Delta Force 2

"A great First Person Shooter that needs polishing."

I don´t actually own this title but I have rented it various times when a friend of mine brings his computer over for multiplayer games. Maybe I should buy it once and for all... (please excuse any spelling mistakes, and if I rant on and on, English is not my native language)

Main Description:

Delta Force 2 is a war-oriented, tactical FPS (First Person Shooter). It's main difference with other games of the kind, is that most of it takes place outdoors, over nicely done hills and valleys, and the landscape is huge, meaning you may have to travel A LOT to get from point A to point B.
Before each mission, you are given some objectives and the possibility to change your equipment. When you're ready, click on ''Start'', and off you go!

GRAPHICS: 7/10

The graphics are both good and bad. On the good side we have these beautiful hills and valleys, which offer a totally different experience when it comes to choosing a place to hide and snipe, or choosing the best way to enter an enemy base, using the landscape to your advantage. On the bad side, however, you need a powerful TNT or TNT2 card in order to use hardware accelerated graphics. 3dfx is not supported, and I can only run the game smoothly at 400 x 300 resolution, which makes it difficult (if not impossible) to spot enemies at a certain distance. So probably on a better graphics card the game looks awesome, but I can't review on that since I haven't seen it. Also, the insides of buildings look rather dull and the walls are paper-thin, so if an enemy is standing right next to a wall, his arms clip out to the other side and you can even shoot at him from the other side. Other than that the game looks great.

SOUND: 10/10

The sound in this game is simply amazing and plays an important role, since you really depend on it to find out where enemies are shooting from (because you can't see very far unless you have a TNT, or a high tolerance for low frame rates). There is no in-game music, but come on, if you were really there in real life, would you be listening to your walkman as you try to approach a base unnoticed? I think not. Also a nice attention to sound speed has been made. While I was playing with my friend head-to-head, I noticed that when he fired his gun at a distance from me, it took a second or so for me to hear the shot on my computer, at a lower volume. Brilliant.

GAMEPLAY: 7/10

Gameplay is the most important aspect of a game for me, even if the graphics are not the best. Delta Force 2 is challenging, and fun, but it can also be frustrating. As I mentioned, before each mission you can choose what weapons you want to carry. You have to choose a main weapon, a secondary weapon, and two extras. For main weapon you can choose from a variety of rifles and machine guns. Machine guns are useful for medium distance since they fire rapidly. Sniper rifles serve their purpose well, but are rather useless at medium range and with people surrounding you, since they take a long time to reload. Your secondary weapon is a hand gun, which can be silenced, and is useful if you want to pick out enemies unnoticed, but you have to be close up and if you miss, he'll panic and alert the other guards. The extras can be extra ammo, a kevlar suit, a camouflage suit, a bazooka, a small video camera (which I´ve never tried, but it seems useless) and other stuff I can't remember. You also carry 5 grenades. Once in the mission, you have a minimap on the corner of the screen with a line drawn that you have to follow to reach your objective, usually an enemy base. Notice that you don't need to follow the line exactly, and it's usually better to take an alternative route to avoid guards, or to be in a better position when you encounter them. The missions themselves are usually clean up the base and sometimes escort hostages or capture enemy officials. Also there are vehicles, such as trucks, tanks and helicopters. While you cannot control these directly, you can sometimes ''get a free ride''. For example, you can get in the back of an enemy truck as it heads towards the enemy base, and enter the base without the guards seeing you, which is a nice touch. Tanks can be very annoying, as they have much better aiming than ground troops and to take them out you need to use grenades or use a nice toy which is the laser-guided-air-strike, but you´ll have to see that for yourself as it's difficult to explain. The only major complaint I have is that when you die you have to start all over again because you can't save, and also you don't have a health bar or anything and they can really kill you with just one shot or two. But I guess this just adds to the tension in the game, so it's not really bad. Another problem is that when you shoot at a guard, the ones around him may see you (not usually), they stand still and wait for you to shoot them (usually) or the don't even notice and just keep patrolling...

MULTIPLAYER: 7/10

(Note: I´ve only played against 1 other person, so I don't know about games with more people).
Playing with a friend as a team, and carrying out missions is very fun, but you really need to comunicate and work as a team because if you die, the other one has to wait until you arrive again from the respawning point (the beginning of the level) which can be annoying.
Deathmatch is boring because of the huge size of the levels, and after 5-10 minutes looking for each other, it's all over in seconds since you usually die with one hit. I think there's also CTF games, but with just 2 people it's very boring.

REPLAY: 5/10

Well this is really up to you. Some people may not find it appealing to start over again but others (such as me) may want to tackle the bases differently, since there can be many ways to finish the missions.

BUY/RENT: Rent first because it's an unusual game that you may or may not like.

OVERALL: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/07/00, Updated 11/07/00