Delta Force 2

Delta Force 2

Platform: PC
Rating: 15+
Type: 1st person shooter
Graphics: 4.5/10
Story: 6/10
Game play: 9/10
Multiplayer: 8/10
Sound: 7/10
Overall: 8.5/10

This game was made in 1999, so it is really old. Some people say the graphics let it down, but you have to remember, at that time, these were revolutionary graphics. It has a lot of ups, but quite a few downs.

In Delta Force 2, you are an elite solider working for an American elite group of people. In some missions you work alone and in others you work with a team of 2-4. Although it is to be noted you cannot command them, they just help. There are two campaigns to take on, both with "different" stories although in both you basically have to save the world from a nuclear war. Deja Vu.

Graphics, they are dismal, really dismal. Everything is pixilated. The gun is 1 colour. Having said this, the game has the best trees I have seen in any game bar Halo2. The scenery interaction is good. For instance if you shoot at the top of a tree it will come spinning of. The gunfire is interesting. Not the explosion at the muzzle of the gun but these strobe lights flying around which represent the bullets. One of the highlights is that if you are on the blue team in multiplayer the bullet lines are blue, if you are on the red they are red. It is obviously deliberate.

The story line is almost as bad as the graphics. It is the same thing in and out, time and time again. Could they not have employed a professional author to write them a cool story. It would have cost relatively little and would have improved the game greatly. They use the terrorist with nuclear war heads story because it is a simple story. It is very easy to base missions around, people feel they can relate to it and it can have a clean finish.

On the other hand, the game play is stunning. If graphics are all that matters then you won't be able to play, but if you can get it in proportion with the game play then you'll love it. The missions are imaginative and rarely repetitive. For instance, in one of the missions you get on a helicopter; fly on it for a couple of minutes with free control, not a video; then you jump out of the helicopter at about 100m onto a moving train. Finally, you then have to clear the train, blow up the tanks, survive the helicopter attack and go through an enemy base then get off the train. You might say, first person shooters aren't original or hard to make, this one has done something, I don't know what it has done, but I LOVE the game play.

The sound is kinda basic, gunfire and the mission briefs do make use of sound but there is only one voice. What is impressive about the sound is that when you wear headphones you can hear what direction the fire is coming from, remember this a 6 year old game. If you play this game, always wear head phones, it makes it soo cool, it is like stepping into a war zone. Noisy and scary.

The multiplayer is one of this game's strong points. Some of the novalogic servers support 50 people simultaneously and the games include voice over net technology. Which means you can conduct live speech to people through the game. Not only is this a cool feature but only Xbox live games can do it 6 years later. The multiplayer games include: Death Matches, team death matches, CTF, King of the hill and co-op. The downside is when you host a game you can't just block cheating or kick cheaters. This is a major downside as there are people who become invisible, go to your base and knife you continually.

The weapons are simple but fun. Most of the time you will take a carbine, which has a scope and a built in grenade launcher. Alternatively, for your first weapon you can have a sniper rifle or a variant of the carbine which has a shotgun attachment instead of the grenade launcher. You can have two secondary weapons which can be anything from explosives to armor suits; missile launchers to extra ammo. There are other options but they pretty much fall into those two groups.

Overall, I think it is a great game and that someone should remake it with better graphics and it would be better than any first person shooter. It is a well lasting game (there are still 500+ people on the server) and although there are sequels I haven't played on them.

I am considering doing weekly updates of the happenings of multiplayer in this game, comments please on what you think of that.