Delta Force Xtreme

I was ready to hate this game. It was probably the title that set me off – anything with Xtremein it is bound to suck, I kept reasoning. So maybe it was the shattering of my low expectations that made the game seem less sucky than it really was. Don’t expect a highly intricate tactical shooter here though – neither the series in general nor DFX in particular is about that, but instead attempts to capture some of the old magic by faithfully remaking the very first Delta Force game from 1998.

DUMB IS FUN

So what was so good about that game? A bit like Doom gone outdoors, you don’t do much else but travel from waypoint to waypoint and shoot bad guys who show zero sense of self-preservation. Occasionally you stop to shoot airborne threats with your anti-tank weapon (yes, it’s still nonsensical), fetch some valuable codebook or plant an explosive charge to demolish a radio antenna before moving on to the next mission. In short, the appeal is simplicity itself, and you engage in this ritual for the duration of three campaigns set in stereotypical jungle, desert and winter garbs. Yay!

Disappointingly, only three of the five campaigns are represented here (Peru, Chad and Novoya Zalya), but the included campaigns have enough action and variety to warrant going through most of them. Faithfulness to the source was paramount, so each individual mission accurately mirrors those of the original right down to the terrain topography, objectives, building design and even radio chatter. NovaLogic has taken some creative license here and there – the inclusion of controllable vehicles stands out most, and on some missions (such as Peru’s ‘Reckless Pack’) the scripting is so vast that DFX plays like a different game entirely.

GAMEPLAY

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