Solid FPS based on historical events. Excellent graphics and sound. Tense (fun) missions. AI can be very average.

User Rating: 8 | Delta Force: Black Hawk Down PC

DFBHD is not the best FPS game I have played ... but it is far from the worst. I really enjoyed playing it and believe that Gamespot's rating of 5.6 is unduly harsh and this is atested to by the average player and critics ratings which are 2 whole points above those of Gamespot. So when deciding on whether a game may suit you and your tastes look at all the ratings in the top right corner ... not just the one in the biggest font.

For me, DFBHD is a good solid FPS. I cannot agree with those that lambast the single player aspect of this game I enjoyed the immersive experience it provided but can see why others, who may prefer a different emphasis in their gaming, might not however it is not as bad as some portray it.

Admittedly, much of it seems to be an "on the rails" shooter going from point to point, but you can pretty much choose your own path, direct or indirect, through the maze of side-streets and shantys that comprise Mogadishu. These alternate routes are also populated by AI bad guys so straying off the beaten path is obviously taken into consideration ... you do not hear any "desertion" warnings unless you are really going off the beaten track.

The historical story line is well known from the Mark Bowden Black Hawk Down book and movie of the same name. The game takes liberal "extracts" from the narrative and weaves them together into a series of missions. There are a fixed (limited) number of saves per mission ... more saves means either the missions are longer and/or that you will be facing lots of enemy AI. My observations indicate that the number of saves or power-ups (ie health and/or ammo boxes) do not change with the level difficulty selected ... it may be that a harder setting means more AI bad guys per level but my look into this was not exhaustive. Increased difficulty, as with most FPS games, also means the number of hits required to kill your character decreases and it increases hits to kill the enemy. The enemy AI is thus not "smarter" ... it's just harder to eliminate them.

Arguably many of these missions are similar but the duties of the real men in Somalia were like that: regular convoy escorts from staging areas to the poor villages and towns ... with the ever present danger of being ambushed by "technicals". The helicopter and humvee rides that comprise the convoy escort duties and/or mission insertion/extraction phases are very reminiscent of the movie: snipers in street clothes take pot shots along the routes and RPGs come snaking towards your copter highlighting the hit or miss nature of the asymmetric combat ... there is NO front line.

Graphics are very good and close to "cinematic". The soundtrack is hauntingly excellent ... again similar to the movie. It feels real ... yes, I know it's just a game, but here you have civilians strolling in and out amongst the bad guys and they are hard to tell apart at the range at which engagements take place... collateral damage is something to avoid ... and the missions move along at a cracking pace, stay too long in one area and the "technicals" will seek you out. All this adds to the tension.

The Gamespot review is correct in that the missions are somewhat uneven ... some are easy and some are very hard, especially the last mission, the hypothetical "Aidid Takedown", and this is independent of the difficulty setting selected. Also I agree that the enemy (and friendly) AI is average at best ... SOF (original), Code of Honor and Battlefield Vietnam come to mind when looking at the "poor AI" issue.

It is difficult to compare AI (or graphics) of a six year old game like DFBHD with the latest releases. Debatably the "poor AI" may actually "replicate" the actions of the teenagers and men handed AK-47s by Aidid without any prior military training. DFBHD is not GRAW or Rainbow Six Vegas ... but comparisons to tactical shooters, despite DFBHD having a "team command" system is disparaging to those games and unjust to DFBHD.

The key elements of Mark Bowden's story (or the movie) are there: the humvee convoy with captured rebels that gets lost trying to get out of the city thanks to wrong directions from the circling observation helo; providing cover fire for the first downed Black Hawk so the crew can be extracted; escorting, on foot, the convoy with all the prisoners and wounded from the overnight battles, getting left behind and running to the stadium. The final mission is based on "rumours" that US Special Forces were involved in terminating leader Aidid.

OVERALL: Excellent graphics and soundtrack. Gameplay is closer to FPS games like MOH or COD than to "realistic" tactical shooter, but to call DFBHD an "arcade game" is ungenerous. I cannot comment on the multiplayer aspects, all I have done is stroll around the maps which are a visual treat ... but other reviews praise this aspect of DFBHD, though I expect DFX or Joint Operations is the preferred multiplayer system from NovaLogic nowadays.

It would be interesting to know what those involved in the Somalia crisis thought about this game when it was released in 2003 especially given all the hand wringing in relation to Konami's recent decision to cancel "Six Days in Fallujah".

Update: The various mods for DFBHD are outlined in my Team Sabre review.