Delta Force

developer: NovaLogic
rating: ****

First-person 3D action games are a dime a dozen nowadays. Even if you stick to the "really good" ones, you'll still be lucky to plow through them all. So it's not easy for a new entry to distinguish itself. However, Delta Force, from NovaLogic, manages that feat.

Imagine something with the realism of Rainbow Six but the playability of Half-Life. That'll give you a vague idea of what to expect. But Delta Force actually bears less resemblance to any previous shoot-em-up than it does to NovaLogic military simulations like Commanche and Armored Fist 2. Just imagine yourself on foot instead of in a helicopter or tank.

As in Rainbow Six, missions are based on believable situations, and begin with an overview briefing. However, this time you've got no squad to control, no choice about the waypoints you'll be following, and only minimal choice as to weaponry. Also, the missions are all set outdoors. The upshot is that you don't get bogged down in planning, as in Rainbow Six. The briefing gives you your objectives and just enough justification to make the scenario seem realistic, then dumps you into the action.

Typically, you'll start a few hundred yards away from the first potential trouble. As you make your way through the rolling countryside, you'll encounter roving enemy patrols and concealed sentries. Your best bet is to pick them off at a distance, using one of the weapons equipped with a telescopic sight.

The way these work is neat. A round inset window appears at the right of the screen, showing the magnified view. The window disappears when you walk, which makes sense physically and prevents you from using the zoom mode all the time. Your other key options are crouching and crawling, both of which make you much more difficult to hit in exchange for slowing your movement.

Missions are designed for maximum fun. You may have to quietly infiltrate a rebel base, or snipe sentries out of watchtowers, or rescue hostages. One of the best scenarios involves protecting a moving VIP motorcade from a rebel ambush.

You get the choice of several locales, which can be played in any order. However, within each area new missions become available only as earlier ones are completed.

Online play greatly extends the single-player experience. Human opponents are fast and merciless, and it's common to find yourself dead literally without knowing what hit you. Connecting to a game is a snap, via a menu built into the game.

Unfortunately, Delta Force does have several flaws that keep it from being an instant classic.

The most glaring fault is sluggish performance. NovaLogic seems determined to get its money's worth on the 'voxel' graphics system it developed. This builds up terrain using tiny 3D elements, just as a flat image can be made up of 2D colored pixels. The approach works well for outdoor settings, and allows creation of huge maps.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world has standardized on 3D graphics that are built up out of flat polygons painted with 2D bitmap textures. Not coincidentally, that's the type of geometry that 3D accelerators accelerate. Which means that when you play Delta Force, your expensive 3D accelerator is totally out of action. Try playing Unreal or Quake II in software-only display mode, and you'll get the idea.

The upshot is that Delta Force is only just barely playable on a 233 MHz Pentium II, with resolution set no higher than 640x480. You can drop the resolution still further, but the image becomes so grainy that you'll miss important details -- like that sniper in the grass. For resolutions higher than 640x480 (which would be highly desirable), get the fastest PC made today -- preferably a 500 MHz Pentium III.

The speed problem is worse in online play. You tend to lose to players who can see further than you owing to their sharper display, and whose hot new processor lets them spin around and target you while you're helplessly banging on your keyboard and waiting for something to happen.

An even more embarrassing problem in Delta Force is the artificial intelligence. Opposing troops are quite good at zeroing in on you and running for cover when you start shooting at them -- but they have a bizarre tendency to sneak up on you then freeze solid. It's not uncommon to spin around and find two or three greasy-looking villains taking a bead on you, yet inexplicably holding their fire while you pick them off at your leisure.

Finally, there's a glitch that makes certain missions unnecessarily difficult to complete. In missions where you are ordered to eliminate all enemy troops it's far too common to have one or two enemies hiding inertly, or even embedded inside solid objects, making them infuriatingly difficult to find. I spent over an hour wandering around several levels, just trying to find the last skulking enemy.

It's a tribute to the basic game play that Delta Force is still terrific fun despite these significant difficulties. Almost by accident, NovaLogic seems to have discovered a promising new paradigm for 3D first-person gaming. Here's hoping they exploit it to the max in future releases -- and meanwhile perhaps patch the current release to fix up some of the rough edges.

Counter-Strike

Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

Developer: Valve/Ritual/Turtle Rock Studios

ESRB: M

Category: Action

Back in 1998, a modification of the Half-Life games on the PC sparked a universal gaming revolution of sorts. Counter-Strike, a first-person shooter that involves teaming up with other players on the internet to take on an opposing team acting as either terrorists or counter-terrorist, was a phenomenal success and is played often even today. Thanks to the mighty Xbox and its ability to play multiplayer games online with the Xbox Live service, it didn’t take long for Microsoft Game Studios to realize that Valve’s popular shooter might just feel at home on this powerful console. So how well does this PC classic do on the Xbox? Let’s find out, action fans.

First off, it’s important to note that Counter-Strike was made with multiplayer online action in mind. Its overabundance of playing maps will bring a smile to any die-hard multiplayer gamers’ face and the fact that you can play as an elite counter-terrorist group or a group of highly trained terrorist gives everyone a chance to feel what it’s like to be fighting for two very different causes. On the one hand you have innocent hostages to think about and on the other you have innocent lives to put in danger. Two very opposing sides and boy does this make for some really dramatic conflicts.

This Xbox version isn’t really a direct port of the original but all the ideas, concepts and weapons are all there. The game offers a Single Player mode but if you’re expecting a few levels tied in with an actual story you are in for a major disappointment. The single player games offer the same eighteen maps (downloadable maps will be available using the Xbox Live service) but you are accompanied by three bots as you battle against the opposing team made entirely of bots themselves. The result is a mode you will quickly get tired of after a few rounds of Hostage-Rescue and Demolition. Yes, online is where the real action truly takes place.

Online, Counter-Strike becomes an entirely different game since now you are joined by gamers (up to sixteen in total online or through a System Link game) that can communicate with you via the Xbox Communicator headset. This allows you to come up with strategies that you normally can’t do with bots (although bots can be issued commands such as Follow or Need Backup). The maps range from an airstrip, a chateau, a subway, a bank in Miami or even a sports stadium and they each have enough places to stage ambushes or make your final stand. While the game suffers from the occasional stutter, it really doesn’t stop the flow of the action. We’re talking a pretty smooth ride for the most part.

The scenarios, though, are only limited to those two I just mentioned. For the counter-terrorist group, you must rescue a small number of hostages and lead them out alive by having them follow you out to a certain point in the game (usually where you started). As the terrorist threat, your main goal is to use demolition charges somewhere in the gaming environment and then guard it from counter-terrorist intent on disarming it. Successfully completing a round by killing all opposition or completing your task you can earn money to purchase different firearms (anything from a Mac-10 to a stylized Steyr Tactical Machine Pistol) as well as equipment such as body armor and grenades.

The game’s controls are very simplistic and this leaves you with the opportunity to concentrate on the action at hand rather than have you missing a beat by performing complex tasks. You can jump, change clips and fire rounds just as easily and this makes the action pretty fast-paced. The only problem is that the aiming reticule remains unchanged no matter what weapon you’re currently using. This is kind of annoying since you cannot make precise shots or aim for specific body parts. Oftentimes you will be focusing the reticule over your opponent only to have the enemy focus on you first and get a shot out before you can even respond. As a single player game, the opposing team certainly has no trouble aiming so you will get shot very often in this game.

Unfortunately, Counter-Strike isn’t a very gorgeous looking first-person shooter. The maps, while numerous and somewhat massive in size, look decent enough until you get a closer look at walls or long hallways. The environments can be a bit plain in some of the many maps but there is still plenty to see and interact with during a match. The characters also look pretty decent as well, although many of them don’t move very naturally . . . most especially while jumping or getting killed. Blood does fly in the game, but it looks so pixilated that it will automatically bring early first-shooters like Doom to mind. There are some nice effects here of gunfire and explosions but nothing that will impress.

Sound-wise, the game doesn’t really showcase an impressive display of sound effects. You might expect a game that supports Dolby Digital to offer various unique sound effects or at least any that sounds realistically like the actual firearms. The game does allow you to use your own custom soundtrack that just happens to be burned to your Xbox Hard Drive and play it during a match. There’s also a decent display of voice acting that is mostly heard during the single player mode when you issue commands to your team. Other than this, there really isn’t anything here that will leave a lasting impression.

Counter-Strike is the kind of game that’s got a lot of addictive action to offer but you will still feel as if the game could have been a lot better. While the game will hold your attention for a limited time as a single player experience, online the game really shines through enough that you will forget its few faults. If you love multiplayer fun on the Xbox Live, this game certainly won’t let you down.

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