Delta Force Black Hawk Down Review

The Gameplay

Black Hawk Down takes place during the United States operations in Somalia. One of the helicopters was downed and you play a squad leader that has to command some of the same missions that the real-life counterparts had to command.

There are 16 missions you have to get through and most of them are just plain boring. Mostly, all you do is go from the beginning of the level to the end of the level shooting as many bad guys as you can. Oh sure, you have your other objectives, but they aren’t terribly hard. One of the main problems with Black Hawk Down is the in-game presentation. Your command interface is not real intuitive, forcing you to take a few seconds to actually pause the action to get your bearings. Then, when you’re ready to get back into the action, you have to make sure that your commands are being followed. This isn’t good in the middle of a firefight. Losing precious seconds could cost you your life, as it did when I tried to use the crappy interface.

The Graphics

It seems that Black Hawk Down was ported directly from the PC and that game came out 2 years ago. The graphics are lacking in smooth textures and movement and (this seems to be a problem with historic war shooters) the frame rate really suffers when lots of bullets are flying and good guys and bad guys are running all over. If there’s one good thing about the graphics, the atmosphere of war is captured decently.

The Controls

I played the game on the Xbox and I heard that the controls were disappointing when compared to the PS2 version. I don’t know about that, but they were uncomfortable. Trying to switch between weapons became a nightmare for the simple fact they weren’t in an discernible order and it was a roulette finding the weapons you wanted. Maybe I had something set wrong or I could have fixed that, but I didn’t want to play this game for another minute after an hour or so.

Thompson’s Two Cents

Super Hardcore war fanatics will like this game. Probably not love Black Hawk Down; just like it. And I do mean super hardcore. If you want to experience what our troops went through in Somalia with this situation, read the book or watch the movie because that time is better spent than playing this game.