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Delta Force: Land Warrior
by "Admiral" Nelson HernandezGame Title: Delta Force: Land Warrior
Version: Third in Delta Force series
Category: Tactical 1st Person Shooter
Publisher: Novalogic
Developer: Novalogic
Release Date: Released
Files: | Patch | Demo | Movie | Screensaver |
Article Date: November 27, 2000
Realism vs. Eye Candy
Delta Force: Land Warrior (DF3) is the third iteration in the Delta Force series of first-person shooter titles published by Novalogic, and like its predecessors puts the player in the boots of an operative in the Delta Force, an elite special operations unit of the U.S. Army.
The twist on previous titles is that the player gets to use the Army’s Land Warrior system. In military jargon, Land Warrior is designed to “enhance soldier lethality, survivability and mobility while reducing the logistical support footprint.” The soldiers are to be equipped with a heads-up display, modular armor and modified weapons. In game terms this amounts to virtually nothing. There is a special weapon associated with the system, but the heads-up display is nothing we haven’t already seen in other games. The armor makes very little difference and logistics do not enter into the scope of a first-person shooter.
Like most Novalogic titles, DF3 puts a strong emphasis on fun and eye candy over realism. It seems that virtually every place a choice had to be made between real life and Rambo fantasy, the latter won out. If you want a game that has more authenticity, then I would recommend Rogue Spear and SWAT 3. If you want to go out and blast some computer-generated enemies of the state or your friends online without straining the gray matter too much, then DF3 is an excellent choice for doing that.
A scene from the introduction
Installation / Manual
The installation was flawless. The manual does the job, devoting a good chunk of space to biographies of your squad mates. There are five of them, and they cover all the racial and gender bases in a little bit of kowtowing at the altar of political correctness. I didn’t know women could serve in the Delta Force, but hey---maybe in 2005, when the game takes place, we’ll have become more enlightened about that kind of thing. What bugs me about it (and the only reason I am mentioning this at all) is that for all their supposed sensitivity about creating a diverse team, every person is basically a stereotype of their race and gender: the white guy is a Texan redneck, the black man is a powerful athlete and the American Indian is a laconic sniper. The women aren’t any better: the white is a medic and the Asian is a stealthy modern-day ninja. Your enemies all sound Arabic, of course. It is all pretty irrelevant in the end, for the members’ personalities do not enter at all into the game. Apart from certain small differences based on their specialty, they play identically.
Gameplay Options / Plot
After a fun intro cinematic you get to the main menu, where you can choose between playing multiplayer or single player missions and the campaign. There is plenty of gameplay value in the single-player side of things. In addition to a training mission, there are several standalone missions. The campaign is quite long, and those missions are also replayable after they are won.
The campaign’s plot is pretty standard stuff: a global terrorist army called New Dawn is doing all sorts of evil things and has to be shut down. In the process of doing this you will play about 20 missions, requiring you to rescue hostages, eliminate enemies, perform demolitions work and capture an enemy leader alive for interrogation.
Vengeance is mine
There is a mission editor that comes with the game, but it is completely unadvertised---it isn’t mentioned in the manual, box, or as an option on the CD’s AutoPlay list. There is a separate PDF manual for it and it runs as a separate program. In fact, I didn’t even know it existed until I had already written this review! It seems to be quite powerful but I did not spend enough time with it to provide useful commentary on this aspect of the game. (More on that in a follow-up).
DF3 also includes a robust multiplayer mode, which offers the expected options and is playable by LAN or through the Novaworld servers.
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