GameSpot editors' review
-
CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 01/23/2004
- Released on: 01/20/2004
- Originally published on GameSpot: Delta Force - Black Hawk Down: Team Sabre (PC) Review
If it were a movie, Delta Force - Black Hawk Down: Team Sabre would be a Jerry Bruckheimer production. Of course, the movie that Team Sabre is based on was a Bruckheimer production, but this expansion pack has more in common with Bruckheimer's wildly over-the-top Bad Boys II than with the grittily authentic Black Hawk Down. Team Sabre may not be realistic, but it's packed with explosions, wild gunfights, and quite a bit of fun--though it's also extremely frustrating at times, due to a limited save system coupled with some excruciatingly difficult gameplay.
A Black Hawk swoops low to provide support. You have to neutralize enemy RPG gunners or they'll shoot it down.
Having exhausted the Somalia setting of Black Hawk Down in the original game, NovaLogic splits the 11 missions in Team Sabre between fighting Colombian drug lords and defeating a rogue Iranian general. In total, these missions should take most players 15 hours or so to complete. Like the original game, the expansion offers a wide variety of mission objectives, like rescuing hostages on an oil platform, blowing up drug boats, seizing an Iranian airfield, and saving the crew of the occasional downed Black Hawk helicopter. There's little room for subtlety or stealth in these missions; when you get down to it, everything basically devolves into shooting and blowing up virtually everything you see.
To say that things explode gloriously in this game would be an understatement. Team Sabre looks and sounds about as good as Black Hawk Down did last year--so it's still looking and sounding pretty good. However, in Team Sabre, vehicles blow up spectacularly; chassis fly up, bodies fly out, and burning tires arc across the screen, all with convincingly loud and dramatic explosions. Even armored personnel carriers burst into flame after you shoot them with your M16. It's certainly exaggerated, but everything is consistently over-the-top. In the midst of all this mayhem, Team Sabre really does convey the chaotic mess of modern-day combat. Enemy infantry charge at you, rocket-propelled grenades streak by your head, technicals (pickup trucks with machine guns mounted on them) race by, and Black Hawk helicopters fly past on strafing runs. At its very best, Team Sabre makes you feel like all hell is breaking loose around you. The expansion's best moments involve desperate, Alamo-like last stands, frantic convoy runs through enemy territory, or urban combat on the narrow streets and alleyways of an Iranian town.
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