Black Hawk Down offers a 16-mission campaign, which is alternately easy and frustrating as you play through it. However, it's also consistently dull. Most of the missions play out like nothing more than a glorified shooting gallery, as you gun down hundreds of Somali hostiles who mindlessly run at you. Some of the missions have you riding shotgun on a chopper or in a Humvee where you're manning a mounted machine gun. These missions are examples of what makes the game feel even more scripted and contrived, like a bad rail shooter. Sure there are objectives to achieve, but that usually just means running from point A to point B and shooting everything hostile in the area.
In some missions you have a squad that follows you, which you can command using a clunky interface. But for the most part you probably won't even bother with squad commands, because your teammates are good enough at following you around. However, you'd think that since they're badass Rangers and Delta Force operatives, they'd be much better shots than they are. They aren't; so the onus is on you to gun down most of the baddies that you encounter. The general simplicity of the single-player campaign in Black Hawk Down may appeal to those looking for an uncomplicated shooter to while away the time, but for the rest of us, it leaves a lot to be desired.
There's some salvation to be had in the multiplayer aspect,
which offers support for 32 players online on the PS2 version, and 50
players online over Xbox Live. Split-screen cooperative and deathmatch
modes are available for up to four players on each, but the game's
primary draw should still be the team-based and competitive play
offered online. Novalogic's network offers a wealth of statistics to
peruse, and the action in the game can actually be somewhat fun, albeit
simplistic and chaotic. When servers are full, the action gets fast and
furious, with dozens of players running around and gunning each other
down while they're trying to capture spawn points and achieve
objectives at the same time. On the downside, the extreme power and
blast radius of grenades leads to a lot of spamming and abuse of these
weapons, particularly the underslung M203 grenade launcher on the M16
rifle. The more-open maps offer more rifle play, but the indoor maps
with hallways and rooms can often degenerate into grenade duels.
There are character classes that you can choose from, which restrict
the types of weapons you can use, and there is a medic class that can
heal and revive downed teammates. Game modes range from regular and
team deathmatch, different flavors of capture the flag, and tag. Some
maps offer vehicles, but don't go thinking that they're the same as in
a game like Battlefield or Star Wars Battlefront. The vehicle maps in
Black Hawk Down merely have Humvees and choppers moving in a circle
around the map. You can hop on or hop off of the Humvees at any point
and man their machine guns, while the choppers land at designated
landing pads. For some bizarre reason, though, the vehicles can't be
destroyed or piloted. This implementation of vehicles is rather
strange, as if you're getting on a ride at Disneyland, and it's not as
satisfying as other games that let you actually drive.
As far as the game's presentation goes, there's not a lot to get excited about. The character models and animation are bland and uninspired, as are the muddy-looking textures. And anyway, for much of the game you'll just find yourself squinting off into the horizon looking for moving specks of enemies to shoot at. On the Xbox, the game actually looks more or less as good as the original PC version, but given the amount of time that's passed since then, the graphics in Black Hawk Down now look pretty dated. The quality of sound effects and voice acting in the game ranges from passable to good, but the music does sometimes feel repetitive to the point that it's grating, especially during the quieter moments in gameplay.