Delta Force: Hawk Ops Hands-On Preview – TiMi Studio Goes Next Gen

Tencent's TiMi Studios and Team Jade recently invited Wccftech to Los Angeles to get an early look at the team's first fully-fledged console (as well as PC and mobile) title, Delta Force: Hawk Ops. As the first new entry in the Delta Force franchise in fifteen years, Call of Duty Mobile's director Leo Yao has certainly picked a passion project that most modern gamers might have had the opportunity to play. Stepping away from the tactical roots of the Delta Force franchise, Hawk Ops aims to modernize the shooter series with modern components while retaining some of the signature elements of the series.

For our 90-minute early look, we were invited to play two of Delta Force: Hawk Ops' multiplayer modes and get a brief peek at the Black Hawk Down campaign. It was a relatively low-key affair, with only a couple of Team Jade members accompanying me as the only media attending that particular appointment. There were only a handful of other media present across other appointments and NetEase billed this as a VIP opportunity before the game is properly unveiled at Summer Game Fest this weekend.

The Call of Duty Mobile influence is immediately present as players put together a loadout before getting boots on the ground. Players first pick an operator to field in battle, each with a variety of special weapons and abilities powered by cooldown timers that differentiate one another far more than just being a differently dressed target on the battlefield. The weapons themselves come with a variety of attachments that can be unlocked and slotted in that feels right at home from Call of Duty. Attachments seemed to have a currency cost associated with the basic currency that's awarded for simply playing Delta Force, and I couldn't get a glimpse into the cost per part nor if there was a per-account or per-weapon requirement before an attachment or weapon was unlocked.

The primary multiplayer mode, Havoc Warfare, is their large-scale operations taking place across expansive maps with teams broken down into bite-sized squads. This particular map featured an attack-and-defend style layout. Attackers would need to push forward and overtake points, while defenders had to keep enemy forces at bay until either side's reinforcements were depleted. Players can spawn upon squadmates out of danger or back at select key points, a mechanic I've used in Battlefield and playing as a medic or assault class to resupply on the front lines. With Delta Force: Hawk Ops, I could see a glimpse of the various operator classes performing in similar ways, but I would like to take a much longer look at the multiplayer modes to see how progression and operator unlocks are handled at a much larger scale. Would the game reward for a particular playstyle beyond just gunning for the highest K:D ratio? Could playing the medic and dropping medpacks be a valid option for hitting the scoreboards? How do tanks and other vehicles handle in Havoc Warfare? These were all questions I was left pondering after completing my brief preview, and I aim to find the answers to them in the next closed beta or hands-on sessions.

Delta Force: Hawk Ops' second signature mode revealed so far and was playable in this month's hands-on event is Hazard Operations. This is Team Jade's take on the extraction shooter: squads of three Operators pick a spot to spawn into the map, scour the map for loot and high-value targets, complete mini-missions, and try to extract and bring what they've earned forward into another game. The one map showcased was fairly large to traverse without jumping into a vehicle, and I was able to make it through most of the math, stumbling into hidden loot caches and heavy artillery-wielding minibosses and beginning my path toward extraction before I ran across another player. Being that this was an offline session, those players I ran into were all bots, and about on par with the level of intelligence, one would expect from Call of Duty Mobile bot matches (which is to say not very reactive or dangerous if not caught unaware). Much of the loot was in the category of "useless and not worth the bag space" to pick up but once in a while, differently colored loot would be revealed that would be worth a significant chunk of currency if successfully extracted. The act of looting requires players to stop and inspect a cabinet or other container, wait for the inventory menu to pop up, and then wait for items to get scanned one by one. In its current form, the mechanic sounds good on paper to force players to make deliberate choices on when to stop and hunt for loot, but in execution, players just rifle through the inventory, waiting to see what color a souvenir might be all the while hoping that an enemy doesn't walk into the room out of the blue.

There are certainly some novel concepts to Hazard Operations that I do want to see fleshed out in greater detail. Players can bring forth different rarity tiers of ammunition with them into the operation and I would be curious to see what differentiates a green box of 7.62mm rounds versus a purple one. Similarly, there are many ways to equip an operator, from helmets and backpacks and armor satchels that provide different numerical benefits both in terms of defense and also gear slots. If these might provide other passive boons to a player, I did not yet have the opportunity to see them firsthand, but I would not be surprised, given how varied the loot has been thus far. Another area of opportunity is in the player count. During our interview, Leo Yao revealed that they're planning for less than half of the roster count that players might see in Call of Duty's DMZ mode (which is 22 squads of three players for a total of 66 in all). Whether the AI bots and missions will make that world feel more alive is yet to be seen, but for a game that wants to capture the high stakes of being an extraction shooter, there needs to be more danger around every corner. I must give Team Jade credit for having random escape points that might not always open up in every map rotation.

Lastly, Leo Yao showed off a brief campaign trailer for their Black Hawk Down story. Interestingly enough, this is the second time that Delta Force has crossed over with Black Hawk Down, but unlike the 2003 title, Delta Force: Hawk Ops draws from the film rather than the book of the same name. Leo Yao was proud to talk about securing the rights to the film (and the Delta Fore franchise as a whole) and use clips from the movie. More details on the campaign will follow, as Team Jade was heavily focused on the multiplayer component, and the campaign received its first trailer during Summer Game Fest. The PC Alpha test will take place in July, as you can read here.

Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.