Reviews / previews
Critics have long jumped
on Nova Logic for
making sims that were
really action games.
Now that the publisher
has finally made a
clear-cut action game in
Delta Force, maybe we
should call it a sim just
to keep them guessing.
It's not a sim, of course;
it's not even the
action/strategy hybrid
you may have expected.
While Delta Force fits
loosely into the
burgeoning 3D-squad
genre, you neither
command nor control
your comrades-in-arms.
It's very much an
infantry-combat
shoot-'em-up, and, while
it's a hardware hog with
haphazard AI, it's an
above-average game.
Delta Force casts you
as one among several
special-forces
operatives on five tours
of duty in hot spots around the globe. The atmosphere's just perfect, and it's
the reason to get the game. With tracers flying, plumes of black smoke rising,
shot-up trees collapsing, and death screams mingling with the distant whump
of explosions and crackle of small-arms fire, you are unquestionably
there-whether dealing with drug-runners in Peru or rebellion in Russia.
"Mama!" one enemy shrieked as I nailed him. I almost felt sorry for him.
But, hey, if he's just going to stand there while I'm pointing an assault weapon
at his head, what did he expect? Once combat is joined, the enemy's
pleasantly aggressive. But I found I could stand in the doorways of huts they
were inhabiting for some seconds without them taking notice of my presence.
And when they hit the deck after I opened fire, they often were facing the
wrong way.
Part of the challenge of accomplishing the 40-plus single-player missions is
helping to keep your colleagues alive. That means not shooting them by
mistake. (They're distinguished chiefly by the color of the targeting cursor.)
And it means providing support fire for them at key moments to prevent them
from being overwhelmed. Keeping them alive helps keep you alive.
However, you've got to come to them. They don't reciprocate. Delta Force
doesn't seem to have any cooperative AI. Indeed, there's no way to
communicate with other assaulters in single-player mode.
Graphically, it's about as good as the system you're playing on. With a
350MHz Pentium II and a 16MB AGP 2x video card, the resolution reached a
smooth-scrolling 800-by-600, and I had the impression I was seeing every one
of the 16 million colors.
However, on a P200 MMX with a 4MB PCI
video card, it was limited to 640-by-480, and
I had to enable Turbo mode-which degrades
graphics to boost frame rate-to get Delta
Force to run at playable speed. As a result,
the terrain was sometimes pixelated, jaggy,
or looked melted. (There's no 3D
acceleration.)
In other words, this is essentially a PII
game. It runs on a Pentium MMX system,
but I wouldn't care to guess what the frame rate would be on the minimum
P166. It plodded on a P200 machine with 64MB RAM.
The huge deathmatches (up to 32 players) on the Nova World server were fun,
but the game sometimes strained to track opponents. They'd disappear from
view only to reappear a short distance away-you can't shoot people you can't
see.
However, for the most part, Delta Force comes across as pretty realistic.
You're not super-human. You're a guy with some guns, a big old knife, maybe
some satchel charges and artillery backup. Take a couple of good shots, and
you've had it.
In this one respect, it's almost a sim.-- Peter Olafson / GamePro
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