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.