Long gone are the days when war games might have been considered controversial. In fact, nowadays any conflict is good for a plundering, as last year's glut of Vietnam games aptly showed. The conflict in the case of Delta Force: Black Hawk Down is the American involvement in Somalia back in 1993. The movie did an excellent job of throwing you into the middle of the war zone and dropping you into the shoes of the brave men putting their lives on the line to try and help put an end to the hostilities, but how will the game fare?

Not so well is the short answer, but I don't think I'll get away with leaving it at that! You are an anonymous member of the elite Delta Force troops and for once it's not a 'the fate of the war lies on your shoulders' situation. Or at least it wouldn't be, if the AI wasn't so absolutely appalling. But I digress. Things start off well enough in the brief tutorial, where you're introduced to the basic weapons and controls; crouching, lying prone, jumping, shooting etc. and given a couple of objectives to carry out. Once into the game proper however, things go downhill and the best thing about the 16 missions of tedium that follow in the single player campaign is that they are mercifully short and have numerous game saves available.

Black Hawk Down is very much a by the numbers shooter and while this formula can work well, in this case it really doesn't. Some of the missions have sections where you're trundling around in armoured vehicles or whizzing about on a helicopter, using a mounted gun to lay waste to enemy soldiers and vehicles. This normally fun task somehow isn't that much fun - sure, the controller vibrates, the gun booms and bullets fly but most of the time your targets are so distant that you can hardly see them, the animation is poor (they just fall over and lie down) and they're just a bunch of Africans in regular clothes with guns, so mowing down endless hordes of them is somehow unsatisfying. African tribal war can be horrifically brutal (while watching the classic war movie Tears of the Sun, I was actually moved to tears by the inhuman abuse inflicted upon innocent civilians by the aggressors) but even so, it all feels a bit empty.

In fact, a bit empty is how you could describe the whole experience. As you progress through the various missions, you never really feel like you're fighting a worthy opponent (partly due to the atrocious AI, which I'm coming to) and much of the time your targets are so distant that you can hardly even see they're a person. This point is one of the things that really spoils the gameplay. Although the enemy is generally wildly inaccurate and you don't get shot very often, it's all very hit and miss and sometimes you'll get hit from a distance and killed after only a few bullets, whereas other times you can charge a whole bunch of soldiers and shoot the lot of them without a scratch. So this means that you do need to maintain a little bit of caution, which also means that most of the time you're shooting tiny little stick men that you can hardly see. And on levels where civilians are in the mix, it's almost impossible to distinguish them until they come running at you waving a gun, or if you see the far off flash of gunfire. Not that it matters much, as the civilians seem to be made of Kevlar, taking a hell of a lot to kill - even a head shot won't take them down straight away.

Your allies are made of Kevlar too, taking a hell of a pounding. In fact, it wasn't until I was halfway through the game that I saw one of them die! It was a particularly bad takedown, although in every case watching a room takedown in Black Hawk Down is like watching a modern dance show performed by drunken gorillas. On many of the missions you'll get to command your team (there's you plus three more) in a very basic fashion (flashbang, frag, follow, stay, fire at will, etc.) but they're frankly so useless that you can't rely on them.

Anyway, I was at the top of the stairs and ordered the takedown, however two of my three men couldn't figure out how to follow me upstairs. So, the sole troop runs past me, through the doorway and stands there, facing four armed soldiers, then throws his flashbang, without getting shot at all. He then charges in, shooting one guy but veering around the other (at this point all the enemies are waving their arms in the air in an "oh, my eyes, I'm blind!" fashion) and then he ignores this second one, heading to the second part of the room, partitioned by half a wall, where there are about four enemies. He then stands near a wall and only shoots one enemy, by which point the rest have recovered and so he crouches down, in a take cover position (despite the total lack of cover and the two enemies literally right in front and behind him) and says "I'm taking fire!" until he's eventually shot dead. By this time the second trooper has found his way upstairs, runs past me, into the room, stands in exactly the same place as his fallen comrade and dies in exactly the same way. Rainbow Six 3 this ain't.

It's no exaggeration to say that the AI is so awful on both sides (one time we were retreating across a bridge and an attacking enemy ran right past us, another time an enemy was guarding a wall, his back to the open tunnel, which was the only possible point of entry to the room!!) that it completely destroys any realism that Black Hawk Down might have had.

On the presentation front, it's all pretty mediocre. The developers have done an admirable job of varying the scenarios for the missions and keeping the scenery and locations fresh, but the textures are quite basic and it all looks pretty bland and dated. The animation is shoddy, the enemies look very basic and expressionless, totally lacking in any sort of personality and the weapons are humdrum. You can almost hear your Xbox sighing with indignation as the levels load up. The skies are lovely and at times it does feel like you're in a war zone, but the AI and by the numbers gameplay quashes most of the excitement. The sound effects are okay, some of the gunfire and explosions are great, others just average, while the music can be over the top and annoying or quite appropriate and compelling, a mixed bag that tends more towards the good than the bad. Either way, nothing's exceptional, apart from the exceptionally awful AI, rendering the single player campaign an obsolete waste of time that no self-respecting Xbox owner needs to bother with.

Thankfully, the story doesn't end here - at least not for those of you with Xbox Live capabilities. Take this baby online and you'll see what it was really designed for - namely 50-player online battles! That's right! Count 'em, 50!! Of course, if you dive straight into a 50-player game filled near to capacity then you're in for a rough ride - something I discovered myself. They say that learning from your own mistakes is experience and learning from others' mistakes is wisdom, so be wise and start with a 16-player game! At first it seems tough, the aiming feels wildly inaccurate (especially when running) and you'll get shot without even knowing who killed you half the time. But three hours in and I was in the vein, killing like a madman and becoming the highest scorer in my team more often than not; highly satisfying to say the least!

The aiming is actually spot on, brilliant in fact, as when you're zoomed in with a gun (giving you a single dot as a crosshair) you can literally get headshots from half a mile away, even while running. Of course, you're much more likely to kill your opponent if you crouch and stand still - yes, you're an easier target but they're running and will be shooting wide of the mark and you only need to hit them in the head once to take them down. Once you get to grips with this realistic and frankly excellent aiming system it falls into place and becomes very enjoyable.

Furthermore, there are four types of troop to choose from - close quarters, with the widest range of weapons available, sniper, medic (who can heal downed comrades for extra points for up to two minutes after they get fatally wounded) or gunner, who sports the lethal machine gun M60 and a rocket launcher too (just the one rocket though so use it wisely). In an unusual touch, you can only change class by physically visiting the armoury, of which there are several dotted around each map, rather than when you respawn. Speaking of which, there are several respawn points to be captured and held on every map (otherwise it's a slog in from the edge of the huge map each time you die) and these are key locations to hold onto in every game mode, also proving to be a guaranteed place to find enemies to kill!

There is a reasonable range of levels, although they do tend to feel a bit samey and they're much too large when there are only a small number of players. The layouts are generally well thought out, although a couple are very frustrating with walls blocking off most routes or buildings with far too many ladders to negotiate. Still, they're suitable playgrounds of destruction for Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, King of the Hill and Capture the Flag, along with slightly more unusual modes Search and Destroy (invade the enemy's base and blow their stuff up while defending yours), Attack and Defend (an S&D variation) and Flagball (where you must return the flag back to your own base). This variation of modes, combined with the small to large games, will offer any shooter fan a good time - but perhaps not a great one.

There's no disputing that Black Hawk Down offers an enjoyable online experience but this PC conversion is looking dated compared to the latest competition that Xbox has to offer. There are niggles - the way you can't see who's talking unless you hit the back button and look at the list of players, and the way you cannot change teams AT ALL and are stuck on red or blue for the entire session, possibly pitted against the friends you invited to join you. Very annoying. Still, good points include a comprehensive Optimatch feature (good luck finding any matches if you get too specific though!), staying in a session once you're in, dedicated servers for the 50 player games and a cool speech feature.

When you talk, everyone can hear you - hold the white button and only your team can hear you. It's awesome to be able to chat and banter with the opposition and in my first online session I was on for five hours, only tearing myself away because it was 7am and I needed to get some sleep!! You know you're having an excellent session when that happens, but it was at least 50% because of the great people I was chatting to and working together with that I wanted to stay on. In fact, I added a couple of my opponents to my Friends List too!

It's wonderful to chat and meet people again, as while this has featured in past online faves Whacked! and Midtown Madness 3 (yes, I know I'm going back a while now!) in Halo 2 you can't talk to the other team unless in proximity or in the lobby at the end, which generally either consists of "good game!" or "ha, you suck, you're sh*t!" or, a perennial favourite, "cheating fags!" It's not easy to make friends in matchmaking, especially as your friends are in your party already. But the community on Black Hawk Down, while not enormous, is generally more friendly and sportsmanlike than in most games, not taking it as life and death seriously as many players in Halo 2 and other games do. If you're finding otherwise, then you're in the wrong match! Perhaps I'm labouring this point, but Xbox Live should be as much about enjoying social interaction, discovering similar interests and indulging in friendly banter as it is about playing games, something that those aforementioned classics totally embodied. Black Hawk Down captures this spirit very well too.

Delta Force: Black Hawk Down is a game of two halves, very much like Midtown Madness 3 in fact. The single player game would be lucky to score 5/10, while the multiplayer game shines, yet loses its lustre against the competition. Want a quality online shooter for Xbox? Halo 2, Unreal Championship 2, Conker: Live & Reloaded, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory … take your pick. Does Black Hawk Down belong in this crowd of giants? No. Is it an entertaining and satisfying online experience? Definitely. So, the choice is yours. If you're not an Xbox Live subscriber then steer away from this like a marine-filled armoured truck would steer away from a street full of RPG-wielding Somalians. If you're into your shooters and fancy a change, you might just like this - it's no Halo 2 but it has real charm and personality, once you settle into the flow. Oh, and those 50-player battles are a spectacular taste of things to come. Roll on Xbox 360…

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).