Sunday, October 7, 2007

Delta Force

Almost no book or film about war claims that it's anything but miserable. Fighting soldiers are under constant threat of death, and to avoid it they have to kill. They carry huge amounts of equipment, freeze in winter, broil in summer, sleep on the ground, and rarely wash. Nevertheless, games that simulate war are permanently billeted in the sales charts, and more surprisingly, the closer to real life they are, the better.

Delta Force was one of the first to try and recreate the knife-edge, sudden death nature of military combat, and while this mobile version doesn't match the realism of its PC cousin, it maintains the game's well established standards.

The narrative places you at the centre of an eastern European terrorist crisis, in which it's your job to destroy a paramilitary organisation before its members manage to make a nuisance of themselves.

To accomplish this, you have a squad of three soldiers, each of whom has a different skill. One is a GI with an automatic rifle, one is a sniper with a scope that you can activate with '*' and hover above the screen, and one is an engineer who can heal wounds, disarm mines, and call air strikes on groups of enemies.

Sonic Golf

Sonic the hedgehog is an animal of simple tastes. He runs, he spins, he collects rings, and he bounces on the heads of anyone who gets in his way.

What he doesn't do is play golf.

Blue spiky hair is still frowned on in fusty clubhouses, and besides, the courses are dangerous places for a hedgehog, what with all those golf carts trundling around. No, Sonic and golf don't go together. The idea is as ridiculous as, say, worms hitting the fairway with a set of clubs.