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"Set in Somalia in 1993, Delta Force – Black Hawk Down is based upon and around the Operation Restore Hope and Task Force Ranger campaigns and follows members of the elite Delta Force and US Army Rangers as they participate in a number of daring raids against the oppressive Somali warlords in and around Mogadishu."
At the beginning of the show, NovaLogic, fresh off the success of their Commanche 4 title, announced Delta Force - Black Hawk Down. Scheduled for PC late this year and for the PS2 and Xbox consoles some time in 2003, Insert Credit had a chance to sit down with NovaLogic and talk about this promising FPS.
On display was the pre-alpha stage game playing a single level, an insertion via helicopter. Starting from the tarmac, the player, one of the Army Rangers, can talk to his comrades who are already aboard other helicopters. To continue, the player sits on the bench of one chopper, causing it to fly toward the city. As it flies, the player is still in full control, able to move and fire as normal. The chopper flies through the city, low to the ground as it zooms over the streets while enemies fire from below. You can imagine our surprise when, in our first run, the character was actually shot off of the helicopter. After a restart and a successful flight through the city, the player is inserted at the top of a building, and standard military FPS commences, albeit with some nice scripted events, such as a chopper losing its rotor and crashing spectacularly into the ground.
Based largely on the Commanche 4 engine with some improvements, this very early build of the game was a bit low in frame rate (below 60 frames per second) despite the fact that it ran on a Pentium 4 machine paired with a GeForce4 video card. The amount of architecture that the graphics engine drove this early in development was impressive; the city which the action took place in was extremely large, at least a half square mile, and packed with buildings and objects. The enemies, as expected for an early build, did not seem very intelligent, though NovaLogic has already implemented unarmed enemies and handling of enemy prisoners. Few weapons have been built, though this, too, has plenty of time to build.
As expected from NovaLogic, the game will feature a variety of multiplayer modes, ranging from simple deathmatches to capture the flag to objective based cooperative play. It's undecided as to whether the player can take a role as part of the Somali forces, but it's confirmed that one can take the role of a member of Delta Force, US Army Rangers, or Navy SEALs.
The game will go far beyond the scope of the book and movie in its single-player mode, extending to all the events of Restore Hope. As such, NovaLogic is working closely with actual Army Rangers involved in the skirmishes, aiming for accuracy in their portrayal of battles within Mogadishu. They will also try to achieve geographical accuracy as well; as it is, the test city was surrounded by hills, though Mogadishu lies on coast.
Both the book and the movie do an impressive job of conveying the hell which is modern urban warfare. If NovaLogic can pull off even a small part of the realism and brutality of the film, Delta Force - Black Hawk Down will be very impressive.
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