Delta Force: Black Hawk Down – Review

From my days as a cinema projectionist, I remember well, Black Hawk Down, as the single loudest film of my career, much loved by people who like substandard, by the numbers films at least it was relatively exciting. But can a game sharing it’s name be as exciting, especially one which is entering the already thoroughly saturated squad based FPS genre?

Sharing a pigeon hole with games like Rainbow 6, and even SOCOM could put the pressure on the very best of titles so I’m always a bit concerned when a new target enters the fray.

Move out – Gameplay
As a genre one of the most important aspects of any squad based shooter is how you communicate with your grunts, in the case of Black Hawk Down this is not very well. The, so called “Comman Wheel” which bears no resemblance in appearance or practicality to any form of wheel, is used to allocate a slightly sparse number of orders to your group as a whole – these include “go to point”; “cover me”; “fall in”; “wait” and “stop”. It’s really quite irritating to have so few options and to be unable to order your squad one at a time.

Speaking of which, in one particular scenario, I sent my three squad members down to the ground floor of a building and out into the court yard, taking care to execute with caution each of their manoeuvres from cover to cover, whilst I stayed on the roof of said building and surgically and expertly picked off any swine who dared take a shot at one of my men. Quite pleased with my work, I strolled out the front door to meet my men, when about fifteen enemies who I can assure you weren’t there before were triggered to appear out of the ether, from behind walls I had checked, buildings I had raided and shrubbery my men had been using as cover minutes before.

I also ran into problems as I lay prone my way through shrubbery in the harsh desert sun, carefully hidden from enemy view, suddenly I was fired upon, before I had time to think about how they had spotted me I had double tapped the shooter and his body lay baking in the midday heat. Wait a minute… while I’m crawling around trying not to be seen, my squad are walking behind me bolt upright, apparently unable to get down, and do as I do, or even be ordered independently, so if you need to do anything stealthily, you need to do so without support.

This is not the only annoyance to arise from the other members of your team as you negotiate the various levels, but I fear that to go through them all would unfairly tip the scales on this game, which is actually a lot of fun. Missions are quite individual and vary from on rails shooting from the backs of cars and trucks, to free roaming the expansive maps which really make this title stand out, they’re really quite big.

Moving around is easy and so is aiming and although certain controls are at times confusing as a whole the game handles well.

I got your six – Graphics
Lets start with the bad bits, the aesthetics on the PS2 are so-so, nothing to get you looking out the address book to write home about it, reminiscent of slightly earlier PS2 titles, makes you wonder about why more people aren’t stretching this machine as it nears the end of its life span. There are a couple of nice lighting effects here and there and you shouldn’t feel too cheated by the visuals.

Now the good bit, draw distance is exceptional that dot mile in the distance, use your scope and holy cow it’s a bandit at 12 o’clock, take him down.

Atten-hut! – Sound
All speech is subtitled well, and suits the situations. Effects on the weapons fire, explosions and vehicles are pedestrian and not that exciting either way.

The music is truly dire, unfitting and inappropriate, it’s loud and irritating, however a simple adjustment to zero percent on music will have sorted.

Girls, in the army? Whatever next? – Female Gamer Angle
Ladies love a bit of war, and Black Hawk Down should be reasonably enjoyable to both the sexes, reasonably irrespective of which bits you’ve got. Of course this being war, if it’s a playable female character of female NPC’s you’re looking for, this – like most the others in this genre – will leave you wanting.

On the whole Black Hawk Down is basically alright. There’s no major complaints that can’t easily be sorted, but at the same time there are no major plus points which push the game to a higher level. It just fails to make the grade in a category that includes some of the most popular games, in the most popular genre in gaming.

Review by Pete