There was a lot that came out of my time working with Delta Force: Hawk Ops that I didn’t expect. I didn’t know it was a top-down reboot of the 1999 war shooter series, meticulously reimagined in Unreal Engine 5. I would never have guessed it was trying to hit not one, not two, but three different current shooter subgenres at once. And I never would have imagined that my short time with it would leave me eager to play more of its heavy, run-and-shoot tactics.
Developer Team Jade studio head Leo Yao answered my most obvious question first: “How did a Chinese studio acquire such an American franchise?” In short, THQ Nordic acquired the assets from original developer NovaLogic in 2016 and was lost in the shuffle of Embracer Group until it was rescued by Tencent a few years ago. “I’ve always had a soft spot for the series,” Yao told me, adding that personal affection aside, the team sees great potential in reviving the franchise in 2024. They’re not just remaking the original game with glosses or a new coat of paint. They expand it into a massive game with three different experiences: a large-scale, team-based PvP mode; an extraction shooter a la DMZ or The Cycle; and a single-player campaign hoping to recapture the magic of war shooters of yesteryear.
Much of that potential lies in the 2003 series adaptation of the book Black Hawk Down about the Battle of Mogadishu. Yao told me that as the most recognizable entry in the series, it serves as the perfect re-entry point and the best place to start the rethinking process. The first big change is that this version of the single-player campaign will be based on the Ridley Scott film of the same name, along with the rights to the footage. He didn’t give me details on how any of this would integrate into the campaign, or the fact that the rest of the game’s near-future and aesthetic would change the story based on an event from the early 90s. Nor was I able to get my hands on it specifically, but he did mention that the team’s goal is to make it a challenging and intense FPS experience where bullets are extremely lethal and if caught out of position can spell disaster.
I spent most of my time with Havoc Warfare, Hawk Ops’ take on Battlefield’s Breakthrough, where attackers must take points of interest away from defenders by pushing their zones of control further and further back until they disappear from the map entirely. The first big difference between Hawk Ops and games like it is in the loading screen. I had a choice of four different characters, each with a set of special abilities, weapons, and tools that made them unique from each other—much like the specialists in the Call of Duty series, but with three or four unique actions per character. I warmed up to Kai, who is mostly your standard assault rifleman who can temporarily speed up, but also has a handy missile barrage that’s great for clearing tight spaces. I really got to get into some more tactical options with Terry, who can use drones to scan for targets and immobilize them for a short period of time, as well as place mines to trap moving enemies by goals.
The map I played had some key fortified areas where using a little pre-assault reconnaissance really made the difference between capturing an objective and stopping the line. Unfortunately, I played in matches that were mostly populated by bots, and without pings or commands it was almost impossible to coordinate these skills between players to make big wins, but the potential for combining abilities for huge wins is written on the wall . Team Jade told me that other maps will test your squad’s tactical awareness even more, as they will introduce a mix of internal and external objectives and verticality, as well as vehicle and weapon placement that can help teams gain an advantage or to keep the defense stable.
Before you even choose your characters, however, you can play around with your gear or spend in-game currency to buy some of the dozens of weapons and gear available. Something remarkable about the customization options in Hawk Ops is that not only do weapons have a huge potential to have parts added to them, all of which have some impact on gameplay, but each of these parts can be further customized. And not just colors, materials or textures, but the actual size of parts like the muzzle and cheek guards can be adjusted to make even finer adjustments to the weapons. I don’t think I have the strength to fine-tune the lengths of all my favorite gun suppressors, but for those looking for an extra layer of optimization, Hawk Ops has what you need.
The Dukes of Hazzard
Item progression gets a little more complicated when you get to Hazard Operation, the extraction part of Hawk Ops. Weapons and mods can be purchased from a larger market (and can be meticulously modified as in other modes), but can be permanently lost if you are shot down while deployed. Yao smiled when I mentioned the possibility of a player losing a gun, they spent an unreasonable amount of time going through it in a sudden hail of bullets. “The risk/reward elements of extraction shooters will be very present.” If you come across someone’s precious weapon while out in the field and don’t see the same value in it yourself, you can resell it on the open market for in-game currency, a feature that is present and in games like Escape from Tarkov.
When you deploy in Hazard Operations, your goal is to pick up something valuable and take it back to base to sell. These could be other players’ valuable weapons and armor, or rare treasures that only serve the sole purpose of being really valuable when resold, like a fancy futuristic VR console or some kind of super-fancy high-tech medical equipment I found while traveling you are. Clearly marked points on the map highlight keyboxes that have a higher chance of containing something valuable and are likely hot spots for enemy player activity.
Between these points of interest are various camps, natural sites such as caves and cliffs, and old corporate buildings repurposed as fortifications for the many AI mobs that exist to put your life and belongings at risk. These regular enemies will never be as significant a threat as other players, but they at least keep the pressure on you to move with caution, as well as provide opportunities to gain essential equipment like ammo and health to keep you active in more long deployments. Not all of these NPC enemies are poochs, though. Boss enemies with high health and rarer loadouts exist on the map to provide players with an extra challenge in exchange for a higher chance of great loot. The one I found was draped head to toe in armor and had a few bandits attacking my flank, but with a solid strategy targeting his lair I found a way to subdue him.
Although I was only able to try out one map, Yao and the team assured me that there will be multiple maps available at launch, each with their own layouts and points of interest. Something that really intrigued me was how your character choices can affect your chances of survival. I was guided to choose the medic character as he had self-heals and some reliable smoke deployment options to keep your movements hidden from entrenched threats. I can’t help but wonder how choosing someone like Luna with her Hawkeye-like trick arrows would fare in such an environment.
Delta Force: Hawk Ops may share a pedigree with the old PC series of the same name, but it doesn’t share much resemblance. Its single-player mode has been revamped from the ground up with modern technology, old-school difficulty, and the blockbuster Black Hawk Down movie as reference and inspiration. Its two multiplayer offerings – large-scale objective-based crawling and dynamic extraction shooting – help highlight how Hawk Ops’ level design and characters put team composition and tactical decision-making ahead of twitchy shooting. Will all of his ambitions come together in a game that has the potential to steal you away from your current game forever? Time will tell.
