasty terrorists (who are planning world wide disruption and must be stopped).
That's the offline game anyway, but plug it in to the network adaptor, and it's a whole different ball-park. You choose to be either a SEAL or a terrorist, on teams of up to 8 players a side, in what really amounts to a death-match. There are some extra hooks in the games - some of them the aim to is get to a bomb and blow up the opposition's camp, in others you have to rescue/predent the rescue of hostages. However it mainly seems to come down to whichever team survives!
The real magic of this game is the headset - yes you can talk to the other people on your team via a rather nifty headset!! Life is never quite the same after you've spent a couple of hours shouting "Tango, 3 'o' clock" or "I'm going for the bomb", or "hostle sighted in the temple" at your TV!
The game is not perfect - The controls take some getting used to, and online it's dead frustrating when you first start out and get killed within 5 seconds (this does get better with practice) not to mention the glitches and lag. The offline game is somehow a little unsatisfying too, although it is quite fun issuing commands to your team through the headset "Bravo, lead to charlie" "Team, fire at will".
That said this game is huge fun - and I'm queueing up to by SOCOM 2 already.