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Source:Nova-Arena

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"The word "immersion" gets tossed around a lot in the world of game development these days. To some, it's little more than an annoying marketing buzzword. To some game developers, however, it represents a goal: to create a world that gives the player the illusion of really being there. It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while the stars align and you get a game so vividly brought to life that players find themselves ducking in their chairs to avoid onscreen danger.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, then the team at NovaLogic may be cooking up some magic you'll be interested in with Delta Force: Black Hawk Down. Based on US forces' real-life peacekeeping efforts in Somalia, 1993, the game mixes tactical squad combat and close-quarters battles with high-octane action and sprawling outdoor firefights, an interesting mix of controlled chaos that hasn't been seen in many titles to date.

With the game's release just a few weeks away, we paid a visit to NovaLogic's Calabasas, CA offices to meet the game's designers and take an exclusive tour through every mission of the single-player game. If nothing else, Black Hawk Down should have players sweating in their seats from start to finish.

Click the title of this post to see the full arcticle

Based on a True Story! (Mostly)

Just so there's no confusion, Delta Force: Black Hawk Down is not a licensed product based on the best-selling Mark Bowden novel or subsequent Ridley Scott film. The book and movie focused on the events of October 3, 1993, during which two Black Hawk choppers were shot down in Mogadishu, Somalia, leading to the bloodiest US infantry battle since the war in Vietnam. The game draws on the same source material, and indeed covers the events in Mogadishu, but also includes a number of missions (some based on true events, some fictional), set during the months leading up to that conflict, where US forces had been sent in to help restore peace to the country and ultimately remove Mohammed Aidid from power.

The game covers a lot of ground during its 15 single-player missions, each with a variety of objectives that often change as events unfold around you. (We will neither confirm nor deny the existence of a 16th bonus mission.) You start out as an unnamed member of the 10th Mountain Division, on what seems like a simple humanitarian escort mission. Within seconds, all hell breaks loose, and you're forced to confront a variety of hostiles. Black Hawk Down doesn't have a tutorial mission, but this initial scenario -- which starts with you simply manning a turret on a Humvee -- should ease the player into things (as should the next 2 or 3 levels).

Categorically Fun

It's hard to classify a game like Black Hawk Down. You'll spend most of your time shooting, but it's definitely not a mindless run-and-gun game. Most of the levels are set outdoors in villages and towns, with lots of buildings and open windows overlooking the action. You never know where the next hostile might be, and since you can only take a few hits before being killed, you'll have to be careful how you proceed. You also need to take care not to hit your own teammates or the many civilians roaming the streets, so you can't just wildly spray fire in every direction.

At the same time, this isn't as tightly regimented as games like Rainbow Six or Ghost Recon. Those games had very limited numbers of enemies per level, and Black Hawk Down's bad guy roster is anything but limited. Just as US troops did in Somalia, your biggest threat will be hordes of enemies armed with AK47s, the occasional rocket-propelled grenade and various technicals. You shouldn't expect traditional videogame "bosses" at the end of each level -- achieving your objectives should be an accomplishment in itself.

The majority of enemies you'll face aren't that strong (you can kill most with one shot), but the sheer quantity and open layout of the levels means you'll need more than a loaded M16 to survive. The good news here is a lot of attention has been paid to Black Hawk Down's mission design, always trying to keep the player focused in the right direction but not leading him down a linear path by the nose. Just as in real life, there are usually a number of ways to get from one side of town to the other; it's the player's job to come up with the strategy. A compass in the lower right constantly feeds waypoints to the player, so you never have to worry about veering too far off course.

For a game that's set almost entirely outdoors in the desert, Black Hawk Down's missions seem to have enough variety and interesting moments to keep things from getting repetitive. A handful are set at night, and you'll often need to rely on your night vision goggles, especially when clearing out darkened buildings or running through underground tunnels. As mentioned before, you'll occasionally ride shotgun as as part of a convoy; other times you'll be inserted via chopper, clearing out the area with machine gun fire so the team can rope-drop onto a building.

Many of Black Hawk Down's missions have a strong squad-based element, which only adds to the overall flavor of the game. You'll often be fighting alongside a team of soldiers, to whom you can issue a limited set of orders, such as carrying out a room takedown or throwing a grenade to a location that you point out with your crosshair. Casualties within your squad don't always result in instant failure, but most missions have a maximum number of friendly casualties that can be incurred.

One interesting element of Black Hawk Down is the Med-Evac unit, which can make an appearance on a few levels. Keeping in line with Task Force Ranger's motto "Leave No Man Behind," you may have to hold in place when one of the Rangers is wounded and momentarily protect the area until a Black Hawk can bring in a medic and carry the soldier away to safety. These aren't scripted events guaranteed to occur at any specific point in the game, but since you'll have to put the rest of the mission on hold for a few moments -- with all the risk that entails -- it's sort of an incentive to keep your team alive.

Black Hawk Down's arsenal is similar to that of most military-themed shooters, with the one obvious limitation of sticking with 1993 technology. Most of the time, you'll have either an M16 or CAR 15 assault rifle as your main weapon, but there are at least 15 hand-held weapons in the game, not counting fixed weapons and grenades. A silenced MP5 machinegun comes in handy on a few of the stealthier missions, and a variety of sniper rifles allow you to dish out some damage while keeping a safe distance. During my own hands-on time, I tended to lean on the M16A2 assault rifle, which lets out a satisfying burst of ammo with each squeeze of the trigger.

Most of the weapons have some sort of a zoom scope, and your accuracy varies depending on what you're doing at a given moment (running, crouching, etc). Explosives also play a big role in the action, with a satchel charge and remote control detonator useful for taking out specific targets, and flashbang grenades that should prove invaluable when clearing out rooms. You can throw a grenade at full power with the normal fire button, but using the secondary fire key fire brings up a power meter that should help eliminate a lot of the guesswork from the process.

Keeping with the realism theme, players will only be able to carry a few weapons at a time: one primary, one secondary (such as a pistol or shotgun), some grenades and a few other accessories (night vision, binoculars, etc). One thing you won't be able to do, however, is pick up weapons and ammo from enemies. As the team from NovaLogic told us, the AK47s used by the Somalis in this conflict were so innacurate and unreliable that they wouldn't be worth picking up, and ammo inconsistencies could also introduce problems. Players won't get to actually pilot any vehicles in Black Hawk Down, but they play a large role in the action, with players traveling via Humvee on occasion. You'll also be inserted and extracted via chopper for a few of the missions, with the Black Hawks appearing on a regular basis.

While talking with the developers, it was clear that one of their goals for Black Hawk Down was to somehow convey what it was really like for soldiers in Somalia. Although there's only so much you can realistically expect from a videogame, it appears they may have succeeded in a few areas. Because your character is so vulnerable and enemies can attack from any direction, there's a constant sense of panic that needs to be supressed as you move from objective to objective, especially with so many civilians running around. NovaLogic has been working with a number of military advisiors on the game (including at least one who was on the ground in Mogadishu), and while they've had to make some concessions in the name of gameplay, the world of Black Hawk Down is an appropriately chaotic one.

(Although the particulars are unknown, it's worth noting here that NovaLogic is donating a portion of the proceeds from Delta Force: Black Hawk Down to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, an organization dedicated to provding college scholarhips to children of Special Operations personnel killed in duty).

We were told that Black Hawk Down is based on the Comanche 4 engine, but it looks a lot more detailed than any flight combat sim I can recall. Characters are well-detailed and smoothly animated, and react believably to gunfire (which is a good thing, considering how many enemies there are in the game). Your own squadmates will limp along when wounded, and the night vision goggles have a nifty blur effect to them.

Outdoor desert areas permeate most of the game, with dust kicking up realistically as choppers pass through. Most of the levels also have a "dirty" look to them, as if they've seen years of fighting and neglect. If it makes any sense, I often felt like I was watching a first-person version of C&C: Generals, especially on the missions where you roll through the city with a convoy of tanks.

One thing Black Hawk Down certainly has in common with Generals: when things blow up, they blow up good. Some of the convoy missions feature enemy vehicles that chase after you, and when you blow them up at full speed, a portion of the screen simply erupts, with bodies and debris flying everywhere. On more than one occasion, I actually found myself ducking to avoid tires flying over my character's head. It may be slightly out of character for this sort of game, but definitely entertaining.

Perhaps the only part of Black Hawk Down we didn't get to see on our visit to NovaLogic was its multiplayer (due to some technical difficulties). The game will ship with support for a number of multiplayer modes, including Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, Attack and Defend, and something called "Flagball" (described to us as sort of a variation on CTF). Matchmaking will be supported by the company's own Novaworld service, with plenty of maps shipping for each of the different modes.

If there's anything about Black Hawk Down that concerned us, it's that things may get a little too chaotic for some players. Your compass is equipped with a threat indicator, and at times the thing would flash different colors from every direction as if it were auditioning for a second job at a dance party. Since you're so abosrbed in the on-screen action, it's often easy to miss important audio cues (it's a little hard to multitask when someone's shooting at your head), and there may be some trial and error necessary to learn the best paths through some of the missions. The game's visuals also require a bit of horsepower, which isn't surprising considering the large outdoor areas and high volume of enemies onscreen simultaneously.

Of course, we won't know anything for sure until the game is released, but with tension-packed missions that give players the freedom to experiment with their own strategies, Delta Force: Black Hawk Down could be one of the more interesting action titles of 2003. We'll find out for sure when the game is released on March 25th -- if you can't wait until then, check out our the official briefings from the first eight missions of the game, as well as our set of 30 exclusive screenshots, and then take the demo out for a spin."

You can find all exclusive screenshots at GameSpy.com here. Further, they have the mission briefings of the first 8 missions here

Article source: http://www.gamespy.com/previews/febr...pc/index.shtml

[Bustin]

LOL something called "Flagball"

That was in all of the other DF games...

Why don't you link directly to gamespy's article rather than stealing their article and posting the whole thing here ? Not sure GameSpy would be too impressed.

[Steve]

ok tell gamespy and see what they say m8.
there is a link to their site
and we linked to NvA were we got the news, which intern links to gamepsy again.
i think 'stealing' is a bit harsh lol.

[=MOW= ØbÌïvîøñ]

LoL, it seems they dont know much bout the DF series when they say "somthing called "flagball""

[Bustin]

that's what I was saying lol NL is making "something called flagball" for BHD lol

oh SB I can give you 2 guesses as to where the poster of that "stealing" post works, but you'll only need 1

[Scott]

It's actually a member of the forums here .