I found the original Delta Force: Black Hawk Down a bit of a letdown. It lacked polish and the grim setting (present for the whole game, which was something new for the series) and questionable AI made it a fairly unsatisfying single player experience. Delta Force: Black Hawk Down – Team Sabre was released about twelve months later and its better than Black Hawk Down, no doubt about that. It offers dual campaigns, a much more effective take on outdoor combat and some impressive special effects. It is a short game where fundamental problems with the AI remain, but it is action aplenty otherwise.

In Team Sabre you play as the usual highly trained combat operative taking on vast numbers of enemies with a couple of team-mates in tow. The missions are based in (for different reasons) known hotspots as the usual objectives of securing / destroying posts, capturing persons of interest, destroying ordinance and rescuing hostages are undertaken. Whilst there is the odd bit of corridor crawling and on-rails shooting, most of the gameplay is standard FPS and is undertaken in some vast and well presented outdoor environments. Enemies come thick and fast and there are more explosions that you will find in a John Woo movie.

Graphically, Team Sabre presents very well. The original Black Hawk Down introduced a new engine that did bring a fresh new look to the franchise. Team Sabre extends on this by providing some excellently presented outdoor environments to operate in, both at day and night. Structures and NPC’s / enemies look reasonable and accurate enough and the arsenal you carry is certainly well defined. But it is the huge outdoor environments especially through the Columbian missions, where Team Sabre excels. Expect to do plenty of crawling through dense jungle with enemies littered across the terrain. As already said, there are some seriously massive explosions during the game, and whilst one does wonder whether a single bullet could initiate such an event, it’s an impressive effect nonetheless. The in-game interface and title / options screens are all well presented and easy to navigate.

The special effects sound as good as they look. Explosions and gunfire rip through the speakers and the environmental sound effects are appropriate. There is the usual opening / closing music and the voice acting presenting missions and advising of new objectives in mission is effective. You’ll hear you opponents in dialogue from time to time and at times it is the silence which creates as the tension before a skirmish. The sound works very well indeed.

The gameplay is more of the standard Delta Force fare. Whilst it’s not traditional run and gun with health packs and ammo abound (though both can be found on odd occasions) and where the avatar can absorb monumental amounts of punishment (two to three hits is all you can take in a mission), it’s also not tight tactical action either. It sits in a strange void in between. As usual for the Delta Force series, there is a serious arsenal available for you to choose from and all items have their own nuances. The opportunity costs have to be weighed as you can only carry two items. Sit back and snipe and run and gun (and hope for the best) are basically the two options available. For the first time ever in the Delta Force series, I found the need to use smoke grenades to enable progress.

The missions are generally well thought out with a series of skirmishes from start to completion. Without a doubt, the firefights are big in numbers and big in effects with explosions and gunfire abound. There are also some night-time missions that add a sense of claustrophobia and crawling through the villages is fraught with danger.

I personally enjoyed the Columbian campaign as the jungle environment and large mission plans provided an immersive atmosphere. Of the second campaign, there was an excellent mission involving storming an oil rig, which (if it wasn’t for some issues about to be mentioned) could have rated as one of the top missions of all time. However, the eternal bogey of the Delta Force series, AI, is as inconsistent as ever. Enemies still face corners, run from one scripted spot to the next and at times don’t even fire. Sitting ducks. And then you’ll be picked off at 150 metres by someone you haven’t even seen yet. The game would be a more consistent and stable experience if the enemies attacked Serious Sam style! Allied AI is not much better, but at times the do make important contributions to the mission – and they do generally follow directions.

This inconsistency is mirrored in the mission difficulty and save game structure. There are eleven missions and two of them are horrendously difficult. What’s even stranger is that one of those missions has (from memory) three save slots, where the easiest mission on the game has seven! Ultimately, you will breeze through a majority of the missions, enjoying the firefights, carnage and impressive effects the game offers. But then you’ll be crawling through the two or three hardest missions, rote learning enemy positions, wondering if now is the time to save, or even restarting the whole mission again as with the health left it is impossible to finish. And this wraps up the game perfectly, generally good fun to play as you waltz through the levels, only to be ground to a halt by some infuriating inconsistencies.

I purchased the expansion pack for $AUD20 and that is reasonable enough for the half dozen hours of gameplay on the default level for single player. For those who like to mix it up online, the game comes with multiplayer and is still very well patronised today. It does add extra value for money. The highest difficult level would be a challenge (perhaps even impossible on the most difficult missions) for those motivated to do it all again.

Delta Force: Black Hawk Down - Team Sabre serves up plenty of action in some impressive outdoor environments. Some big time production values make it a Hollywood style experience as well work your way through some serious special effects. But like the entire Delta Force series, the game is positioned in a void between ‘no holds barred’ run and gun and the more purposeful tactical shooters. Add to this the AI problems that are present in the entire franchise and the frustratingly inconsistent difficulties from mission to mission, Team Sabre sits basically where the entire series does. Good but not great.