A ‘brilliant’ tactical third person shooter on the PSP was foundational to Manchester United’s success, according to former player Wayne Rooney.
The rise of esports this century has brought the worlds of video games and sport even closer together, but they were already closely tied thanks to the huge popularity of sports sims like EA Sports FC and Madden NFL.
Many football stars today grew up playing these games, and dreamt of making the cover (like EA Sports FC 25 cover star Jude Bellingham), but one former football player has revealed how a very different video game, outside the realm of footy, helped them in the sport.
Speaking on his BBC podcast The Wayne Rooney Show, the retired footballer, who previously played for Manchester United and Everton, explained how the PSP game SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Fireteam Bravo was a ‘big part’ of his team’s success at Old Trafford.
‘I really believe a big part of our success was playing on the PSP,’ Rooney said in relation to his Manchester United days, where he won five Premier League titles and a Champions League under Sir Alex Ferguson.
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‘It got us communicating more – we used to play it on the plane, on the team bus. It would be me, Rio [Ferdinand], Michael Carrick, John O’Shea, Wes Brown. You have to talk, you have to tactically be right, go and revive people when they get killed and it was a massive part of our success – ask any of those players, it was brilliant.’
Rooney said each person’s playing style in the tactical third-person shooter reflected their personality on the pitch.
‘How you played that game reflected that player, how they play the game,’ Rooney added. ‘Michael Carrick was a little sneaky calm one, you would be lying down hiding and you’d hear a little grenade bouncing by where he’d thrown it.
‘I was just all in, straight in, frontline of the trenches, get in there.’
Developed by Zipper Interactive, SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Fireteam Bravo launched in the US in 2005 but wasn’t released in Europe until 2006. It spawned two direct sequels on the portable system, released in 2007 and 2010, respectively.
The SOCOM series began on the PlayStation 2 in 2003, which was one of the first games on the console to utilise a headset for speech recognition commands offline, and for voice chat when playing online with others.
In fact, it was one of Sony’s first online games of any kind and the original version was bundled with a modem and headset since, unlike the Xbox, it didn’t come with one as default.
The last entry in the series was 2011’s SOCOM 4 U.S. Navy SEALs on the PlayStation 3 and, somewhat strangely, Sony has shown no interest in reviving the franchise in the modern era.
You also can’t replicate Rooney and Ferdinand’s squad dynamics within the shooter today, because the online servers for the PlayStation 2 and PSP SOCOM titles were shut down in August 2012. If you fancy revving up your PSP again though, here are some of the best games on the system.
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