Delta Force: Land Warrior (PC)

...red and yellow, with the Delta Force’s trademark ‘broken triangle’ logo emblazoned proudly on the front. Inside, we have an instruction manual, a keyboard overlay, and a single game CD. Excellent. On the reverse of the box, we see a few screenshots, which look pretty good, and the minimum system requirements – more on those later.

Time to have a quick browse through the manual, to familiarise ourselves with ...
...I’m pleased to say that Delta Force – Land Warrior doesn’t disappoint.

This section requires quite a lot of explanation, but it’s worth reading, even if I do say so myself!

Firstly, let’s mention the ‘characters’. Although you only play as one individual, there are five different characters (or roles, if you prefer) you can assume. Disregarding their names, we have five categories ... more

After much intensive training, I’m now a fully fledged member of the ‘Delta Force’, America’s answer to our Special Airborne Service (SAS) commandos.

OK, well not quite. But I have been playing a lot of this first-person perspective shooting game, from software house Novalogic. Anyone ever fancied being a commando without so much as a drill instructor in sight? Now’s your chance – let’s have a look at this game and see what’s what.

THE PACKAGING

Well, the box is a blaze of orange, red and yellow, with the Delta Force’s trademark ‘broken triangle’ logo emblazoned proudly on the front. Inside, we have an instruction manual, a keyboard overlay, and a single game CD. Excellent. On the reverse of the box, we see a few screenshots, which look pretty good, and the minimum system requirements – more on those later.

Time to have a quick browse through the manual, to familiarise ourselves with the controls. Looks quite slimline, this manual – ah, well, all we have to do is shoot a few bad guys, right? How hard can that be?

THE MANUAL – ANTI-TERRORISM IN THREE EASY LESSONS

Well, not quite. Here we have an overview of what the real-life ‘Delta Force’ actually is (an elite commando unit, in case you hadn’t guessed!) and, more importantly, the game controls and how to play.
The game controls are fairly similar to other games of this genre; in other words, movement is controlled with a combination of mouse movement and keyboard controls – although you can configure a joystick or gamepad according to your preference. The keyboard overlay provided seems like overkill to me; although there are a number of key commands, most of these are fairly easy to remember – press M for a new Magazine in your current weapon, G for Mission Goals and so on. So in summary, this looks easy enough to pick up and play – no complex key commands to learn, and a handy, if a tad unncecessary, overlay for the keyboard.
We are also treated to a description of the various weapons in the manual – extremely unhelpful, save the fact that you can see which weapon has a secondary firing mode – usually a grenade launcher or a sniper scope – and its range and rate of fire.
The final major part of the manual is an explanation of the five characters in the game, and it’s this part that makes very little sense when read without playing the game. I’ll cover these ‘characters’ in the next section….

GAMEPLAY – LOCK AND LOAD, SOLDIER!

The most important aspect of any game is how it plays, regardless really of graphics, sound and other bits and pieces. If a game is playable and enjoyable, it will sell well, simple as. I’m pleased to say that Delta Force – Land Warrior doesn’t disappoint.

This section requires quite a lot of explanation, but it’s worth reading, even if I do say so myself!

Firstly, let’s mention the ‘characters’. Although you only play as one individual, there are five different characters (or roles, if you prefer) you can assume. Disregarding their names, we have five categories – Close-Quarter combat expert, Medic, Heavy Gunner, Sniper and Grenadier.

In essence, and in terms of single and multiplayer, these different characters all have different abilities and strengths – for example, the sniper character is more accurate and steady when using weapons with a scope; the grenadier is accurate with explosives / grenades, the heavy gunner with the machine gun and so on. These characters do have other ‘abilities’ – for example, the heavy gunner is meant to be able to absorb more damage than the other four characters, but to be honest, these abilities aren’t overly obvious in the game and don’t have a significant influence on play as a whole.

Being a first-person shooter (or FPS as they're known), you control the commando as if you were looking at the world through his / her eyes - a technique first introduced in the 1908s with a game called 'Doom'. As far as the missions and their objectives go, they are all fairly similar in this game - eliminate resistance in an area, rescue some hostages, steal some papers - anything that involves shooting bad guys, really!

So you chose your character and start the Campaign mode – although you can dive into a single, one-off mission or a training course if you wish – here you receive your briefing, mission objectives and have the opportunity to select your own weapons to take into combat. There is a good choice; I’m not sure what the differences between all the guns are, but you have some broad categories of heavy assault weapons, smaller automatic weapons, sniper rifles, explosives and pistols. There is a ‘recommended’ list, so if you’re not sure or you’re not fussed about selecting your own ordnance, you can just use the recommended weapons and dive right in.

So, in we go – for the first mission, we start out on a helicopter over a desert – I can hear the base letting me know what I need to do and where I need to go. So the ‘copter lands, and I hit the ground running. The sand is, well, pretty plain, but the game as a whole has a good variety of scenery and there is a fair amount of attention to detail – adds to the gameplay. My solider I’m controlling can run, walk, crouch / sneak or lay prone / crawl. These different ‘postures’ allow you to sneak up on an enemy and, to be fair, posture can make the difference between winning and losing. Example – you run onto a hilltop to snipe at the soldiers, you stick out like a sore thumb, so by the time you have activated the scope on the weapon, which is wobbling like a jelly because you’re standing, you’ve been shot.

However, if you were to crawl up to the hill….you go undetected and your weapon scope has a lot less movement in it, allowing you to pick off your target and move on.

This game places a fair amount of emphasis on realism – there’s no ‘health meter’ or ‘power up’ packs to be found floating around; a couple of shots and your soldier will die. It’s that simple. There’s just one thing that bothers me though, and that’s the enemy AI….

AI stands for Artifical Intelligence. Obviously the computer enemies have to behave in a certain way; after all, it’s essentially a whole lot of computer code that is telling them how to behave. You would expect them to run and hide, call for reinforcements and generally behave like , well, like bad guys!

I’m sorry to say, however, that the AI is laughable. If you have two men standing together and you shoot one of them with a sniper rifle, the other seems relatively unconcerned – he might do a bit of shouting, he might even run round a bit, but that’s your lot. No cry for help, no reinforcements, nothing. It’s also a bit disconcerting when you think you’re being stealthy and quiet, sneaking up on an installation, only to peer through your binoculars and see the enemy frantically running round like you’ve been spotted.

In short, even on its hardest difficulty setting, don’t expect anything like an outflanking manouever from the enemy – in fact, don’t even expect them to react with any sense – very often they will sit in one place and just watch as you round a corner, for example and gun them down!

The one saving grace with this game, though, is the freedom that you are given to complete the mission. The landscapes are enormous; so big that you can just go running off into the hills and ignore the mission!!

This gives the player a much greater freedom to choose a strategy and a plan for each mission. There are a few obvious choices for certain missions – for example, a convoy ambush is more for a heavy gunner than a medic / swimmer, whereas a mission involving a raid on a city / buildings is more suited to the Close-Quarter Battle expert. By and large, though, the way in which a mission is completed is entirely down to the individual. Do you run in, guns blazing and grenades flying, or do you run for miles round your target, using the sniper rifle to pick off enemies, the just walk into a compound with no opposition? Thankfully, we are given that choice – apart from a few missions, as I said, there is really no right or wrong way to go about completing them. Another good example – in one mission, you are called upon by your base camp to sneak into the back of a truck, which will drive you undetected into the enemy compound. You can, if you wish, just blow up the truck and make your own way to the compound – it’s a lot harder, and you’ll be noticed and shot at by guards en-route, but it’s entirely possible to do!

In many games, particularly those in this genre, this freedom is all too rare. Shame really – I rather like it.

GRAPHICS – ARE YOU EYEBALLIN’ ME SOLDIER?

Graphics are reasonable, if a little two-dimensional where the enemy is concerned. The gun models are excellent, as are the muzzle flashes – although the clouds of blood that seem to erupt from a downed enemy are a bit strange. Vehicle models aren’t bad, which sums up the whole graphical content of the game really – not bad. The night vision goggles though, when employed, make everything appear in shades of green – excellent! The dawn / dusk effects are also well done, I feel, and as far as the landscape goes, there are enough nice touches to keep you interested.

One minor niggle though….even without binoculars or the scope of a weapon activated, you can see tiny little black dots moving about on the landscape. When investigated, these are in fact enemy soldiers – so simply looking for the black dots allows you to pick them off from a safe distance!

Surely there must have been a way round this?

SOUND – LISTEN UP, PEOPLE!

As far as audio goes, what there is is fine, for the most part. Guns sound decent and meaty, as do explosions – the voices sound suitably military, and radio hiss and crackle can be heard.

My only problem with the sound, and it is rather a major problem, is that there are only two or three different voices for the bad guys. In addition to this, they only know about five sentences between them. There’s never any variety, and when they are shot, their death sequence is laughable – they roll about, wailing and screaming for about five seconds after they’ve been hit. Not even a further shot will silence them – although a more stealthy, soundless kill can be achieved with a pistol shot or, better yet, by slitting their throats with the combat knife (the gurgling sound they make then is comical!).

For me, this takes some of the realism away – shooting an enemy results almost always in pantomime-style death, that even the campest of performers would be proud of.

STAND BY FOR EXFILTRATION…

Well, you’ve heard the good and bad points of this game, and to summarise, it’s a lot of fun, very playable, if a touch unrealistic in points. Even on its hardest difficulty level, you’ll be done with it after a week or two, and whilst the story / plotline is quite compelling (it’s worth playing to the finish just for the last mission!), it’s not going to last.

Which is why there’s a multiplayer option…….

Logging on under some ridiculous pseudonym, I managed to get myself shot, stabbed, and killed in a variety of ways. But it did add a whole new dimension to the game – realism. My main criticism of this game is the AI, but add humans into the equations, and you’ve got yourself a real winner in my book.

Almost, anyway. I’m sorry, and I know people will disagree, but Half Life : Counter Strike does this better, I think. As far as I’m aware, it’s also more popular, too.

As a cheap game goes (expect to pay no more than £15-20 for this) it’s not bad – but everything in this game has been done bigger and better elsewhere.

The good news for the future, though, is that Novalogic seem to have learnt from their mistakes in the latest instalment of the Delta Force series of games – Black Hawk Down.

Watch this space…

 

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