Delta Force: Proof that forced diversity can make you hate a good video game

Delta Force mirrors a decades-old but consistently successful blueprint for first-person shooters but stumbles out of the gate with cringeworthy characters and a boring prologue.

Before launch, Delta Force promised modes like operations, attack and defend, and a recreation of the cinematic wonder that is "Black Hawk Down."

The latter is a story familiar with most war genre fans but unfortunately wasn't available in the open beta.

Users will be annoyed before the game even starts, having to parse through multiple screens in order to launch it. Users are asked to launch Steam, agree to terms and conditions, and then launch the game every time they boot it up, at least for now.

What the gamer immediately gets when the game finally opens, however, is a storyline and set of characters so baffling it feels like it was written with artificial intelligence using the keywords "gender and racial diversity."

The opening cinematic feature is a tried-and-true story about a conflict in a fictional Middle Eastern war zone, before quickly transitioning to a vague plotline about a cybernetic old woman communicating with her daughter via video call from a control room.

Either this story was very hard to follow or it was so scatterbrained it wasn't worth following. The publishers also released other trailers for different plotlines, such as an Elon Musk-inspired Neuralink knockoff, where a female Russian character who helped develop the technology has to murder the co-founder.

Moving on, the characters — or the "operators" — then offer a sad reflection of the current state of big-budget titles.

Put a chick it in, make it lame!

Using the typical "operator" method that has been used tirelessly by developers in recent years, users are given the option of eight characters, four of which are unlocked at launch.

Three of the characters are Chinese, which becomes less strange when you find out Delta Force is developed by TiMi Studio Group out of Shenzen, China.

While the game lacks the nonbinary characters that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 provides, it makes up for this with pointlessly diverse characters that seem like tropes from any given heist movie crew.

The first few characters are normal enough if we excuse their nicknames: "D-Wolf" (Kai Silva), "Vyron" (Wang Yuhao), and "Stinger" (Roy Smee) are just regular-seeming guys with their own special set of gadgets and bonuses. This is where any semblance of actual time spent writing stops, though.

Enter "Toxik," a Russian woman named Zoya Pomchenkova. This sexy operator uses mini-drones that are shaped like dragonflies to help her on the battlefield.

Next is "Shepherd," the quintessential buff, quiet character whose name alludes to his deep religious faith.

We then move on to "Uluru," who painfully shows up on screen as a beer drinking, spitting, bearded Australian guy with a mullet.

Luna Kim uses her high-tech bow-and-arrow system to create scans of the battlefield to reveal nearby enemies.

"My arrow knows everything," she says, as users consider closing their laptop.

Last is "Hackclaw," real name Mai Xiaowen, a silver-haired hacker wearing — you guessed it — a COVID-style mask.

"Don't imagine that hiding behind a keyboard makes you safe," she says, in what is seemingly a mistranslated tagline.

At this point, it really seems major developers don't want gamers to have the freedom to create their own characters out of fear the user base may appear incredibly un-diverse. Instead, players are forced into tragically bad archetypes that provide unnecessary advantages that typically trump skill.

This is especially odd given the customization levels throughout the game.

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Gameplay: Auctions and microtransactions

After choosing from one of the incredibly demoralizing operators, users quickly jump into a prologue mission where they are joined by two other real gamers to explore a warehouse.

Enemies inexplicably drop briefcases full of loot, ranging from ammo to medical supplies or hard drives. Key cards gain the player access to rooms with more loot.

Equipment and load-out are customizable, allowing users to change their helmets, vests, and even their backpacks in order to carry more ammo or med packs.

Users take their in-game findings with them to their menu hub where they can pull from their inventory before each game. This is key because there is a medical aspect to the game; players can bleed out slowly or use a tourniquet or wrap to stop the bleeding. There are other injectables for stat bonuses, too.

Acquiring weapons and ammo out-of-game is very reminiscent of Counter-Strike and similar games, with in-game currency used to buy any item at auction.

As a reminder, this game is free, so one might have expected it to include microtransactions ... and it does. Offers to buy in-game currency ranged from $1.35 to $135, which could have been curated, however, users can spend as much money as they want to get ahead.

For example, a user can buy key cards in the auctions that allow them to gain access to certain rooms on a map to collect more goodies.

Available game modes included operations and war, the latter offering fast-paced urban combat on the one available map upon launch. Users who get to level 12 unlock a "normal" difficulty for the map, as opposed to "easy."

Operations is typical of games like Battlefield; fight for control of certain regions on the map until you control them all or exhaust the other team of their lives.

Controls

Although there was no controller support on PC (even a custom setup didn't provide proper mapping), there are many of the standard in-game movements one expects to find.

Purists may not be happy to hear that within hours of the game's launch there was already frequent abuse of the sliding maneuver.

The action itself felt like anything you might play, while still being better and more realistic than Call of Duty or Fortnite.

Purists may also not like the pace of the game; there are a lot of open areas and a lot of reviving going on. Vehicles parachuting in can be annoying as they are as bait as possible, as opposed to them being available by default on the map.

For a free game though, there is not much to complain about. Unreal Engines look great (Unreal 4 for multiplayer, Unreal 5 for campaign), and recoil, damage, and movement is about what you'd expect.

What Delta Force does right is deliver a current-generation, fast-paced shooter that provides a refreshingly simple kit system with a vast array of guns and items.

What it gets wrong is being another game where users will be disadvantaged against whichever teenager is willing to spend the most money on in-game currency.

This, combined with the awful operators meant to placate any complaints about a lack of diversity, will likely make the game a "pass" for anyone but hardcore fans of the pay-to-play genre.

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