Delta Force

Delta Force: A Competent but Uninspired Revival in the Crowded FPS Landscape

“First-person shooter” is a broad term. It can mean everything from an action-horror game like F.E.A.R., to a sci-fi adventure like Metroid Prime, to a demon-eviscerating romp like Doom. Even narrowing it down to a sub-category like “military FPS” still puts the linear campaign of Call of Duty, the enormous PvP clashes of Battlefield, and the white-knuckle extractions of Escape from Tarkov (among others) under a single umbrella. Delta Force, the latest revival of a now 26-year-old shooter series last seen in 2009, is probably best defined as a bit of each of those last two – with a dedicated large-scale PvP mode and a separate extraction shooter mode, it sits somewhat awkwardly at the center of that Venn diagram. As a result, it’s a free-to-play one-stop shop of “just fine”: It’s competent all around, but doesn’t distinguish itself in battle with any substantial new ideas.

Features：

While Delta is officially “out,” (whatever that means anymore) only two of the three main modes are currently available. The third, a single-player campaign, is planned as paid DLC somewhere down the line. Of the two that are here now, the Warfare mode is Delta Force’s version of the big team combat of Battlefield, where 64 players duke it out for supremacy across one of a handful of sprawling arenas. There is no straight kill-focused Deathmatch; instead, the focus is on objective-based games like King of the Hill variants. The standout among these is Attack and Defend, which has one team capturing strategic points before running out of a finite number of respawns, while the other team defends those areas with limitless lives. It’s a subtle rule change that does put a good spin on a mode we’ve seen a ton of in Battlefield; initially, the offense has the advantage thanks to favorable terrain and an abundance of vehicles, but things even out as the match progresses and the defense retreats toward their home base and has quick access to respawned reinforcements. This means each side typically gets to spend some time as both the figurative hammer and the nail.

Summary：

 The battles certainly do feel big, which is a good thing. Fast respawns mean both teams are dense with soldiers at all times. Once the bullets and rockets start flying, the chaos and confusion of combat is as exciting as you’d expect for a Battlefield-style game. Each gun you use earns it’s own XP to unlock component options, as is common on modern military shooters. It’s particularly fun when you get behind the controls of a vehicle and start running roughshod over the other team. A tank fully loaded with gunners can dominate, but don’t sleep on the impact of a simple machine gun turret on the top of an armored car. And similar to Battlefield (yes, you’re hearing that comparison a lot, for good reason), aerial vehicles like helicopters are challenging to pilot but can be powerful in the right hands, rewarding skillful play.