Like many others, I’ve been desperate for a return to form for DICE’s Battlefield series since the poor launch of 2042. While that game has received updates and now plays reasonably well, I’m still always searching for another modern shooter that’s comparable to the old greats. Battlebit held my attention for some time, while Call Of Duty Black Ops 6 wasn’t really of much interest at all. In stepped Delta Force, a game I approached with (healthy) cynicism.
The game has operators – like Battlefield 2042 – and takes place in a sort of pseudo-modern setting. I’m just surprised that a team of developers saw what happened to 2042 and decided that they’d essentially remake it as a free-to-play shooter. Some of the maps have a striking resemblance to 2042, and the operator system (characters with unique abilities) is drawn from 2042 and other games with hero-shooter mechanics. It begs the question: why wouldn’t I just play Battlefield?
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Well, to start with, Delta Force is a shiny new thing, and all shiny new things are fun for a time. During the review period, I was playing on closed servers and didn’t get the full experience of the 64-player combat, but it’s a multiplayer FPS with a bunch of people in various locations shooting at each other. The graphics are great, the gun customisation system is incredibly detailed, and there are explosions, tanks, and chaos. Delta Force runs significantly better than 2042 did at launch. What more do you really want from a game like this?
It helps that the gunplay is satisfying. It has a short time-to-kill compared to other shooters and this feels rewarding when you kill people and feels bad when you die. Gunplay is, of course, the most important aspect of a shooter, and I feel Delta Force has built a competent system with bullet projectile drop and recoil that effectively toes the line between realism and arcade.
Operations
Beyond the 64-player mode is Operations, an extraction mode that blends Tarkov with a map stylistically similar to Call Of Duty: Warzone. There were moments where I had to stop and process that I wasn’t, in fact, playing Warzone. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does contribute to one of the biggest problems I have with Delta Force – more on that later.
Firstly, though, the Operations mode is tense and fun in a way that these ‘loot stuff and try not to die’ shooters are. The mode doesn’t do anything revolutionary, but it does work. You head into a zone with some missions to complete and loot to collect. You can return to your Black Site and upgrade and purchase gear. If it sounds familiar, it’s because it is. The short time-to-kill is extremely punishing in this mode, and sometimes it feels awful to die in the space of a couple of seconds, but, as a result, tactical gameplay excels. It’s the sort of thing I can see myself enjoying with a couple of friends on a rainy Friday night.
Delta Force Downfall
Delta Force is currently in an ‘open beta’ phase, a term that seems to just mean a soft launch of a game these days. More content is planned for the future – including a standalone Black Hawk Down DLC which I think fits the setting perfectly – as well as new maps, operators, and weapons. As it currently stands, Delta Force is a perfectly competent free-to-play FPS.
But there are two big issues I have with the game: the lack of originality, and the kernel-level anti-cheat that has Steam reviewers up in arms.
Delta Force doesn’t do anything new or fresh. It just reimagines existing games. I want to give developer Team Jade the benefit of doubt that maybe new features or something more unique will arrive over the next year of planned content, but as it currently stands, there’s little reason to play Delta Force instead of the other games it drew inspiration from. It’s free, of course, which is incentive enough to at least try it for yourself, but isn’t much of a selling point if you’re already playing a similar game.
As for the kernel-level anti-cheat, the developers posted a response via the Steam reviews that reads:
“Hi! Thank you for playing Delta Force and sharing your feedback with us.
Fair play and integrity are core values for us, and we are committed to combating cheating to maintain a fair and enjoyable gaming environment. To achieve this, we work with ACE, an anti-cheat solution that is trusted by a roster of prestigious developers and operates at the kernel level, which is necessary to counter modern hacking tools that also function at this level. This approach has been widely adopted by other game developers to protect their communities.
We also want to clarify that our anti-cheat tool only runs while the game is active. We are aware of false alerts from certain security tools indicating that ACE is running when it is not, and we are actively working with said party to address this issue.”
As is always the case with these types of things, install and play Delta Force at your own discretion. For a free-to-play shooter, it’s a solid game, but nothing too special. Worth trying out for the sake of a new shooter, but it probably won’t tempt you away if you’re happy with your current multiplayer game or if you object to kernel-level anti-cheats.
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