Delta Force: Black Hawk Down

Written by Glenn Wigmore  on March 15, 2005

First Impressions: 50 players on Xbox Live? Interesting... very interesting.

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Normally, any game with the words УBlack Hawk DownФ in the title wouldn't perk my interest, namely because the movie of the same name was such a colossal piece of trash. Add to this the fact that the original game on PC had some glaring flaws and really didn't transcend the genre. However, all this being said, the game is being released on the Xbox come this April and it's got once huge selling point: 50 players over Xbox Live.

Up until this game's release, no game will have supported more than 16 players over the Live service, except for the recent patch for Star Wars: Battlefront which enabled 32-player support (which is reasonably entertaining, by the way). At first, many Live gamers might have wondered why more titles did not support more than the 16-player threshold, but after 2 years of the service it has become clear that capping the players at this level, for the majority of games, is a smart move. With voice chat, integrated features, and no real УdedicatedФ servers, it's smart to keep the player limits reasonably low and this often makes the game more manageable than it would've been with more people playing.

Still, a developer taking a big chance like this and going for 50 player over Live is mildly refreshing, to say the least. Granted, the technical challenges of this taking place are obvious, and the developers will have to get creative to make this happen. Likely, the graphics will be somewhat streamlined and proximity voice chat will be implemented to save bandwidth, and (hopefully) dedicated servers will be used. Either way, the people at Climax must be sure they can pull this off so all the power to them.

Aside from this main draw, Delta Force: Black Hawk Down features a 16-level solo campaign that is based on events from 1993 in Somalia. The conflict took place in the streets of Mogadishu as American forces battled Somalian warlords and dealt with civilians and militia at the same time during some extremely gritty street warfare. To retain some authenticity and realism (albeit from the American perspective), the game has been developed in conjunction with US Special Forces who were involved in the conflict. Throughout the missions, you'll have to undertake various task-based objectives that involve rescues, retrievals, assaults and all the standard fare for this type of shooter. The landscapes will be large and varied, and many of them are based on situations from the actual conflict. The game controls a lot like Halo, with both thumbsticks providing movement and aiming. There are auto aim features in the game, but it has not been decided whether these will be defaulted on or off for the game's release. Also akin to Halo is the use of interactive objects, such as turrets, and NPC teammates that will assist you during missions. The vehicles and weapons used during the missions are all authentic as well, with Black Hawk helicopters, APCs, assault rifles and explosives being some of the notables. Should you need to familiarize yourself with these tools or tactics, a tutorial mode is available to get you up to speed.

Calling to mind the likes of Full Spectrum Warrior or Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the game will use a class-based system for the soldiers (Rangers or Delta Force) within the game. You'll have a sniper, gunner, CQB and Medic at your disposal, and each soldier's inventory and skillset will be altered by his specialization. This type of multi-faceted squad based approach has worked well for other games (especially in the online for RTCW), but it's only on paper for this game so we'll have to wait to see how it actually turns out.

The Xbox version of this game features exclusive co-op missions that are available to play in split-screen with four players, and you can participate in adversarial modes as well. With Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and other Ubisoft titles championing co-op play, it's encouraging to see other developers getting involved in this avenue.

The aforementioned online play will support up to 8 modes of play, such as Deathmatch, CTF, King of the Hill and Search & Destroy. On Xbox Live, you will be able to use the Xbox communicator to chat to teammates or (for offline) you can issue orders to AI NPCs with the game's advanced voice recognition technology. All of the basic XBL features will be functional, including friends lists, stats, and matchmaking. Downloadable content will also be available for augmenting the game down the line.

Again, many of these ideas in Delta Force: Black Hawk Down are good on paper, but they might be less impressive once bandwidth issues, cheaters, and other superior games show themselves. The biggest challenge, obviously, will be the 50-player online and how the developers will go about coding and serving that, but let's hope they follow through on their promise (especially since they have been heavily promoting this feature) and make it a worthy addition.