As Chris Remo pointed out during his San Deigo Comic Con coverage, SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Tactical Strike isn't what you expect from a series typically known for its emphasis on skillful aiming and quick reactions. Instead of providing direct control over a SEAL and throwing the player into the fray, Slant Six Games' Tactical Strike on PSP takes, well, a more tactical approach to the situation.

Best described as a mixture of Nintendo's Advance Wars series and Sony's SOCOM property, Tactical Strike puts players in the role of squad commander, issuing orders to the four highly-trained special operatives in the battlefield. These commands apply to the whole squad, a two-man team within the squad, and even individual soldiers, and switching between the various commands and their recipients is a rather simple affair thanks to an extremely functional control scheme.

Built around a series of button taps and holds, the controls allow for numerous combat actions without too much work or confusion. With just a few button presses, I split the squad into Alpha and Bravo teams and had them alternating between designated points of cover while the other team provided suppressing fire.

More importantly, the user-controlled pace of the game permits players to approach the game at their own speed, resolving the issues some had with the fast action of previous SOCOM offerings.

At one point in the game, I once again split my squad into two teams. One was positioned on bridge above a street, which was crawling with enemies. The other team was located on the porch of a building down the road, giving them a slightly different view of the action. With both teams set to emerge from cover and begin their assault at my mark, I triggered my carefully-planned assault. As the combatants took cover from the bridge team behind cars and boxes, they fell prey to fire from the two on the porch. None of my SEALs took any damage, a vast improvement over the last time two times I had approached that scenario.

To find out more about the game and and the challenges behind it, I chatted with Slant Six director of development Dan McBride. With the frequent fire of airsoft rifles in the background--Sony had set up a simulation run by actual Navy SEALs to give the assembled journalists a feel for actual battlefield tactics--McBride offered new details on the game, including its conception and evolution, along with his insight into PSP development, thoughts on the new PSP Slim, and hints of what else is in the works at the developer's Vancouver-based studio.

Shack: One thing that really impressed me about Tactical Strike was the control scheme. Obviously there's a learning curve, but once you've got it down, there's a lot of functionality through taps, double taps, and holds. How much work went into the control scheme?

Dan McBride: It was the biggest R&D aspect of the game, well, that and AI. This was a 21 month development cycle for PSP, and as a side note, I really gotta congratulate Sony in backing us to that degree and having the faith in the platform and the project and giving us a long development cycle. They didn't try to turn it around in 10 months like a lot of publishers would and they gave it time to mature properly.

That's a good thing, because the control scheme went through at least six iterations before we honed in on the version we're playing now. I'd say that was the most enjoyable, but difficult, problem solving design session that I've ever been a part of. It was a challenge.

Shack: Just lots of focus testing?

Dan McBride: Well, we did focus tests. It was a big challenge, and we went through multiple iterations before we got it right, or right-ish.

Shack: When did you settle on the current control scheme?

Dan McBride: It would have been just around the New Year.

Shack: With the camera automatically controlled by the computer and the direct movements of the soldiers controlled by the AI as well, how do you ensure the camera is properly positioned?

Dan McBride: That was a big challenge too, and we were refining that up to a month ago. One of the things we went through was having the camera oriented the way a SEAL is facing, which kind of makes sense, but what happens is when you send your group of four SEALs off to a location, they automatically do this sector-splitting logic. This is an actual thing that Rob taught us. A group of SEALs moving through the field, when they're at rest, will divide the 360 degrees of a compass into quadrants, if there are four of them. Each will take a facing, so that way they have full coverage. What that means is, I look down the street, I send my guys down there, then I switch cameras and it goes 180 degrees behind me, which is never what you want.

Currently it's a fairly complex algorithm that has to do with the last time the player moved the camera, if the moving-from SEAL has an active target and the moving-to SEAL also orients towards that target. It's actually about a 12-step algorithm, with early outs for certain conditions being matched.

That was a tough one. Especially in the early builds, we got a lot of feedback. Even when the dev team played, it was our common gripe that you were always wheeling the camera around to where you wanted to go.

With the current build, I think we're getting pretty close. There may be a few instances where, "oh, I switched the camera and it's not quite where I want it to be," but I think 95% of the time camera switches are pretty good. I'd be interested to hear your feelings about it.

Shack: The more I played, the more I found the camera was where I needed it to be.

I've always liked the idea of SOCOM but I could never deal with the action of the series, especially on a portable, so this is a good fit for me.

Dan McBride: The user dictates the pace here. There's not that requirement to react all the time, it's on your conditions.

Turn the page for more on origins of Slant Six and Tactical Strike along with the the studio's research process.