| DELTA FORCE REVIEW by ... Maurice Fitzgerald | ||||
| The
big selling points from Novalogic's perspective on this one are the directional
sounds and their latest version of their Voxelspace engine, Voxelspace
3.0. I’ll admit it up front I do not like the Voxelspace engine. In the
past it was ok but with 3D acceleration so prevelent I’ve just had a hard
time making the switch back mentally to Voxelspace.
To be fair it does make a huge difference by allowing us some of the best terrain for multiplayer environments I've seen in a ground combat simulation and for this reason only I have been sold on its use. Voxelspace makes me feel that I’m playing an old DOS based game and not a Windows 95/NT game, maybe I’m just too picky I dunno. But once you get over the pixelation in the game you’ll really enjoy the terrain you can freely roam over, and even UNDER, since you are able to swim through streams and rivers. (I know Delta troopers are some of the country's best trained soldiers but even they cannot hold their breath for over a klick underwater!)
The reason there is no acceleration is due to the fact that the terrain is constructed of pixels and not polygons, with polys there can be acceleration with pixels there is none. There are enough objects in this game (buildings, tents, enemy and DF characters) that could be accelerated if NL chose to do so as rumor has it they might in an upcoming patch. How much it will help I’m unsure but I’ve also heard that acceleration was originally considered and was dropped due to slowdowns. How the game looks will depend very much on your hardware. If you have a high end PII and enough memory you should see very good frame rate and the resolutions can go as high as 800x600 at 32 bit color. Although there are a lot of gamers out there with high end PII’s a majority of gamers are still running on straight Pentiums and that is where this game suffers. On a 233 MMX with 64 Megs RAM, (which is about an average gamers machine) the frame rate on this one is ok for single player. But the game does show a slowdown in mulitplay situations with bandwidth playing a good part in that as well as your processor working hard to draw all the objects, so your reaction time may suffer in large games. You have the option to go as low as 320x240 to increase frame rate but at that resolution there’s almost no point in playing as the screen appears very blurred and is absolutely hideous. Also I believe Novaworld has been overworked on this first weekend of release so that could be a cause for some slowdowns I’ve seen online. Best time I’ve found to play is very early in the morning as later in the day and into the evening it gets very laggy online due to more players as well as the overall congestion of the internet. Going back to the point of directional sounds I’d like to point out that these are some of the best in a game I’ve seen to date. This is a very important point, especially in multiplayer where you’ll find yourself under fire from all angles and each weapon has a distinct sound. From the rat-a-tat-tat of the M4, the plunk of a 203 to the intimidating boom of the Barret .50, paying attention to the directions of the rounds whizzing by your head can keep you alive. If you’re being shot at from the right you’ll hear the bullets fearful ‘zing’ through your right earphone; if from the front you'll hear in both earphones. Besides being a great asset in gameplay it also brings to this game a real feeling of being in a combat environment. Nothing like hearing the plink, plink, plink of rounds hitting the barrier you’re behind to get you motivated enough to find a new spot. Btw, if you play this game not only do headphones enhance your gaming experience they are a mandatory thing to wear to survive; you just don’t get the same effect from speakers no matter how good they are. Pop those headphones on in a 32 player game and crank up the volume and get assaulted by the sounds, gives me flashbacks to Saving Private Ryan! I can’t tell you how many times my heartbeat was elevated as I ran back to my base with the flag in tow, rounds lashing the dirt behind and around me, intense! One last point that has been in debate amongst gamers has been the ballistics modeling in this game. I’ve been hearing this so much that to be honest I’ve gotten a bit sick of it, all of a sudden we have hundreds of ‘experts’ claiming the trajectories of rounds fired in this game are unrealistic. I just want to point a couple of things on this subject. First off this is a GAME, it is not a realistic simulation so there may be some deviation from reality in the ballistics modeled in this game to keep things enjoyable and playable. Look at this for example, try running down a 30 degree hill while firing an M-16 on burst. Will you hit the target, come even close? Not in real life, but in this game you will. Why, because it’s a game! |
Second, the ranges you will be engaging at are usually less than 1,000 meters. So you won’t need to concern yourself with the major adjustments a sniper would be faced with such as: ammo load, wind velocity and direction, temperature, humidity level and others all of which play an integral part in successful sniping. Keep this in mind when you hear people complain about the rounds dropping at 500 meters. Rounds do drop over distance and you can see it in this game, as I said this is a game not a sim so don’t get stuck on such a simple thing as this. From my multiplayer experiences I was pretty impressed with the 'round drop,' as it seemed to me quite realistic. It brought me back to the 500 meter line in my Marine Corps rifle qual days it was believable enough for me. Besides having 40 missions the multiplayer support enables 32 players to play head to head over Novalogics Novaworld online gaming service for free. Connecting is as easy as logging on to the internet, starting the game and clicking JOIN in the multiplayer screens. The built in mini-browser will connect you within a few minutes and show you what games are available. Currently Novaworld is hosting deathmatch only, with king of the hill, capture the flag and team deathmatch available right now. You can also play over a LAN, modem or direct IP connect with your friends online.
My multiplayer experiences had been in deathmatch only until this weekend and it didn’t do a lot for me. I found the situation of just sitting there and firing away at people an extremely boring and unchallenging style of play. If you play with a sniper rifle it takes almost no skill whatsoever to take down a target. Get yourself a great hide position and plink away, like fish in a barrel. Sure it was nice to nail a guy at 800+ meters through my scope but after awhile I found it to get a bit tedious for me with everyone lying around sniping at one another. I prefer team tactical movement and coordination, something CTF (capture the flag) does have and probably KOH will have as well. CTF has been a BLAST this weekend, if it was up to the single player only missions in this game I wouldn’t be as high on this one as I am. CTF is what sold me, it’s like playing one of my favorite sports, Paintball, and it’s just as intense. Here teamwork is essential to success and it’s great when you can get online and work together with people you don’t even know to win the game. Here is where sniping does play a good part but snipers are only a small portion of the overall game. The game is only won by those willing to run down under fire to grab the flags, something I find both challenging and exhilarating. I just hope Novaworld adds more maps to CTF as the ones we’ve been playing, fun as they are, will get old in a few weeks. Possibly a mission editor would help us gamers, how about it Novalogic? You’ve GOT to try CTF it’s one of the best multiplayer situations I’ve played in this year, 16 players on each side firing away at each other with everything but the kitchen sink. Claymores set up at flag stations to give you a nice surprise and even LAAW rockets in use whooshing over your head. You can catch me online playing the CTF fields under the name CSIM, see you there! The bottom line? If you are looking for a lite action game that’s a lot less serious than Rainbow Six, has tons of action and awesome mutliplayer capabilities, Delta Force delivers! One thing to note is the hardware requirements. Novalogic claims a P166 MMX is the minimum recommended but after playing this on a 233 MMX I would say it’s more like a 233 would be most appropriate as a minimum. I couldn’t imagine how it would play well on a 166 after seeing the frame rates on a 233 push it. On a 166 I think the frame rate would suffer and would frustrate a gamer and not allow him or her to enjoy this game to its fullest. We’ll just have to wait, watch and hope a patch with possible acceleration that could boost performance will be released in the near future. While the game is a decent single player shooter, the true fun factor and worth lies in the multiplayer aspects. Unlike Rainbow Six, which is unforgiving and realistic in its multiplayer play, Delta Force regenerates you continually through the game. This makes for instant and continuously furious action, a total blast to play! COMBATSIM.COM RATING : 82 Core Rating : 25 (Lite/Action Game)
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This material is copyrighted and may not be reprinted in any form without Last Updated November 1st, 1998 |
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