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Genre: First-person shooter

Format: DVD

Developer: Novalogic

Publisher: Aspyr Media, Inc.

Minimum System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.2.8, 1GHz G4/G5, 512MB RAM, 1.5GB hard disk space, 64MB 3D graphics acceleration (ATI Radeon 8500/nVidia GeForce 2 or better), DVD drive required to install and play

Review Computer: 1GHz G4 with 768MB RAM, 128MB ATI Radeon 9000, Mac OS X v10.3.5

Network Feature: NovaWorld or IP LAN

3D Support: Yes

Price: $39.99

ESRB Rating: Teen (blood, violence)

Availability: Now

Version Reviewed: 10.5.0.6

Delta Force: Black Hawk Down puts you in Somalia in the early 1990s with a variety of missions that follow what actually occurred during that time, including the downing of the Black Hawk helicopter. Do you have what it takes to be a soldier?

When you start a single-player game, you can choose from one of three missions, one of which is called Marka Breakdown, which I'll detail in this review as it's indicative of the action you'll encounter and strategic decisions you'll make in the game. Marka Breakdown requires you to board a convoy of HUMMVs as they make their way to a UN convoy which broke down while carrying food and supplies. UN convoys were often targeted by thugs who would steal the goods, so you have a lot of bad guys to kill in this mission who try to do the same thing to your own convoy.

Once you pick the mission, you can choose from a primary weapon, a secondary weapon, and an accessory such an anti-tank rocket. However, how can you know which weapons will be the best from just reading the little mission blurb? You do get a detailed briefing that covers the terrain, enemy, weather, support units, and more, but you see that after you pick the weapons you'll use, which makes the briefing less useful than it could have been.

There is no tutorial to get you started, so Marka Breakdown puts you in the action right away. The HUMMV convoy starts moving, and you're told via audio that your job is to protect the UN convoy until the mechanic can fix the broken UN vehicle and get it moving again. Your character asks who the enemies will be, and gets told that while this isn't known, UN convoys have had their tires shot at and their supplies stolen. If this is true, shouldn't there be a record of what weapons were used in the past? Maybe this doesn't really matter as you end up by shooting anything that moves anyway.

A few seconds after the convoy left the staging area, the other soldiers in the convoy began reporting taking enemy fire from the front and then from the sides. The first time I played this mission, I couldn't see anything besides a lot of reddish, sandy hills; no one seemed to be firing. The next time I played, I could see men running down these hills shooting at the convoy, and it was my job to try and shoot them from a moving vehicle. It was then that I realized that I was the only one with a gun. Shouldn't a convoy have more than one person shooting at the bad guys? In any event, the radar blinked in the direction from which I was being shot, so you can look there and hopefully kill whomever is firing at you.

Once you get to where the UN trucks are broken down, you park and defend the convoy against a swarm of incoming trucks and men with guns. After a minute or so, you call in air support and, as the plane swoops down overhead, you're told to get off the HUMMV and proceed on foot with soldiers at your command. You head to a location where you fight more guys with guns, and then take to the air on a Black Hawk helicopter and shoot bad guys on the ground to protect the UN convoy as it makes its way to town. If you can ensure the convoy gets to town, you'll have successfully completed the first mission.

Now, I've never been in a war, so I can't say if Black Hawk Down accurately simulates real battle. The experience was very hectic, with bullets flying, reports of being fired upon from ahead and behind and to the sides, and trying to fire at men from a moving vehicle while also preventing anyone from getting shot or vehicles from being destroyed or from accidentally shooting at one of good guys.

However, despite my inexperience in war I'm pretty sure you won't find health packs which automatically heal gunshot wounds sustained in battle. To me, this took some of the realism away from an otherwise very accurate war game. Well, accurate in the sense that your mission in every level is to shoot everyone you see as you make your way from one location to another while avoiding death yourself. You do this either while on foot or on the back of a HUMMV or flying in a helicopter, and you have 25 different weapons from which to choose, but each mission basically has a similar feeling.

The graphics are pretty standard of 3D games, although performance wasn't the smoothest at high settings. There are a lot of yellow, rolling hills and buildings that look very much the same, but, then again, all of the missions take place in Somalia, which doesn't have a lot of variety in scenery.

If you are looking for a game with plenty of action set in a turbulent time in history, then Black Hawk Down is the game for you.