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 because it was the most recognizable entry in the series, it was the perfect point of return and the best place to start the reimagining 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, complete with footage rights. He wouldn’t give me any details about how this would all be integrated into the campaign, or about the fact that the rest of the game’s technology and aesthetics might change the story in the near future based on an event from early in the nineties. I didn’t get to work on it specifically in time either, but he did say that the team’s goal is to make it a challenging and intense FPS experience where bullets are extremely deadly and if you get caught out of position could mean a disaster.

I spent most of my time playing Havoc Warfare, Hawk Ops’ version of Battlefield’s Breakthrough, which requires attackers to take points of interest from defenders and push their control zones further and further back until they disappear from the map completely. The first major difference between Hawk Ops and games like this is in the equipment screen. I had the choice of four different characters, each with a set of special skills, 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 with Kai, who is mostly a standard assault shooter who can temporarily speed himself up, but also has a handy missile barrage that’s great for clearing tight spaces. I really had to sink my teeth 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 plant mines to capture enemies moving on targets.

The map I played had some key fortified areas where using a little recon before an attack really made the difference between capturing an objective and stopping at the line. Unfortunately, I played in matches populated mainly by bots, and without pings or commands it was almost impossible to coordinate these skills between players to achieve big wins, but the potential for combining skills for huge payouts is the writing on the wall . Team Jade told me that other maps will further test your team’s tactical awareness, as they introduce a mix of indoor and outdoor objectives and verticality, as well as vehicles and weapon placements that can help teams gain an edge or solidify defenses hold.

But before you even choose your characters, you can play with your gear, or spend the in-game currency to purchase some of the dozens of weapons and armor items available. Something remarkable about customizability in Hawk Ops is that not only do weapons have tons of options to add bits and pieces to them, all of which have some consequence to the gameplay, but each of these pieces can also be further customized. And not only colors, materials or textures, but also the actual size of parts such as barrels and cheek guards can be adjusted to make even more small adjustments to weapons. I don’t think I have it in me to fine-tune the lengths of all my favorite weapon suppressors, but for those looking for an extra layer of optimization, Hawk Ops has what you need.

Dukes of Hazard

Item progression gets a little more complicated when you get to Hazard Operation, the extraction shooting portion of Hawk Ops. Weapons and mods can be purchased from a larger marketplace (and can be minutely customized as in other modes), but can be permanently lost if you’re downed while deployed. Yao grinned when I mentioned the prospect of a player losing a weapon. He spent an unreasonable amount of time smoothing it out in an abrupt hail of bullets. “The risk/reward elements of extraction shooters will be very present.” If you come across someone else’s prized weapon in the field and don’t see the same value in it yourself, you can resell it on an open marketplace for in-game currency, a feature also present in games like Escape from Tarkov.

When deployed to Hazard Operations, your goal is to pick up anything valuable and bring it back to base to sell. These could be other players’ prized weapons and armor, or rare treasures that only serve the sole purpose of being truly valuable when resold, like a fancy futuristic VR console or some kind of super fancy high-tech medical equipment I picked up during my journey have found. Clearly marked spots on the map highlight lockboxes that are more likely to contain something valuable, and are likely to be hotspots for enemy player activity.

Among these sights are several encampments, natural features like caves and cliffs, and old corporate buildings that have been repurposed as fortifications for the many AI mobs that exist to endanger your life and your belongings. These regular enemies will never pose as much of a threat as other players, but they at least keep the pressure on you to move carefully, and also provide opportunities to earn basic equipment like ammo and health, so you can keep up with longer engagements on the height remains. . Not all of these NPC enemies are pushovers, however. There are boss enemies with high health and rarer equipment on the map to provide players with extra challenge in exchange for a higher chance at big loot. The one I found was covered from head to toe in body armor and had several thugs attacking my flank, but with a good strategy towards his lair, I found a way to capture him.

Although I was only able to try out one map, Yao and the team assured me that there would be multiple maps available at launch, each with their own layouts and points of interest. One thing they really intrigued me about was how character selection can affect your chances of survival. I was guided in choosing the character for medical support, as he had self-healing and some reliable smoke deployment options to keep your movements hidden from entrenched threats. I wonder what it would be like to choose someone like Luna with her Hawkeye-esque trick arrows in such an environment.

Delta Force: Hawk Ops may share a line with the old PC series of the same name, but it doesn’t have much similarity. The single player mode has been redesigned from the ground up with modern technology, old-fashioned difficulty and the blockbuster Black Hawk Down movie as reference and inspiration. The two multiplayer offerings – a large-scale, objective-based crawl and a dynamic extraction shooter – highlight how Hawk Ops’ level design and characters prioritize team composition and tactical decision-making over twitch shooting. Will all his ambitions come together in a game that has the qualities to steal you from your current forever game? Time will tell.