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Reader Reviews
8 reviews. Average Rating: 5
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Publisher:  Genre: Action
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Mac OS X: 10.2.8 Mac OS Classic: Not Supported
CPU: G4 @ 1000 MHz RAM: 512 MB DVD-ROM Graphics: 64 MB VRAM |
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Delta Force: Black Hawk Down
July 22, 2004 | Eric Ford |
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Now listen up, Soldier!
Seeing how Black Hawk Down has a decidedly ‘team’ feel to all that missions, it isn’t surprising that one of the more important aspects would be the communication between commanding officers and the player out in the field. Luckily, the voice acting is superb and creates a very realistic portrayal of battle communications in the field. You will constantly be receiving transmissions from higher powers adding or changing objectives on the fly in each mission. It all adds to the realism factor in these types of games.
The rest of the sound work, including the music, is standard at best. The booms, pows and blasts have all been heard before, so nothing to say there. My biggest disappointment, however, is the music. There are some good tunes that are played throughout the game, from laid back middle-eastern sound to up-beat battle music cutting in when you’re about to enter into a hot area with lots of action. The problem? These are the only songs in the game! The fact that all these decent songs are reused over and over again detracts from a lot of the feel that they present initially.
Affirmative, mission complete!
For the most part, Black Hawk Down features the standard gameplay elements that are present in every other first person shooter on the market. Players will infiltrate (sometimes with their A.I. controlled squad teammates) buildings, blow up bridges, escort convoys, and track down hostages and other baddies. As varied as all these objectives are, they are centered on running amok and killing all the bad guys before they get you first. Thankfully, the folks at Novalogic have tried to make the experience as fun and varied as possible.
First of all, there are other friendlies on playing field, as well as non-hostile civilians. As a member of legitimate task force, one of your main directives is to only harm those that would harm you back, and not shoot at civilians. Simple, right? Well, not exactly, considering that a great deal of the enemies you will face wear the same clothes as non hostiles, and until you see them shooting at you, you won’t know if you can shoot them back. Shoot enough civilians, and its game over. In the same vein, wait long enough before taking action, and these ruthless baddies will take you down, forcing game over. Don’t forget folks, while in the middle of all this hubbub, don’t fire against your fellow soldiers. Failure to comply will have you waiting around for a medical helicopter to take your injured teammate out of the battle area or, worse, an immediate game over will ensure. All these variables definitely add to the difficulty of the game.
Before we go any further, I feel I should mention the varied destructive tools you have for getting your job done in Black Hawk Down. Since it is taking place in the modern era, you get your choice of modern guns, many offering a refreshing change of pace from the sometimes inaccurate WWII weapons. You have your machine guns, rifles, sniper weapons, shotguns, pistols, grenades (flash, flak, and smoke), and rocket launchers at your disposal. Each gun is based on a real life model, and there are explanations of them in both the manual and the game itself, so I’ll leave the rest out of here.
Speaking of difficulty, there’s something else I forgot to mention: you are very mortal in Black Hawk Down. Several good shots against you, and you’re as good as dead. Don’t be relying on medical kits to save you, either. They are few and far between, with only one or two in each mission placed at various parts. You better conserve your ammo too, because ammo packs are just as rare as medkits (and don’t be expecting to pick up weapons from dead soldiers – it just doesn’t work). Thankfully, the enemy is also very mortal and doesn’t take much to be killed (most baddies fall in one or two shots in normal difficulty). Regardless, one can never be too careful, especially against an RPG carrying bad guy that you can’t quite see while running around in a helicopter.
Okay, so this game isn’t as easy as some may think, you can still save as many times as you want and just reload, right? Right??? Well, not exactly. Each mission has a certain amount of saves that one can enact in the game. For example, an early mission may allow you to save your progress four times throughout the entire mission, while one of the later (and much harder missions) might allow the player eight total saves. Its one of the ‘features’ Novalogic has put into the game to encourage strategy and ‘smart saving.’ Personally, I’m at odds as to how I feel about the feature. It’s a novel concept, and there are many times that I didn’t even go through all the available saves. However, towards the end of the game, the missions get extremely difficult, and you will be restarting time and time again, looking to get past certain key points and then using your precious saves to get you closer and closer to the end.
Difficulty can always be a good or bad thing, and I believe it's a little of both in Black Hawk Down. On one hand, it lengthens the single player campaign, since you will find yourself restarting many a hard mission from a save. On the other hand, some missions become incredibly difficult and could even frustrate the gamer for being a little too hard. However, each mission is beatable, since I know if I can do it, many others out there can too.
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