Parents' Guide to

Delta Force: Black Hawk Down

By Chris Jozefowicz, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 13+

Recent military events inspire lackluster shooter.

Game PlayStation 2 , Xbox 2005
Delta Force: Black Hawk Down Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this game.

Community Reviews

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age 11+

Based on 3 parent reviews

Matt B.
Matt B. Adult
January 23, 2016
age 13+

Pretty violent

This is a first person shooter game, It has intense violence and mild blood. Game for teens.
Pom123
Pom123 Adult
December 15, 2015
age 6+

This title has:

Great messages
Great role models
Easy to play/use
See all 3 parent reviews

What’s It About?

DELTA FORCE: BLACK HAWK DOWN casts gamers in the role of a U.S. soldier in Operation Restore Hope, which brought U.S. special operations forces to Somalia to restore order and deliver famine aid to the civil-war-torn country. The operation is infamous for an episode in which Somali militiamen shot down two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters.

The single-player game comprises 16 missions, but only the last few deal with the downing of the U.S. helicopters. The bulk of the game consists of other tasks, such as escorting United Nations food convoys and destroying militia weapons caches or radio towers used to broadcast anti U.N./U.S. propaganda.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (3 ):
Kids say (2 ):

Real-life war narratives can make for compelling and complex games but unfortunately, Black Hawk Down is a dated, routine shooter. Players probably will tire of repetitive, linear marches through town, village, or countryside, killing bad guy after bad guy. For a war game it's a pretty bloodless affair, with enemies dropping in the distance and players only rarely seeing a tiny puff of red when someone gets shot. Civilian death is not only disturbing, it is part of the biggest problem plaguing this game: Combat often fails to come alive.

Offline, the game supports up to four people in split-screen deathmatch and cooperative shooting matches. Online, the shooting action gets chaotic; the Xbox version supports a whopping 50-player online game while the PS2 version allows 32 players to take part. In the end, history comes wrapped as violent action entertainment, and the game never transcends its run-n-gun limitations.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about historical war games. Do you think action-oriented, first-person shooters give players a sense of what war is really like -- or do they just glorify it? Could historical war games help players connect with history? Real people died during this operation -- does this game make a mockery of their deaths?

Game Details

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