Delta Force: Task Force Dagger

The Good
It's Delta Force, still the last word in First Person Shooter realism. You shoot, and the bullet travels quickly, but not instantly, and there's no one in the game who needs any more than 1 headshot to kill. You travel into a battle zone, have a short mission, then leave, like a real Special Ops agent. Also, you're not able to simply jump into any vehicle you see, like in other games like Delta Force Xtreme, as if either you can hijack any vehicle you find instantly, or every terrorist in the world is dumb enough to leave their keys in their cars and trucks. Plus, added to this particular game is the UAV, which while generally not easy enough to use to spot individual enemies, it's nice to see a real-time layout of your battlefield so you can plan your action. Another little touch added was that now you can see a plane fly overhead when you designate a target. You still don't see the bombs though. Just the explosion.

The Bad
Well, personally, I think some of the things people could criticize about this game aren't necessarily a bad thing in this case. Sure, there's no music, the graphics aren't exactly breathtaking, the enemies aren't particularly clever, and many of the missions involve minimal teamwork, but I'm fine with most of those. I've never heard of Special Forces playing music while they're on a mission, nor have I heard Afghanistan in real life referred to as "pretty", so the lack of music and bland scenery in this case just adds to the realism. As for the AI, friendly and enemy, I think they're sufficient. Enemies will turn towards you if they hear you, and shoot you if they see you, but neither friend nor foe is superhuman, meaning your allies will probably die rather quickly without your help. However, though it made the game more doable, I didn't like the excessive hesitation NPCs had, some taking up to 3 seconds after seeing an enemy to open up fire, and the excessive bad aim of some, such as when some NPCs use automatic weapons, sometimes they end up not compensating for the recoil at all, and shooting way above their targets.

But, without a major overhaul, which could hurt speed and game play, I'd say there's really only thing I'd change about this game if I was making it would be fixing the bugs. Now, Novalogic has never been known for making games bug-free, but this one seems to have more than even the average Novalogic game, and this game seems especially buggy. You have to wonder when playing the game if Novalogic did any beta testing at all before releasing the game. Its bugs are many, but here are some I noticed while playing: 1. First, and most importantly, when I first started playing, sometimes when I fired the screen would go all weird, with images flashing on and off, that wouldn't quit until I restarted the game, and would sometimes come back the very first time I fired in a level. Novalogic tech support helped me with this one, and come to find my graphics card is too new for the game. I installed an older graphics card, and that fixed most of the problems, but it also made movies look washed out on some of my media players. 2. Sometimes when I started the computer, it wouldn't acknowledge Novalogic was even in the CD-ROM drive. Usually fixed when I took it out and put it back in 3. When you drop your main weapon, if there's not a full clip in it, when you pick it back up it'll be miraculously loaded with another clip. So, if you drop, say, a M249 "Minimi" SAW machine gun, which has a 200 round clip, and before you drop it, it has 197 rounds left, and you have 1 spare magazine, if you pick it up again it will have 200 rounds left, and 0 spare magazines. Those 197 rounds just disappeared, and the weapon miraculously was reloaded sometime between when you dropped it 2 second ago and when you picked it up. It's the opposite when you load. If you have 2 shots left and 1 spare ammo clip for the SAW when you saved, when you load the game you'll have 200 shots left and 1 spare ammo clip, as if exactly 198 extra bullets appeared in your gun when you loaded. 3. In the last mission, I was walking down an underground ramp, and suddenly appeared 30 feet away, above ground. It only happened once, but it was weird. 4. Sometimes when you demolish a building, be it by air strike, SLAMs, or whatever, it'll explode like other buildings, but then its graphic won't change, and it'll look exactly the same as before the explosion. I'm not sure if this happens with other buildings, but it happened to me when I tried to demolish a small house. 5. When you smash a window, by firing it or an explosion or whatever, if you go up to the window, it'll look like there's still a window there, even though firing again at the "phantom window" doesn't do anything.

Also, though it's not so much a bug, it seems a bit unrealistic to get intel (as in, knowing the exact location of soldiers and direction their facing) on people in buildings or deep underground. Kudos for Novalogic for not giving intel in missions set in cloudy or foggy weather, but I just don't see how it's possible to get the exact location of every soldier below 40 feet of dirt. It did make things easier, though.

The Bottom Line
It's Delta Force. If you're not a fan from the start, chances are you'll like at least one Delta Force game out of sheer frustration. It's one of the only FPS games set in modern times, a rarity these days with so many set in such eras as World War II, the Vietnam War, the near future, and the distant future. It's still one of the few games that brings you closest to real combat experience in modern warfare, even more so with this game because it's set in a real conflict, instead of fighting fictional terrorists like in prior Delta Force games. If you get sick of playing games where you can dodge a bullet fired 20 feet away at you (such as in Destroy All Humans), or 3rd person games in general where for some reason you're watching your character from slightly above its head, and need to awkwardly maneuver the camera to see what you want to see, or are sick and tired of any of the numerous aspects of games that fly in the face of realism, Delta Force is the game to play. It may not simulate exactly what goes on in a typical

As for this game in particular, if you could only buy one game in the Delta Force series, I'd instead recommend Landwarrior or Xtreme. Landwarrior is less buggy, has a more linear storyline, and takes you to a greater variety of locales. Xtreme is also one of the "prettiest" Delta Force games, where you'll find better, more modern graphics and some new weapons like Flashbangs. However, if you see this game at the bargain rack of store for less than $20, I'd suggest buying it. If you have the right graphics card, its bugs won't be serious enough to really bother you too much, and you'll probably have a good time playing it.

As for this game in particular, if you could only buy one game in the Delta Force series, I'd instead recommend Landwarrior or Xtreme. Landwarrior is less buggy, has a more linear storyline, and takes you to a greater variety of locales. Xtreme is also one of the "prettiest" Delta Force games, where you'll find better, more modern graphics and some new weapons like Flashbangs. However, if you see this game at the bargain rack of store for less than $20, I'd suggest buying it. If you have the right graphics card, its bugs won't be serious enough to really bother you too much, and you'll probably have a good time playing it.