Delta Force – Black Hawk Down
what did the ground ever do to you?
Tags: Delta Force - Black Hawk Down Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Andrew on Mar 16th, 2004
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Force - Black Hawk Down (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
The reviews for Delta Force: Black Hawk Down have been rather mixed, and as a reviewer of that title also, there is a lot to be said for a complete lack of AI. Building on that greatness, Novalogic gives us the expansion complete with a little new single player, and a massive add on to the multiplayer that enables this series to stand up to the best multiplayer titles.
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The single player mode gives you the opportunity to work with your Delta Force team or mostly with the SAS (the British version) as you fight through 11 missions between a drug cartel in South America and Middle Eastern wars. While not incredible in its storyline, the expansion is commendable for not just throwing together a lame excuse to put you back in Somalia. The missions don’t really offer anything new, but they do give you a couple more hours of gameplay. But really the expansion is about the multiplayer.
Ah, multiplayer. While the original game boasted a wonderful multiplayer, Team Sabre does exactly the same, only adding a marvelous 30 new maps and 24 new weapons to dish out death with. With so many new environments to explore, and with players already getting to grips with the new weapons, the atmosphere online is still a joy to drop into. With online battles allowing up to 50 gamers to play against each other, battles can be immense and chaotic, and while it has neither the fast pace of Call of Duty or the scope of Battlefield 1942, it’s still a heck of a lot of fun in its own right.
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Sadly though, the same old problems that plagued earlier games in the series have reared their ugly heads again. Visually, Team Sabre doesn’t have quite as much impact on 2004 as Black Hawk Down did in 2003, and once you’ve completed the pathetically short single player you can’t help but feel that the whole experience is a big step backwards for the series. The cracks in the engine are beginning to show, with enemy character models looking like a big blob of random textures close up, and the majority of town environments bearing a stunning resemblance to parts of Somalia visited not so long ago.
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Even worse is the biggest failure of the whole series: the lack of AI. Enemies fire blindly and wildly, sometimes missing by miles, occasionally hitting with pinpoint accuracy for no justifiable reason. Team-mates just stand there, following you, absorbing a few bullets before collapsing into a bloodied heap. On the odd occasion when they decide to let off a few rounds, don’t expect them to be accurate: as a matter of fact, it’s usually a wise idea to defuse situations yourself before they have chance to catch up and kill the hostage/shoot you in the back of the head/walk into your line of fire. They’ll do anything to ruin your day: blow up explosive barrels right next to themselves, blow up explosive barrels right next to you or even commit suicide on missions requiring their survival. It’s like they’ve come straight from a Police Academy movie. And yes, the random town folks still throw rocks at the ground, apparently it didn’t learn its lesson in the first game.
This game series really has to be looked at two ways. While not the most graphically outstanding, it does give the Delta Force series fans a great new update and is the first major title to redo the Black Hawk Down storyline and get some connection to the hit movie. Unfortunately the AI and poor graphics mean that the series can never achieve any mainstream success. It is a great multi-player game though, even if the single player mode is less then useful.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ Huge selection of maps and weapons for multiplayer mode + Not just giving a lame excuse for going back to somalia |
6.2 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Same bad graphics - Still some of the worst AI in a game since Atari |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| As long as you don't rely on the computer to be your opponent and graphics aren't a big deal to you (see counterstike fans) this game may have a place in your collection | |
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Tags: Delta Force - Black Hawk Down
Posted by Andrew on Mar 16th, 2004 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
