Latest ‘Delta Force’ needs facelift

“Delta Force: Xtreme 2” may be considered a new game, but many of the features look and feel like something from the previous decade. That isn’t to say that the game is all bad, but it certainly felt like I was playing a game from the late 1990s.

Most of the time, it is easy to tell what facet of a game developers worked on the most. It could be the graphics, the gameplay, the scale or even the sound. One of my biggest problems with “DF: X2” is that it doesn’t appear that any particular game aspect got any ‘love’ at all.

For graphics, “Delta Force: Xtreme 2” is using what seems to be a decade-old game engine. What this means is that the textures are not very crisp, there are very few advanced video features (like bloom, bump-mapping, reflective surfaces, etc.) and the game world looks bland.

The end result is that the game looks old.

The single-player mode consists of basic military-like operations to take out drugs or weapon stashes in non-English-speaking territories. This is a cliché for the genre, but if done right, can be entertaining. Unfortunately, some dense AI bad guys and sometimes mind-boggling mission objectives hinder most of the entertainment value. Vague instructions also lead to difficult missions.

As for the sound, the game does have some adequate music that repeats in the background. Some of the gun sounds also work well, but many just sound like firecrackers.

While the single-player feature certainly felt empty, the multiplayer mode helped fill up the bucket. The game modes for multi-player are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Team King of the Hill, Flagball and Capture the Flag.

Many of the maps are large and offer up several different vehicles for the players to pilot, drive, gun and ride in. Some of the better vehicles are the attack helicopters, the tanks, and the Jeeps. If you’re pressed for time, a motorcycle will get you across the map fast as well. I found myself enjoying the multi-player feature for short bursts, but most maps just ended up being ‘find the sniper,’ which did get tiresome.

The core of “Delta Force: Xtreme 2” really tries to be a good game. It is just hindered by a game engine that doesn’t seem to have been updated since 1999 and a fairly pointless single-player mode. Hopefully, NovaLogic will beef up their bells-and-whistles for their next “Delta Force” release.