Delta Force: Black Hawk Down

Richard fuels the public's obsession with all things wartime in this review.

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As the games industry grows its ties to other entertainment mediums does so also. It is no longer unusual for games to be based on a television series, or a book, and movies have long been a source of material. What is changing is the improvement in quality these titles show as companies on both sides realise the commercial benefits attainable. The caveat to this growth is that companies must start to show a more mature attitude. The games industry cannot pretend to operate in a vacuum. That Novalogic would choose to release Black Hawk Down amidst the backdrop of war in Iraq is highly questionable. I would add though that software does not age well which would have been a factor. The setting of the game is Operation Restore Hope, a US led action in Somalia in 1992/93 to try and capture General Mohammed Farah Aided who was interfering with UN food convoys. During one operation, codenamed 'Irene', the US suffered its worst casualties since the Vietnam war and it serves as a footnote in history to the dangers of a modern high-tech military attempting to operate in an urban environment. The story of Black Hawk Down was popularised by the Mark Bowden book and later the Ridley Scott film. It is a story of heroism and the US military mantra that no one gets left behind. The Novalogic game cannot do justice to these complex issues and their use of real footage of Somalian refugees in the opening cut scene was a little unsettling. It would have perhaps been more prudent to have kept events slightly more abstract. These issues aside, if you take Black Hawk Down as an action game based on an action film it is exhilarating stuff.

Playing 'Delta Force - Black Hawk Down', to give it its full title, is like playing through a series of brilliantly choreographed action sequences. Each of the sixteen missions is relatively short, averaging around ten minutes, but Novalogic have crammed more into those few minutes than most first person shooters manage in an hour. It is an approach I applaud them for. With pseudo realism bleeding into so many games I often find that the life of the title has been drained out by forcing players to crawl, peek, sneak, duck, snipe and yawn their way through every pixel of the map. The Delta Force series itself struggled to marry the demands of an arcade game with the elements of realism. With Black Hawk Down they have finally succeeded.

As a taste let me describe the first mission of the game. After a brief load you are sitting atop a humvee manning a .50 caliber machine gun waiting to head out. Your in a small shanty town with huts made of corrugated iron. People mill around you as your convoy heads out and you are briefed on the way. A UN food convoy has come under fire and you have to help secure it. As you head out you hear gun fire in the distance attacking the lead of the convoy. You round the bend in the hills seeing the landscape stretching out for miles around you. Once that first bullet goes past your head though, politics and all that crap just goes right out the window. There is gunfire, radio chatter, a truck explodes sending a burning tire flying through the air. You're firing like crazy as your humvee bounces along the track, mowing down enemies as they flood over the hills. You make it to the UN food trucks and park, then suddenly a rocket from the distance flies over your head exploding behind you. You're under fire but you've got to hold the position. You lay down suppressing fire but there are too many of them. You need aerial support. In comes a black hawk swooping over you with mini-guns raining down bullets. The area is secure but a road block needs to be cleared. Dismounting your humvee you continue on foot, following a small squad of rangers to the road block. You shoot at the trucks, explosions and fire everywhere, then move in to kill any militia left standing. Once the road block is clear the convoy can move out. A black hawk comes in to pick you up, as it lands it kicks up dust in your face. You jump in and man the mini gun as it takes off providing cover for the convoy. More 'skinnies' attempt to attack the convoy as you swoop around, at times so low the dust from the rotars obscures your vision. The ride is smoother, noticeably more so than the humvee, and the mini gun purrs as you squeeze the trigger, each bullet impacting into the ground with a ferocious energy that creates a small plume of debris. After a frenzied flight the convoy is finally out of danger and the mission ends. Phew, and all that happens within the space of about five minutes.