Delta Force: Black Hawk Down is a breakthrough for Xbox Live players. For the first time it is possible for up to 50 gamers to play at once, and the quality of that experience is quite good. At the same time the game does show its roots as a port of a two-year-old computer game that has been eclipsed by more recent console offerings. So the overall presentation cannot quite compare to newer Xbox games.

Set in the year 1993 during the military intervention known as Operation Restore Hope in Somalia, Delta Force: Black Hawk Down casts the player as an elite soldier hunting for the Mogadishu-based Habr Gedir clan warlord General Mohamed Farrah Aidid and his lieutenants while doing all he can to minimize the suffering of the Somali people by protecting civilian lives and ensuring humanitarian aid reaches them. The events are very loosely based on the events that lead up to the ill-fated raid by Delta Force and 10th Mountain Division soldiers to capture some of the Aidid organization’s top leaders. In that action two Black Hawk helicopters were brought down and 18 Americans lost there lives in the ensuing firefight.

During the 16 missions of the single-player game the player will take on the numerically superior but ill-trained, only-fairly-equipped and disorganized militia of General Aidid. At the beginning of the campaign the player will be invited to create a profile and choose which class of soldier he wishes to play as. He may choose between soldiers equipped for close quarters combat, sniper, gunner or a medic. These classes are used both in the campaign and multiplayer modes, but in the campaign they do not impact play as much as they do in multiplayer. In each mission the player is given initial objectives and additional objectives as the mission plays out. Most involve killing bushels of Habr Gedir militia on the way to meeting an objective while avoiding civilian casualties. Usually the player will find himself on foot – ground-pounding about the countryside with nothing between him and militia bullets except a Kevlar vest. But every so often he’ll mount up on a Humvee or hop aboard a chopper for some fast-paced gunning action with heavy machineguns and miniguns. Keeping on mission is made much simpler with an excellent map and GPS locator system that is very easy to read.

The foot missions can be real white knuckle affairs, as death can come from almost any semi-demolished shack or a militiaman you missed in your initial sweep of an area and ammo consumption is always a factor. In comparison, the vehicular runs make the player feel almost invulnerable with pretty good armor and a gun that can just be used as a lead-spewing hose that never runs out of rounds.

In the missions the player will usually have a few squad members along for the ride. The AI for these troops is workman-like but effective enough in keeping them from just being cannon fodder. However it is not that great about reading your actions and really lending a hand. It is possible to make these guys a little more effective by issuing them eight different commands either via an orders menu or by employing spoken commands if you’ve got your trusty Xbox Communicator plugged in. The voice recognition is not bad and the addition of a command-confirmation button means you won’t be accidentally sending your buddies on a charge-of-the-Light-Brigade maneuver when the software misinterprets your command as you munch some cheesy poofs. The sad thing is that for long periods of time the player can forget to issue any orders and it does not greatly affect the outcome of the fight.

Of course getting into the fight would not be much fun if the weapons disappointed. Fortunately, they do not. There is a good variety of weapons from a simple combat knife to a shoulder-fired rocket launcher, as well as heavier vehicle-mounted weapons. All are very true to their real-world functionality. My personal favorite has become the M21 sniper rifle, which is based on the M14 assault rifle. Try it as a nice compromise between range, rate of fire and ammunition load.

Delta Force: Black Hawk Down got almost all the multiplayer elements of the game right. With up to 50 players via Xbox Live, it takes the crown as the game with the most simultaneous players possible. It also supports all the most popular Live features and a nice variety of game options. On a single console, split-screen for up to four players supports both deathmatch and cooperative games. Via System Link the game supports 32 players. Man, that is twice as many as Halo’s maximum number of players! The bad news is that you will need eight times as much equipment to pull off Delta Force: Black Hawk Down’s maximum number of players. In System Link mode only one player may play per Xbox console, the same disappointing shortcoming that plagued Star Wars Battlefront and kept it from becoming a LAN-party staple.

Control of the game is pretty standard first-person-shooter fare. It is tight and responsive enough to shoot with some precision and adds in lean, roll and crouch/prone movements to keep your soldier under cover and out of trouble as he goes about his job. I found the weapon-selection system a little clunky, but it was plain enough what I needed to do to get the death dealer I wanted.

Where the game seriously losses points is in its presentation. Delta Force: Black Hawk Down is a two-year-old computer game and it shows it. The character models lack the detail we’ve come to expect on Xbox games and the textures are overall a little murky. The environments are rather generic and under-populated with elements – even for the desert region around Mogadishu. All too often it is hard to see an enemy who is shooting at you. An enemy may be a tiny figure at the very edge of the player’s vision but is still a hazard to the player’s health, while the player may find it hard to adequately return fire at the little guy. The sound also never rises to the occasion. The radio chatter is pretty good, but the weapon sounds just don’t cut it, being far too generic and lacking power.

I suppose what a potential buyer of Delta Force: Black Hawk Down needs to ask himself is, "How am I going to play this game?" If the answer is, "Alone as a campaign.", then there are probably better choices out there. If on the other hand the answer is, "I wish to crush my enemies, drive them before me, and hear the lamentations of their women.", the 50-player Xbox Live experience of Delta Force: Black Hawk Down probably makes it worth a purchase. Questions? Comments? willhill2600@charter.net !