Delta Force: Black Hawk Down

The Good
I was actually surprised by the quality of this game. While I enjoyed the previous Delta Force games, they weren't exactly the pinnacle of realistic shooters. It was neat that you died in one or two hits, and that there was (literally?) infinite land for you to roam around in, but unless you wanted to take a huge risk you'd just grab your sniper rifle and play "Shooting Gallery" for about fifteen minutes then move on to the next level.

Black Hawk Down is in many ways similar to previous Delta Force games, but improves on every aspect. Because you spend so much time in urban areas, a sniper rifle is not always your best choice, and the enemy AI has improved greatly. Bad guys will take cover, man machine guns, do all kinds of great stuff to keep you on your toes. And as previous Delta Force games, the mission areas are God-damned gigantic.

And boy are some of the missions just...epic. One particular level starts you out at your base and you get a call that it's time to go into combat. You and nearly a hundred other soldiers all run down the road toward the helipads where several Black Hawk 'copters are waiting. You attach yourself to the Black Hawk and take off, along with several other Black Hawks. You fly up and away from the base, cruising over the ocean area, watching behind you as your base disappears into the distance. In front of you is a city, which you soon find yourself flying over, just barely over the roofs of the very detailed buildings. Below you you see people running around, doing their business, and you watch as soldiers go charging down the streets to meet their adversaries. A man calls out "RPG!" and the Black Hawk jerks to the left, narrowly avoiding the rocket-propelled grenade. As the Black Hawk realigns itself, you take the shot and take down enemy soldier who launched the RPG. Other Black Hawks start dropping soldiers into buildings to capture enemy leaders and rescue hostages, while your Black Hawk circles the area so that you and other soldiers can provide cover fire for the infiltrators. Finally it is your turn -- you descend onto the roof of a building, and take out the soldiers nearby. Other soldiers accompany you and they tell you to save the hostages in the building you landed on. And that's when the mission really starts.

That's just one of several missions that were, in a word, breathtaking. All this happens in one level, with a very short loading time and almost never a frame-rate drop. There can be a hundred things going on on screen at once, with a massive city and landscape looming in front of you.

I would say the best part about this game is that. The sheer size of the levels and memorable level design. One level requires you to go through an area at night, careful not to be spotted. Another requires you to make your way across a beach into a town while avoiding mines and artillery fire. Another mission requires you to hop on the back of a humvee, arm a machine gun and defend a food caravan. There are plenty of missions, each one better than the one before it.

The Bad
Sometimes the game just gets downright silly. There are levels where it's almost impossible to tell enemy soldiers from civilians, so, well, you just gun everyone down. Some levels you'll fail if you pull this sort of thing, but a lot of them don't really have any rules on civilian killing. I found myself pulling out a pistol and shooting up the people who threw rocks at me and told me to "Go away."

The sheer numbers of those you kill is a bit staggering. It's more like genocide than "tactical combat". I don't think there is a mission in which you don't kill more than a hundred soldiers and/or civilians.

Novalogic seemed to borrow the brain-dead AI from Rainbow Six. Your soldiers are all fricken useless. They can't hit a damn thing and never take cover. I wish there was a command to tell them to sit their asses down and wait for me to take out the enemy, because some missions require them to stay alive, and they ain't gonna do they on their own! The enemy AI is just as bad, but that's okay since they're so expendable.

The Bottom Line
A better name for this game could have been "Towell-Head Massacre 2000", since that's what it really is. It's much better than previous Delta Force games, and some levels are just amazing. The graphics are great and the action is non-stop, but really, it's just sort of silly how many people you kill in this game. Serious Sam has nothing on a US Soldier in Somalia.