“I have a confession to make,” I say youtuberishly. I have never really played Delta Force. I played some Land Warrior, the marketing vehicle for OICW, and I don’t think they got any good titles after that. But I believe that Dagger Directive demo is proof of a successor coming, one that doesn’t feature any extraction shooter features.
Dagger Directive is framed like every military shooter from the 90s/early 00s: you’re part of a force drawn from all NATO nations to drop solo special force soldiers in the field to carry out dangerous operations. That’s you, you’re that lonely, lonely warrior.
In the Dagger Directive demo mission, you’re dropped off at the end of an valley and ordered to destroy two weapon stashes. If a Russian Army HVT is present, kill him as well. That’s it, go nuts! You can go stealthy or go load – after all, you can both chose your loadout and scavenge weapons in the field. Oh, and there are mortars waiting on call.
The game immediately puts you in the thick of it: a patrol noticed your insertion (Blackhawks are kinda conspicuous) and you have little time to prepare. It’s up to you how to deal with them – sneaking past is just one of the options. But the real revelation came when I shot the first guy. What did the rest do? Scatter off the road and deploy smoke. This definitely impressed me – even if the following AI maneuvers didn’t.
Very much like in ye old Delta Force games – or Tom Clancy‘s titles before they started making them for babies – you are fragile. One bullet is usually enough, very Arma: Cold War Assault (nee Operation Flashpoint) like that. The enemies aren’t tougher, but there’s many more of them, and only one of you. Good thing that AI isn’t advanced enough to organize a coordinated defense of an outpost. Even with an unsuppressed rifle, the the aggro range doesn’t seem to be that far, so you can clear one end of a longer outpost without alerting the other.
But that’s not the greatest weakness of the Dagger Directive demo. No, that’s the tutorial. It begins with a long and boring helicopter ride where the pilots chat like anyone but hardened special operations troops. And the island itself very barren and lifeless for something that’s supposed to be the HQ of an elite force. But if you can get through that, the firing range and the game itself is much more fun.
Another small fix would be the pre-mission loadout selection. Currently, you do it manually, walking up to shelves and picking up weapons, attachments, ammo and such. And while that allows you to immediately try out any combination of gear you want, it still involves some annoying, time consuming inventory management. The finished game could do without it.
The Dagger Directive demo is – dreadful tutorial aside – a slice of classical military FPS design from the days when special forces soldiers weren’t supposed to be unkillable bearded psychos. If you want to play with the newest gear while always outnumbered, outgunned, and without health regen to save you, it’s the going to be the game for you.