Delta Force: Task Force Dagger for Windows

The first game I bought for my new computer was Tachyon: The Fringe, created by Novalogic. Basically, it's a great game if you're into spaceship battles and all that jazz. Good guns, cool ships, and ship control is quite unique. I liked the game quite a bit and blasted through the solo-missions, but when I got to multiplayer, I got slaughtered. Anyway I liked the game so much I was interested to see the other games Novalogic produced so I went down to Wal-Mart and bought Delta Force: Task Force Dagger, because I thought the idea of making a game out of the war in Afgahnistan was not only a great new way to create anti-Arab sentiment, but also a perfect way to rub the American life-style and capitalism in the faces of the Taliban, by making a video game that glorifies the destruction of their dictatorial government, and makes money off of it, all for the sake of us lazy Americans to sit back in our chairs, staring at our monitors and clicking away at our mouses, firing Ak-47s and M4s at ill-tempered nomadic herders with pistols. WOO HOO. Now what I just said should not convey even a shadow of sarcasm, because I stand by every word. Ok, not to get off topic, I've made four topics to talk about; Controls, Graphics, Gameplay and finally, the Mission Editor.

Controls:
I personally prefer the mouse and keyboard combination when controlling a first-person shooter, rather than a joystick. In the mouse/keyboard combo, the arrows control the direction and the mouse controls where your gun is pointed and direction as well. For instance, let's say you have you sights on a shepherd guarding his flock of SAM launchers. If you want to strafe left to avoid his shooting but still keep your sights on him, you can press the left arrow and keep the cross hairs on his head. Sound confusing? It's not the controls, it's just me. Once you play it you'll get the hang of it. Anyway you can stand, crawl, and crouch, as well as jump and strafe. You can also use optional scopes on some of the rifles to make perfect head shots. Pressing t or y in multiplayer allows you to hold conversations with just your team or the enemy and you can also press f7 to make taunts that are audible for everyone. The numbers at the top of the keyboard change weapons from primary weapon to secondary to side-arm to explosives to grenades to detonator to knife. The little rolling scroll button on the mouse is great though because it cycles through the weapons without making you take your hand off the trigger. All of these come in handy at different times. A silenced pistol is great when your SAW would alert too many people. The game also comes with a keyboard overlay. It's basically a piece of paper that you can put down on your keyboard. It has actions assigned to the keys. I never used it though because my keyboard is round and the cutout wouldn't fit. If you play the game for more than an hour and read the manual, the overlay is really non-essential.

Graphics:
I've never really cared much about graphics as much as game play. I don't care it the shadows are in perfect alignment with the suns position in equinox or the absence of blocky characters. I suppose the graphics in DFTFD are slightly out dated but I really don't care, as long as I can see an enemy soldier, I'm good. This is not to say that the graphics are bad, they are just average. If your opinion of games is based solely on graphics, not only are you a loser who cares about womanly things like perfection and beauty, you also shouldn't be playing computer games but rather going to the salon to get your nails done. Great graphics are merely an addition, not a must.

Gameplay:
The Guns
They rule. I love them. You can almost feel the recoil of your 50 cal. Berret and you might need to take a cold shower after lighting up a pitched tent with your SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon). Think everyone in the tent is dead? (Don't worry, they are.) Why not fire a AT-4 shoulder rocket at it, just to make sure. All the weapons are exact replicas of the real ones used by the military. Clicking the left mouse button fires the selected gun and the right mouse engages the scope, if the gun is equipped. You can zoom in of out and calibrate the scope for long distance shooting by matching the actual distance of your target up with the scope trajectory. Don't get it? You will eventually.

Solo-Missions
Sad to say they suck. Really, really, bad. Ok picture in your head a catfish that is 67 years old living at the bottom of a retention-pond sucking raw sewage, mixed with barf and diarrhea through his mouth-like appendage. Think that's pretty sucky? Cube the suckiness of the latter example and you're on the fringe of how sucky solo-missions in DFTFD really are. When you get the game, play the first mission, get the controls down, go puke in your toilet, needless to say you will have to, then rev up your modem and go play some kick-butt multiplayer. The reasons the solo-missions are bad can go on and on, but my fingers are hurting and I'm beginning to toss my cookies just thinking about it so just take my word for it.

Multiplayer
DFTFD was almost geared towards multiplayer. I mean, it's like they thought of the solo-missions as though they were catfish and the multiplayer as if they were Jaws. It's great, run around shooting your friends, Free-for-alls, Team Deathmatches, Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, all in pretty realistic terrains and varying shrubbery and foliage. Think a contact is in a building? Lob a grenade in and listen for a scream. Or you can check the scrolling ticker at the top of the screen that displays who killed who and what not. Think you just made an awesome play? Tell the enemy by pressing t on the keyboard and typing your sentiments. All in all the multiplayer is the best part of the software. It's the only reason I think anyone should get this game. Once you play it you will too. You can also host a game if you have a fast enough connection. Otherwise the game will lag, which isn't preferable but is still playable. Get DSL and you can be worry free. Dial-up works all right but not great like DSL. It's worth the extra money.

Mission Editor:
If you have the time(not me) and patience(not me again) to make a mission, you can try the mission editor part of the software. It has it's own manual that is very confusing and detailed. Basically it lets you pick the terrain, buildings, waypoints, vehicles, enemies, guns available, weather, etc. etc. I've seen some really good multiplayer levels and some not so good ones.