‘Delta Force’ was a series of tactical shooters back in the late 90s and early 2000s, developed by NovaLogic (primarily for PC) and various other companies for consoles. And despite its critical success for those few short years where gaming’s advancements accelerated across every visual and auditory field, I’ve never actually heard of the series. Which I find a bit odd as I used to play a lot of shooters when I was younger. Now, I might have preferred ‘Unreal Tournament 2004’ and later on ‘Battlefield 2’ in those years, but even then, I’d expect a game like this to carry more headspace than the likes of ‘Shellshocked’. Regardless, the series died when NovaLogic eventually dissolved once the HD era of games came to a turn, like so many other games and companies.
And while Delta Force might’ve been a receptive hit back in its day, I couldn’t fathom why Team Jade, part of Tencent’s TiMi Development Group, would be interested in taking up the IP and creating their own shooter out of it. It’s not like it’s a household franchise of sorts; you’d think you could just make another brand by slapping some military-affiliated words together a la “Charlie Hawk Alpha” or “Firestorm Beta” or some nonsense. Maybe I should claim those names before Microsoft gets to them…
But regardless of what I think, Team Jade has put together a game that features an extraction game type, infantry game modes that rival long-running shooters like ‘Battlefield’, and a campaign that recreates the “Black Hawk Down” film that features tactical gameplay completely different to the aforementioned game modes—all for free. On top of that, the game is not only available on PC and very soon consoles, but a mobile version of the game also exists and runs parallel to the other versions. Crossplay will be available between PC and consoles for the multiplayer, but cross-saving is available everywhere and any unlocks you earn (and gamble for) will be available everywhere.
It’s an ambitious title for sure. Call of Duty’s Warzone attempted to do a similar bridge between platforms and failed spectacularly considering its brand strength. And yet, Team Jade has displayed little issue in maintaining support and adding content across all its platforms. I’m impressed. So much so that, before Tencent even flew me out to their Playa Vista-based US headquarters to try out Delta Force on consoles, I started playing the game for myself. Mind, I don’t play shooters as much as I used to as a kid, but I still enjoyed playing Battlefield 4 or Halo—these are games that I could play to take a load off, turn off my brain, and activate it if the enemy team is becoming sufficiently sweaty enough that I need to actually get into gear lest I be cannon fodder.
Delta Force has since become my go-to shooting game on PC and, even to my surprise, on mobile. But before I get ahead of myself, I’m going to go over each of the game’s modes and the hub itself, which ties Delta Force’s various game types all together. This game is not without its clumsiness, but in this free-to-play package there is a strong, well-optimised shooter that’s really fun to play and features an insane amount of customisation.
Welcome to the Hub
When players first boot up Delta Force, they’ll be greeted to the Hub. It’s here where you’ll choose what game mode to jump in, manage your playable Operators, check your loadouts and stashes, look through and complete time-gated events, manage your unlockables and purchase cosmetics and the like. And some of the descriptors I give here aren’t enough to describe everything because Delta Force features an enormous amount of functionality across its game modes.
I’m going to be frank with you lovely people—this is the worst part of Delta Force. The game does not do a good job of going over the available functionality in its menus. Matter of fact, I’d argue a significant portion of the player base doesn’t even know what to touch. Thankfully the “play” button is easy enough to get to, but if you want to change your player cards, badges, avatars, or whatever, it’s not immediately obvious where to go to change those.
What compounds the bloated user interface are these little notification blips that appear just about everywhere on the Hub. The Armoury tab, the player icon, the operators screen, the events page, the store—gosh, you will be gobsmacked at every bit of corner of Delta Force vying for your attention. It took me months to figure out what I was clicking on, the resources I was picking up, the various currencies that come and go as events change. I played for a whole two seasons of the game before I realised that these blue armoury tickets I was collecting were actually meant to be used in the game’s seasonal weapon skin gacha, for example.
Speaking of gacha, I do want to cover the microtransaction aspect of Delta Force. There are quite a few things you can buy in this game with outright dosh, such as various Operator and weapon skin bundles to don and some of them look really cool! Others look a bit… Extravagant. Plenty of skins that feature gold and rubies on them for anyone interested in that. I found the prices for these paid bundles to be reasonable and there’s a solid variety if you want to pay for something off the bat. And as I mentioned earlier, playing the game nets you cosmetics as well even if they’re locked behind a bunch of confusing menus. The Season Pass this time around (and as of this writing) is also giving a unique Arknights-themed skin for one of the medicinal Operators Smee, donning the wisecracking Brit Smee in the clothes of the Executor from the tower defence mobile game.
Right so, here’s the part I’m going to talk about that I definitely don’t like. Certain Operator skins, like the tech-aficionado sniper “Hackclaw” have skin bundles that include various cosmetics like watch skins, executions, voice lines, match ending screens, and the skin itself. In Hackclaw’s case, she has the “Inky Reflections” skin, which not only features all of the above but even an exclusive song “Got You”, a hardcore pop slash house listen with an enthusiastic beat (and honestly, it’s a bit of a banger). This song can be played in the main menu and can also be heard when the player is victorious in a match. It’s a really cool touch and nearly every skin bundle of this series have their own songs which you can also pull up over on streaming services and other music distributors.
So, what’s the big deal? Well, you can’t buy them outright—you must pull for them. Remember that “gacha” term I mentioned earlier? Essentially, the skin is part of a pool with those bundled items I mentioned, and you need to “pull” each time in hopes that you pull the Operator skin or exhaust the pool and collect everything within. Each pull gradually increases in pricing and if you’re unlucky, you could easily spend nearly a hundred bucks trying to get the skin you want. The last time I played a game with this system was ‘Honkai 3rd Impact’ and I hated it there just as much as I hate it here. But I think what really stinks is that the game isn’t upfront with what the next “step” will cost, and each cost is buried under a virtual currency that you’ll have to manually calculate to figure out how much the game wants from you. I’d appreciate the upfront cost being displayed because it’s easy to feel cheated.
And in my case, it hurts more because as of this writing, the game has a series of collaborative skins from that Arknights game I mentioned earlier. These skins are too damn cool, but you’re limited on how much time you can procure them. Unlike the permanent Inky Reflections skin, the current Arknights banners have expiration dates and who knows when they’ll return (if ever). And there’s still two more on the way…
On the bright side, it is entirely possible to earn these skins by playing the game’s extraction mode—Operations. But I’ll touch on that later.
Now, I will tell you what I do like about the Hub. There’s a lot of customisations you can do to not just the player card and the Operators but to your weapons as well. There’s an assortment of shotguns, rifles, pistols, snipers, whathaveyou in Delta Force and each weapon can be levelled up to a certain amount. Either by using the equipment or using level up cards, which can be earned during play. The higher a weapon level, the more equipment you can slot onto the weapon and there’s just an insane number of parts you can apply to a weapon: sights, flashlights and laser sights, stocks, barrels, and more.
On top of that, you can tune these aspects of your weapons to either favour a balanced shooter or one that can see further at the expense of other stats being impacted. Top that with skins and charms, you can really make a gun feel like your own. Operators can also be fitted with different starting weapons here and you can adjust sprays, voice lines, and certain bits of gear like ammo or health crates for certain characters.
Once you’re done catching up on the events and outfitting your characters, you can either hop into Delta Force’s many game modes alone or with a squad of up to four or engage with other players in the world chat, where you can discuss many riveting topics amongst intellectuals such as religion, race and, more recently, “Delta Force versus Battlefield 6”. Besides that, there is neat little translation button that can be clicked next to non-English text bytes, and I must say it has come in handy.
Warfare: Your Rush and King of the Hill Extravaganza
This is my go-to mode in Delta Force and where I’ve largely spent most of my time. This is the section of the game with the various PvP modes you can hop right into and get started on the action. Here you’ve got two main modes: Attack and Defend and King of the Hill. The former is a rush-style mode where attackers push towards set objectives that the defending team must keep occupied at all costs. And King of the Hill is what you expect: both teams must hold several points across the map to gain score and win the match. And then there are event modes that get cycled in every now and again, such as King of the Hill but with armoured tanks and the like.
Right, so before I really get into how the game plays, I should probably explain Delta Force’s playable characters. Our Operators, as I’ve mentioned previously, are unique playable characters that have their own skill sets based on their classes—but there are variations between units even within classes. Stinger, for example, is a healing-focused machine who can not only revive quicker but can revive anyone who has been downed within the faction. He is also equipped with a tonne of smoke-deploying skills that can blanket the battlefield for easy escapes. Toxic, on the other hand, can revive faster but is unable to fire off heals like Stinger can, nor does she have smokes like he does. Instead, she can fire off swarms of drones that can hitch onto enemy combatants, forcing them to spend precious time pulling off drones less they get chipped to near critical conditions.
Going through all the Operators would take me a bit, but they’re all unique in their own way and I really it. I’m usually not too keen on “unique” playable characters (I’m more into class-focused games) but not only does Delta Force do a good job of making it so you can be successful without solely depending on your skills, but the game is balanced in such a way that every Operator has a counter of sorts. And no I don’t mean just a shotgun blast to the face either. Some characters, like Sineva, the riot shield-holding monster, can tank basically everything you throw at that shield, and he can be a real menace. But Hackclaw has a flashbang drone that can impact his ability to hold the shield proper, which gives you and your team just enough leeway to blow that loser into the sky.
I personally found not only Operators to be fairly balanced, but weapons also don’t feel terribly overbearing. Like, don’t expect to be sniped with a shotgun, but obviously don’t be surprised to get glassed by one up close. The snipers in the game can only one shot if the players get your head. Assault rifles and machine guns can absolutely shred you to bits, but players will find themselves needing to reload quickly and, in most Warfare modes, that usually means insta-death.
Right, so Attack and Defend is by far my most favourite mode in Warfare. And on PC, it is visceral. Sixty-four players are at each other’s throats, tossing bombs, spraying into mists of smoke, electric arrows splash damaging allies and foes alike. Matches are incredibly intense, and it only takes a couple of sweats to engage the other sweats for all-out warfare to play out. If I could best describe Delta Force’s play and overall movement, I’d liken it to “modern day Battlefield”. There’s a heft to each player character, yes, but the character controller supports dolphin diving and sliding as well as vaulting over most chest-high walls. This gives you enough movement to be able to glide effortlessly across maps but not enough control that you can 360 no-scope enemies. Not that you can’t but you’ll likely get glassed before the rotation even completes.
…Sorry.
Now, up to this point, I’ve been talking about my experience with the game through a PC and mobile lens. That’s because I’ve only gotten to play the Xbox Series X version of the game twice: once when I arrived at Tencent’s Cali-based HQ and the other over a closed beta test that ran over a random July weekend. When I first got to Tencent, I met up with a member of the team alongside with another player: Philip Watson of CGMagazine (a very cool customer, by the way) and we both set out to play a few matches of Warfare and Operations while a member of Team Jade assisted us. They also nearly caught me trying to play the game on the PlayStation 5 test unit (and I would have if I didn’t hold a hatred for that ugly monstrosity of a controller).
Also, I still refer to it as a DualShock. Too bad, nerds.
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Delta Force’s console version was, of course, still in development when I was playing. But it was content complete, and we were free to browse the menus and muck around. At the time, one of the newest Operators to the roster, Tempest, along with the new attract video and the “Prison Break” season theme that is active. Now besides my controller(s) having a bit of stick drift, I was able to get a sense of how the game plays with an Xbox controller and, as one would expect, it plays quite well. Now mind, I can’t do shooters on a controller anymore—sans Halo, the more modern FPS titles on platforms emphasise too much on direct aiming and you can’t get that from a controller. And when I did enquire whether or not the console version of the game would support mouse and keyboard, I was told that sadly it would not be the case; or at least for the time being.
When Philip and I interviewed two of Delta Force’s designers after our play session, they explained to us that “it might be more of a niche” and that it would make enforcing anti-cheat measurements more difficult. But they are open to ideas and what the community thinks would work for the game. In addition, I was able to confirm cross-play support for the multiplayer portions of the game across PlayStation, Xbox and PC. You can match between consoles only or play with PC players if it suits your preference.
Philip also brought up some great points regarding player progression to the designers, asking them about how important it is to the development team that a “sense of progression” was baked into the user experience. We were told that one of the ways Delta Force does this was by offering players earned experience points that apply not only towards the player rank but also that weapon customisation system I mentioned earlier on. This, compounding with the season pass, is how Team Jade believes players will enjoy a feeling of account progression beyond the gameplay mechanic-driven feedback loop of the game’s many modes.
When I inquired about what the team had in mind for personal player objective when in-game (such as how they should push the objective as their specific Operator), the designers explained to me that Delta Force is an always-evolving title and that how players may play the game with a specific Operator at one point may change in the future due to newly introduced mechanics.
Operations: Loot and Shoot and Survive
I hate extraction shooters. And when I was playing Delta Force at Tencent HQ, I wasn’t exactly enthused at the idea of trying the game’s Operations mode. But I was insisted upon and, well, what’s the harm in trying, right? It can’t hurt me.
That it can’t, but Operations will definitely make you sweaty. If you’re not familiar with extraction shooters, you’ve likely heard of contemporary titles such as ‘Escape from Tarkov’ or ‘Hunt: Showdown 1896’. Heck, I could technically argue that our beloved Sea of Thieves is an extraction title, to an extent anyway. See, your goal in an extraction shooter is to land in a map, find as much loot as you can, and escape with what you can as soon as possible lest you get ambushed by other marauding players. Imagine PUBG’s scavenging but brought to a whole new level: you can bring equipment with you into the fight, but if you die, it’s lost forever. This also means that you have the chance to lose just about everything you bring in if you stink and/or are simply unlucky.
It’s a high stake, high reward mode. Partially because here, the game’s loot crates known as “Mandelbricks” can be found and taken with you. See, by extracting with loot, you can sell what you find for currency. Some, like Mandelbricks, can be sold for Delta Coins, which are the game’s premium currency. With the right team, good coordination, and a bit of luck, you can leave a match making it “big” (relatively speaking, anyway). But pursuing these high value items will also put you square on the map—be prepared to fight hard for your valuable loot.
Operations plays differently to Warfare. Not radically mind, but there are some major key differences here: sprint is no longer unlimited, and the player can take critical damage to their limbs, which impacts their performance and makes it even harder to stay alive. Good old heals won’t just work here, even if you play as the Operator who can heal themselves (Stinger)—medkits are crucial to your survival as are the helmets and bags you find strewn about in these desolate wastelands you’ll trudge through.
So, since I’ve left Los Angeles a month ago, I’ve been hopping into Operations matches every now and again to see what it’s like. After all, if I’m going to be covering the game in full, I’ve got to suck it up and jump into the fray. And that I did, on mobile of course. Because the flow of the game is fundamentally different when everyone’s gotta fight their disgusting touch screens to score loot. Though it is here I noticed just how well the game plays even on a touch screen. Moment to moment gameplay is satisfying and I never felt that my shots either weren’t making it or that I was struggling too much in getting from point A to B. Gyroscope functionality makes aiming easier, but admittedly I was never able to trigger this during my time with the game on mobile. Aiming while scrolling the screen isn’t too shabby but it’s not my cup of tea. Still, the game has kept me busy during downtime while at work and, if this game had controller support on mobile, this would easily be the best mobile shooter in the market right now.
Black Hawk Down: The Radically Different Campaign
Now Team Jade could’ve stopped at both those aforementioned multiplayer modes and called it a day… But they didn’t. Matter of fact, they’ve gone the extra length to create a full, short multiplayer campaign that can be played cooperatively and solo. On PC, mind! Console players will unfortunately be left out of cooperative play at this time, but I’ll touch on that in a bit. And, to reiterate, this mode is not available on mobile devices despite being present on the game’s Hub.
Delta Force’s Black Hawk Down campaign plays radically different compared to the other two game types. As a matter of fact, it uses an entirely different tech stack: while Delta Force’s multiplayer-focused modes run on Unreal Engine 4, the Black Hawk Down campaign runs on Unreal Engine 5 to push for fidelity and the like. The story is not only different (opting to follow the well-known film of the same name) but the gameplay and the playable characters are nowhere near the futuristic warfare that’s present elsewhere. Here, you’ll play as Private Generics in a slower, more tactical-based gameplay that approaches the likes of the original Delta Force games. All though truthfully, I can only tell you this from the bit I’ve played of an Original XBox version of one of those games earlier last month and… I don’t quite remember being a fan.
I won’t go over the story as I don’t really have anything nice to say about the incidents nor its glorification. What I can say is that the cinematics are strikingly beautiful, pre-rendered as they are.
Touching on the gameplay, players will have to trek across eight or so missions as they take on rebel forces in Somalia. Running and gunning here is foley as you will be immediately lasered by enemies. Shots count, as you cannot pick up enemy weapons and, if you aren’t playing one of the characters that carries ammunition, you’ll find yourself drowning in your own blood quick. Revives take longer. Walking and sprinting are significantly slower. There’s a lot of things that will be fighting you in your attempts to clear missions, be it enemy or even friendly AI, and you will die a bunch. But! It is really fun to go through especially with mates. Coordination is key and you’re always on your toes as one wrong move can lead straight to a game over screen.
It is also a bit of an unpolished experience, compared to the rest of the game. Creating rooms can be a bit tricky if you want to make a private room as the option only appears once you create a room and the game will immediately matchmake with other players. Not that I hate playing with randoms, but being able to private rooms before they’ve been made should be a standard feature. In addition, the game is quite literally unplayable on my desktop PC—if I load up Black Hawk Down on my Ryzen 9 7900X, Intel B580-based desktop (don’t diss the GPU, I’m not giving Nvidia my kidneys) my PC will completely lock up and I’ll be forced to do a system reset. As of this writing, the mode still does this and I’m not keen on beta testing that as I value the 15+ year old hard disks still spinning in the bay. Don’t worry, I’ll eventually replace them.
Completing challenges within this mode nets you rewards that can be brought to the multiplayer modes. And there is a Black Hawk Down-inspired bundle of skins available for purchase within Delta Force’s store. But the Black Hawk Down campaign itself has no store nor the rest of the game’s busy Hub—it’s a completely divorced, standalone package that costs you zilch. Look, I’ve been spoiled by the quality of free-to-play content of today’s games. Even considering the F2P content I’ve been playing decades ago from across plenty of major publishers like Nexon or independent developers, I’m still incredibly impressed with what you can get for nothing more than the hardware you carry and an active internet connection.
If you love tactical-based gameplay, you’ll love this mode even if it can frustrate. Console players will unfortunately have to play this mode solo as, when I asked the developers during our interview, they said that because of that technical discrepancy (the differences in engines I mentioned earlier and how the game has to launch a separate executable) it is a challenge to bring cooperative functionality to consoles at this time.
What’s it Looking Like, Chief?
I really like Delta Force. When I picked this game up months back, I did so because I was looking for a shooter that would fill my time. I played shooters all my life, some of the more notable ones being Battlefield, Unreal Tournament, Halo, ‘Combat Arms’, ‘War Rock’ (I’m sorry for reminding you of this one), so on and so forth. These are and were my favourite time wasters, but over the last decade I personally found that the shooter genre evolved in a direction that I wasn’t too interested in. Hero shooters, battle royales galore—that goober who walked the Summer Games Fest stage a few months back was “right” about shooters not quite being what they used to be, but he also missed the point so hard their game ended up being unlaunched.
And I bring this up because I’ve been thinking back to that moment on stage, that little gaffe, when I think about why I don’t play shooters much these days. Not just the modern war stuff, mind, but even the ones with cartoony, fantastical universes. Not expecting the industry to evolve is silly, because mechanic and mode offerings today could very likely be a thing of the past a decade from now. Who knows, right? But here’s the thing I ended up really enjoying about Delta Force: it combines much of the newer game modes and progression systems that permeate modern gaming while also digging into what made older shooters fun. There are game types here with player controllers and objectives that differ significantly from the other and yet, despite the many grievances players have expressed regarding cheaters and matchmaking queue times, I’ve never heard anyone actually complain about the game’s balancing. That’s a rare sight, in my eyes.
It might not look like it from a glance, but Delta Force is an ambitious shooter. It plays great across all modes despite some polish issues for the overall experience. But it gets a lot of things right in a shooter that I don’t see in today’s shooters which is why I think this is a damn good game. For free, no less. ∎
‘Delta Force’ is available to play over on the game’s official client, Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series consoles, and mobile devices (iOS/Android).
