Hands On with Blackhawk Down
I got a chance to play the upcoming FPS Delta Force: Blackhawk Down today at E3. The game is set in Mogadishu during the 1992 time frame when the movie Blackhawk down took place. I sampled the single player mode only, but I was told the multi-player mode is fairly good. The first mission I played was the classic escort mission, which broke with tradition and was actual fun. At the start of the mission you manned the second Humvee’s machine gun and the AI drove you down the road as the enemies swarmed your Humvee. What made this mission fun was firing the machine gun felt like you firing a real machine gun. For example if I fired the gun in bursts I found it easier to hit guys, but if I just held down the fire button I found I could not hit a darn thing. The thing I really like was if you put a burst into a bad guy he went down real fast like he would in the real world. I also liked the random guys firing RPGs at you who could not hit the backside of the barn, just like it happened in Mogadishu. All of this combined together to make me fell like I was Ranger battling the bad guys in Mogadishu.
After we reached our objective for the first mission I was required to get out of the Humvee and take out an enemy compound. You could play this mission had multiple ways you could play it out, you could go in guns blazing or you could sneak around and take everyone using stealth. I tried both ways and both ways where fun. What I loved the most about this mission when I started firing on the bad guys, a lot the bad guys fled instead fighting to the last man. Again making this level feel like how it would really happen if you where a Ranger in Mogadishu. After I defeated the bad guys, a Blackhawk touched down and we hoped a ride on it back to the base. While on the helicopter you manned a Vulcan machine gun (the one with rotating barrels) and had to again fight off swarms of bad guys. This time was even scarier as they where in trucks firing RPGs at you, forcing the helicopter to duck and weaving to avoid all the RPG the bad guys where firing at us. Again I loved this level because the machine gun was fun and felt very realistic to play with. Another thing that was really cool was during all the mission you had you had squad mates who actually offered support. The only downside I found about Delta Force: Blackhawk Down was that the graphics looked very poor. For example all the character’s face made them look like goofy. The most annoy thing graphically was that the Mogadishu bad guys where looked like ghosts and looked like they where hovering through the air. I am looking forward to seeing Delta Force: Blackhawk Down in stores, but I am going to wait till it drops in price to buy it. The game was fun but from what I saw in the preview it is not a must buy for. The above preview was for the Playstation 2 version.
For the XBox version ignore everything I said about the graphics, it looks alright but it is a lot crisper and cleaner than the Playstation 2 version. Also in the XBox version in the same mission I had to do more stuff. Going in guns blazing on the second mission got you killed and it was a lot harder. I would also rate the XBox version worth buying at launch day if you are an FPS fan.