Gaming🎮 Delta Force is an ambitious tactical FPS that's equal parts Battlefield and Tarkov – but does it trump either?

[Royal_Lizard]

Did you know Delta Force: Black Hawk Down was big in China? I certainly didn't. But it's in the internet cafes of the 2000's that the embers of a new tactical shooter were first lit. It was here, that the founder of Tencent's Team Jade fell in love with one of gaming's earliest tactical shooters. Fast forward to NovaLogic's selling of the IP to THQ in 2016 and the wave of Tencent's expansion into the gaming sphere and voilah! Delta Force is back.

"They saw an opportunity to bring their favourite game back", states publishing director Wallace Wei during a preview of Delta Force: Hawk Ops in an LA hotel room. It's there that I was given a brief hands-on session with this new venture into the modern - and, indeed, post-modern - tactical FPS. What I found was not one game, but two. Team Jade's Delta Force is, if nothing else, an attempt to please two crowds at once; the fans of the original 1998 FPS, and modern audiences altogether unfamiliar with the IP. That task, much like the game itself, is fraught with danger.

What exactly are these two halves of Delta Force: Hawk Ops? The first is a modern remake of the original campaign. This I can write the least about - I was only shown snippets of a gameplay trailer rather than given the opportunity to test it out myself. Wei informed me during the preview that it is a faithful recreation of the original campaign - with the same levels and missions remade in Unreal Engine 5. So faithful, it seems, that's Team Jade has also sandwiched clips from the Black Hawk Down film between missions. A byproduct from buying the IP rights from THQ, and a peculiar link to the past.

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