Delta Force Black Hawk Down/Team Sabre Review
For that reason alone I have always liked the Delta Force line of PC games. They have had four previous versions and have always included the mission editor. The games have been from mediocre to great and I have not regretted ever buying one of the games.
This one is based on the great movie by Jerry Bruckheimer, Black Hawk Down. The story line is loosely based upon the rescue and a few of the missions actually follow that. They have broken up the major portions of the rescue into some of the missions for the story line. But like all really good shooter games you don’t need a story line to have a good game.
The graphics on this game are great, not because I have a decent computer but due to the game engine. The game play is pretty good and the story line falls short but the selection of weapons and how many missions are included make up for any short comings. The Black Hawk Down part of the game has 20 missions in maps that are large.
That is one of the first impressions of the game for me. The size of some of the maps and how well the graphics hold up on them. At long range there are some problems like disappearing people and wall joints that are visible but the graphics do pretty well for all of that.
The missions are not great as far as scripting and if you want a very well planned story line you should look to the movie that the game is based upon. The game doesn’t really follow the movie really well, but that is to be expected.
What you do want in a first person shooter is action, and this game has it. From the time you start the mission, you drive in on Hummers, or fly in on Black Hawks and go to work. There are guys that run, shooting at you and your team mates and this keeps up from beginning to end.
You have your choice of close in weapons to sniper rifles, including my favorite the PSG-1. They have included 25 weapons that you have to choose from but not on all missions. For some of the missions, such as one where you have to go in quietly, they limit your choices. So you use what they give you and sometimes you restart the level due to a bad choice of weapons at the start.
Some of the missions get pretty tough, thank heaven for the saves feature. You get a variety of save slots for each mission. Some of them only have three and others have as many as six. I found that some of the harder missions don’t have enough of the saves. Or I was not learning fast enough.
Actually the game was good with the saves it had, I just had to work at getting some of the missions completed. It was a fun time. And then I got to move on to the Team Sabre expansion pack.
The Team Sabre pack was even better than Black Hawk Down. The game is an expansion so all the same thing like saves and graphics apply. But the story line is less loose and you get the idea that there is really no need for one here. The whole basis of the add on to Black Hawk Down is the defeating of drug lords and terrorists.
There are only eleven missions in the add-on but that is expected as it does not include any new great features. The missions are better scripted and the guys you are fighting act better than the first one.
For instance, in several games I have played, men fall into water and sit there, waiting for me to get around to shooting them. Not so here in Team Sabre, they rush to the shore and return fire. That is due to work by the designers scripting the game and taking into account what can happen to the AI characters in the game.
The more care put into the scripting of each mission even with a bad game engine, the better the game will be. I have played games that had really good engines but the story line was mediocre. And then there are games with mediocre graphics but I play the game over and over due to how much the game characters fight against you.
This game is one that I will be playing over again due not only to the others that have been designing their own levels but I enjoyed the game that much. I have read some reviews and do not agree with one of the common opinions for this game set. I have read that some did not like the fact that part of the mission you have to ride in to the beginning of the mission and fight against people on foot with the gun in a Hummer or on a chopper. I love the riding in the Hummers and Choppers shooting your way to the mission.
I think this makes the game more realistic instead of less personally controlled. Games that start you out in the middle of the action don’t make sense, ones that you ride in and the only place action happens is in a well defined square of land makes even less sense.
I like the fact that some missions, just like real combat, you have to fight your way in to perform your part of the action. Riding into action and defending yourself just makes sense in some of the missions.
The Delta Force line continues with the great game combination Black Hawk Down and Team Sabre. Separately the games are pretty good. Great action and a good choice of weapons coupled with very good graphics make them both a great buy. As a set they are great, going from one area of operation to another makes the game great.
Jungles and waist high grass are well rendered as you can shoot through it to take your kill shot. The games are a great buy and a very good first person shooter.
