This game looks like a 2001 game, acts like a 2001 game, except it's a 2005 game. Not good.
In the game, you play a marine from Delta Force, and you are out to eliminate enemies and complete objectives through twenty different areas. That’s it, basically. There are missions where you go out and save a hostage, obtain an item or destroy something, but in every mission, you’re basically killing as many grunts as you can.
Here’s a problem with this game: It’s very boring and repetitive. The level structure looks very plain, with various hills in many terrains in places like the jungle, desert or snowy area. Problem is, these areas look almost all the same. Even things like buildings and bunkers are literally carbon copies of each other. It’s as if Novalogic took a backseat in level design, and probably whipped these levels up in a week. You’re given a large arsenal of weapons such as the M4 assault rifle and M249 SAW, plus a knife, a MK23 pistol, grenades, and an item of your choice such as a rocket launcher or satchel charges. Honestly it doesn’t matter what weapon you go out there with, as there’s very little differences between weapons. One weapon shoots slower or faster than the other, but enemies go down in one hit with any weapon and they all have virtually no recoil.
The graphics of everything look like they’re from a 2001 game. Models for characters and weapons look pretty non-detailed. While there are objects that can be destroyed, they cannot be moved, and players do not have ragdoll physics. Now, I wouldn’t complain if the game actually was released in 2001, but it was released in 2005! I’m expecting at least some quality here! In addition, the weapons sound pretty uninspiring and lack oomph, plus reload sounds are a bit clunky. Even a reload sound is recycled for two weapons, the M4 and the MK23. It sounds very awkward. The game only has one techno music track that plays during the menu and when you complete missions. It’s not a good track. There are a few fanfares but you rarely hear them unless you’re doing multiplayer.
The A.I. is very dumb. Many times I’ve shot enemies from a distance and saw their buddies sit there doing absolutely nothing. Enemies and allies alike can’t hit the broad side of a barn if they’re far away, but they got near hack-like aim in close ranges. Most of their concept is “run to the hostile”, not even taking cover or doing other common sense maneuvers like in other games. There are times even where enemies would just stand in position until they saw somebody and shoot. And since some objectives will only be considered “complete” when you’ve killed all the enemies, you waste your time looking for one lowly grunt to pop off, although this sometimes is a little flawed as it says an objective is complete but yet there’s still a handful of undead enemies. In addition, you can shoot through mostly anything, being able to kill grunts without having to even see them.
Another problem is if your character dies, you have the option to continue or restart the mission. This makes the game INCREDIBLY easy to beat, because you can take a few potshots, continue from a checkpoint and just keep moving. There is literally zero challenge. In addition, you’re given “Experience Points” that are neigh worthless, and don’t do absolutely anything except as a futile attempt for scoring. And those experience points go away if you die and respawn, unless you killed somebody after you died, where you’re given the experience points the moment you spawn back in.
The game also gives you vehicles like a motorbike and a buggy with a machine gun, but that’s all you can really drive in the single player campaign. There are bugs where if you continue to press the gas button on bikes while in the water for instance, the moment they hit the ground, they’re off like a greyhound. This is a bug that can be easily exploited in multiplayer. The Multiplayer can be described as a lighter version of the Battlefield games. There’s the standard deathmatch and capture the flag, but also a “King of the Hill” game mode, and co-op through the single player missions. Capture the flag is a bit different than CTF in other games, in which you grab flags strewn around the map and take them to a flag capture point. A nice twist on capture the flag.
The game requires you to have an account with Novaworld, Novalogic’s online community. It’s a painless registration, but I found it a little silly after playing countless games that did not do this. In addition, this game also has rankings, in which every time you gain experience in multiplayer, you go up ranks and get medals. As far as I know these have no effect or give you any form of advantage like in Battlefield 2, so it’s pretty worthless and is only useful if you’re a stats whore.
So the single player is an utterly boring portion, and the multiplayer is a low-calorie Battlefield. Even for a budget title, this is a disappointment. Don’t get this game if you like games like Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, because you’ll be disappointed.
Pros: Decent multiplayer modes, vehicles.
Cons: Just about everything else.