So that’s what happened to the ‘A Team’ Review

So that’s what happened to the ‘A Team’

“In October of 1977, the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-DELTA was

secretly formed to deal with the growing threat of world terrorism. At Fort

Bragg, elite Delta Force operatives, recruited mainly from the 82nd Airborne,

Special Forces Green Berets and U.S. Army Rangers, rigorously train in hostage

rescues, specialized reconnaissance and other counter terrorism techniques.

Highly skilled in CQB (Close Quarters Battle), armed with the best equipment,

and able to infiltrate as civilians, Delta Force is ready to deal with the most

dangerous world threats. Due to the extremely sensitive nature of these low-visibility

missions, the U.S. Department of Defense still does not officially acknowledge

the existence of Delta Force. You are the hunter. This is what you’ve trained

for… what you live for… YOU are Delta Force.”

This is

no hype. Every once in a while you find a game that actually delivers the excitement

and level of tension it promises on the back of the box. Every once in a while

a new game comes out that has it all. This is one of those games. Novalogic

did good. They did real good.

Where do I start? This game really rocks. First off, let’s begin with the gameplay.

One of Delta Force‘s greatest strengths is the level of reality this

game brings to the PC. Ignore the graphics and sound and other dressings; you

could actually buy this game for its gameplay alone. It is that much fun. But

beware, it is extremely addictive.

You are sent on 40 different single player/cooperative missions spanning five

continents. These include airfield takedowns in Asia, destroying Nuclear and

Bio terrorism in Russia, capturing terrorists in Africa, and more. When the

back of the box says “gut-wrenching," they mean it.

Unfortunately, there’s very little in between the missions to help flesh out

the story. There are no voices and no movies at all, only pages of text to help

guide your way. Functional, but boring.

You can play in either 1st or 3rd person across miles and miles of vast outdoor

environments. Novalogic took the time to make the environment so large that

you could literally go in any direction off your designated mission path and

not hit the end of the computer generated terrain for quite some time.

You can choose from a complete arsenal of real-life weapons like the H&K MP5-suppressed

for close, silent combat or the Barret .50 caliber Sniper Rifle for those long-range

kills. You can also toss grenades, lay claymore mines, and even slit throats

with your trusty knife. Hehe.

The enemy AI is great. They communicate with each other, look for you, aim

at you and hunt you down or call in reinforcements while fleeing from your ‘bad

ass’. To succeed, you must sneak up on your enemy. If you are spotted and alert

them to your presence, it’s killing time…and sometimes they are the ones who

get to do the killing.

Once spotted, the enemy will hide and target you from a distance. Your only

hope of taking them down is to use your binoculars to locate their general location

and then switch to your scope and snipe them. This is really fun, provided they

don’t get you first. There’s nothing like dropping a target with one bullet

from 400 meters, staring straight into each other’s scopes; only you’re just

a little faster. In many ways, it can be compared to Tenchu:

Stealth Assassins for the PlayStation. It’s hide, patience, patience, and

then strike!

There are a full range of human movements, which are brought to life by motion

capture for both your character and the enemy. I cannot emphasize enough the

level of realism the characters have. For example, when the enemies speak or

yell out to each other and scream or gurgle blood as they die, they do it in

their various languages depending upon their country of origin. If you’re in

Russia, you’ll hear Russian. If you’re in Asia, you’ll hear some authentic Asian

screams and taunts. When you or your enemies die, everyone dies realistically,

from clutching the entry wound to crawling on the ground, gasping and expiring.

Now, it’s not like Quake II or Unreal.

The death scenes and violence are NOT gratuitous and gruesome with blood and

body parts everywhere. They

are more real… and more pitiful. It usually only takes one shot for you or

your enemy to go down. You don’t get a life meter. You cannot just go into a

camp blasting and expect to complete your mission. There is a real need for

strategy, stealth and patience – not to mention cold-hearted brutality.

Furthermore, you really need to work with your other Delta Force teammates

to complete your mission. This brings me to another element of the game. On

top of fighting smart enemies, you will actually fight alongside smart computer

controlled teammates. They hunt with you, kill the enemy with you, cover you,

and die like you if they are not careful.

This is where the multiplayer option comes in handy, where up to 30 players

can play in each game and actually flesh out both your soulless computer controlled

teammates and enemies. Playing through Novaworld (Novalogic’s own online gaming

server) is effortless – just one click and you’re up and running with other

players from around the world. Then the real melee begins.

The music is sparse, which adds to the tension. The sound in general is very

life-like, with great sounding gunfire, believable explosions, and of course

the aforementioned enemy chatter. Just crank up the volume and tell the neighbors

to wear earplugs.

And the graphics are awesome. The level of detail is great, although this is

double-edged sword. MMX is required and a Pentium II is highly recommended.

For those of you out there with lesser systems, you won’t really enjoy the intended

level of detail and smooth frame rates. In fact, without a PII, you won’t be

able to play in 800×600, nor will you be able to enjoy true 65 million colors.

This is a Voxel based 3D engine, which relies on processor power instead of

nifty video cards. In other words, that Voodoo II card won’t help you one bit.

This is really Delta Force‘s biggest drawback: the fact that it is so

hardware intensive. Many players out there don’t have the system to play it

(at least not well). Then again, in 3 to 6 months it probably won’t matter because

everyone will have bought a PII 400 and the manufacturers will have again raised

the standard. You can’t win. It’s time to send in Delta Force to take

out those corporate monkeys.

In all, Delta Force is a great mix of a 3D-shooter and strategy sim.

It’s the thinking man’s answer to Doom or Quake. If you have a

good computer, go out and buy this game. It’s a super groovy, kick your gluteus

maximus, must-have PC game. Comprende?