Joint Operations preview

If you are familiar with the name Novalogic, you have most likely played some of their Delta Force titles. These games have always been regarded as great and accurate depictions of military scenarios and a couple of them have even formed the basis of real military simulations, used in the education of American GIs. The latest Delta Force game, named Black Hawk Down after Ridley Scott’s movie, was also based on actual events that took place in Somalia, ten years ago.

But with Joint Operations, Novalogic are leaving the Delta Force franchise, although there is an expansion pack for Black Hawk Down in the works. Does this mean radical changes? As a part of a group of gaming journalists, we got to spend some time with the game at a presentation in Copenhagen, Denmark and were left with some solid impressions of it.

Inspiration from the champion

Joint Operations really seems like the offspring of Delta Force and Battlefield 1942. Many of the latter game’s elements are carried onto a modern battlefield and the focus has shifted to larger-scale land-based, naval and airborne combat, instead of the traditional mano a mano warfare, we associate with Delta Force.

The game features twenty different vehicles, ranging from hovercrafts through Black Hawk and Chinook choppers to many others. Virtually all of these vehicles come with passenger seats and/or gun mounts, and the permanent installations dotting the maps have either machineguns or grenade launchers.

The busy bees at Novalogic have toiled long and hard to balance the vehicles, so none of them dominate the maps. The vehicle physics model has been made semi-realistic, so things seem to behave correctly without being too hard to control. In contrast to the vehicles found in Battlefield, the ones in this game have gears. The controls are easy, though - the helicopters are much easier to control than the ones in Desert Combat, for instance.

Recycle and improve

Joint Operations runs on the third version of the Comanche 4 engine, which also served as the basis for Delta Force: Black Hawk Down. As we’ve come to expect, it has of course been enhanced. Joint Operations sports much better landscapes and prettier effects than any of Novalogic’s previous efforts. This time, you can hide in tall grass with your M24 rifle, and the surroundings appear much more alive.

Novalogic have worked closely with nVidia, in order to optimise the graphics in the game and it shows. We tested it on 2.4 GHz machine with a GeForce 4 Ti4200 graphics card and the quality was impeccable. We saw beautiful water effects and grass that waved nicely in the wind.

Cut out for multiplayer

Having completed the single-player presentation, we were looking forward to the multi-player goodness. Joint Operations supports up to 64 players simultaneously and in contrast to previous titles, it will be playable online on open public servers, instead of just Novalogic’s proprietary Novaworld service. This is definitely a plus.

Multiplayer modes will include classics like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, as well as some novel ones that the company are still hard at work on. But the multiplayer element seems to be coming together very well and everyone in the room was entertained for the hour that this part of the presentation lasted. There were lots of vehicles in action and even though the map seemed large relative to the number of players, the hot spots were action-packed.

A childhood favourite makes a comeback

A great addition to Joint Operations is the return of the co-op mode, which was one of the best parts of the first Delta Force games. Teaming up against the AI was a riot back then, but this mode has been absent from later games in the series. This time around, we were told, there will be no less that 12 co-op missions, as well as 11 single-player ones and 19 multiplayer maps. All taking place in large, detailed environments.

Still, don’t mistake the name. This is all very much in the spirit of Delta Force. However, the differences certainly do merit a closer look. The addition of vehicles is a welcome one and a good upgrade from Black Hawk Down, in which there were some vehicles, but they were all automated. Joint Operations looks to be a more easily accessible version of Battlefield, as well as a more appealing take on the Delta Force formula. By no means a bad deal. We’re looking forward to this one.


Source: Boomtown DK
English version by: Jonatan A. Allin (neonwolf)