Delta Force feels very familiar, even though it’s been more than a decade since the last entry in the series. And that seems very much by design as this game seeks to thread the needle between FPS experiences.
The hallmarks from other games are all here: Snappy, Call of Duty-style gunplay and fast TTK. Large-scale multiplayer combat experiences à la Battlefield. A more unforgiving extraction shooter mode that can feel like someone put Escape from Tarkov on 2x speed. And it all comes together in a package that feels snappy to play, to boot.
But the strengths of this familiarity can also be the downfall of the game. So as Delta Force moves into its open-beta phase, my question is still one for the audience: Can this game break through a historically well-received CoD to become the breakout shooter of the holiday season?
Shooter gameplay that stands on its own merits
An FPS game is only as good as it feels to shoot its weapons, and by that metric, Delta Force thrives. Weapons that feel “floaty” are a plague on the FPS genre and one of my biggest pet peeves, so I was pleased to settle in and find Delta Force’s felt responsive and the shots themselves weighty.
The time-to-kill (TTK) here is fast as well and will feel more familiar to the CoD multiplayer fans than many of the battle royale FPS titles that have so thoroughly dominated the market in recent years outside of the CoD franchise. Every bullet you shoot here matters, and I quickly learned how getting back behind cover and outmaneuvering opponents who saw you first is generally the safer move instead of trying to turn on someone or hope a quick flick and raw aim (outside of the sniper gods in the game) will be enough to win a gun fight.
There are some light abilities in certain modes that supplement the weapons, but for the most part, I found myself simply relying on shooting to get me through encounters. Apex Legends or VALORANT this game is not, and while you certainly can gain a couple of advantages with one of the four classes on offer in the large-scale Warfare mode (Assault, Support, Engineer, and Recon), you’re mostly going to be worried about what’s in your crosshairs—or if you’re in someone else’s.
There are other things fleshing out the gameplay here, like vehicles and attacks you can call in by cashing in on Military Rank Scores (essentially killstreaks), but the heart and soul of Delta Force is your primary weapon of choice. And luckily, those feel pretty damn good to shoot.
Will familiarity breed success or complacency?
It really was difficult to shake the feeling that I had played similar games to Delta Force before, and I’m still uncertain if that was a good or a bad thing.
The good was that I felt the freedom to jump right in immediately and start playing. I checked out some operator classes and in the Operations mode, I dragged and dropped different weapons and gear before heading in for a run, ready to gobble up some loot and find the closest extraction point. The game’s easy to pick up, certainly.
The larger question I still have is if this mish-mash of influences and game experiences will add up to a title with serious staying power, or if what I expect will be a huge influx of players for the free-to-play title drops off after a couple of months when new CoD content comes around, a Gray Zone Warfare update drops, or an entirely new game rolls up ready to take on all-comers. Both the game’s major modes, Warfare and Hazard Operations, really depend upon a thriving community to continue to push the game forward and make the milsim an interesting game to play. Will Delta Force support a large enough and engaged enough community to stick around in our minds and at our fingertips through 2025? Or will it go down as another niche shooter with a smaller audience?
I’m still not sure, and I don’t think I will be certain until I see the game out in the wild. As such, this remains something of a first impression, and a little bit of a review-in-progress. There’s plenty to like about Delta Force. But it’s the type of game that’s only as deep as its playerbase.
Thankfully, that playerbase will get its hands on the game soon when it releases in open beta on Dec. 5.
