Delta Force returns after 15 years to shake up first-person shooters

Welcome to the war-torn country of Ahsarah. This formerly peaceful nation is currently the site of a civil war, which pits a private security force against what’s left of the country’s military. As operatives for the Global Threat Initiative (GTI), an international peacekeeping force that’s here to bring an end to the conflict, you’re caught in the middle.

That’s the story setup for TiMi Studio Group’s revival of the Delta Force franchise, which is making a comeback in 2025 after 15 years dormant. The new Delta Force—formerly known as Hawk Ops—is a free-to-play package: a large-scale PVP first-person shooter, and an extraction shooter where players compete for gear and cash. On the horizon is an upcoming remaster of the entire campaign of 2003’s Delta Force: Black Hawk Down.

Delta Force just wrapped up its closed technical test, but the open beta goes live December 4, 2024 at 7 PM EST (a few hours after this post goes live) with the game's first season, "Genesis."

The next 44 days promise new weapons, vehicles, appearances, UI tweaks, mechanics, servers, languages, and more. Delta Force's open beta includes the Warfare and Operations modes. Warfare consists of large-scale 32 vs. 32 PVP matches, while Operations is an extraction game built around grabbing all the valuables you can and escaping alive.

We’ve been playing both those modes in the run-up to launch. The beta lets you choose between eight members of the GTI, split between four roles. Your role determines the primary elements of your arsenal, including your primary and secondary weapons as well as the grenades and gadgets you carry. Engineers gain access to heavy machine guns and rocket launchers as part of their standard kit, for instance, while Recon troops get a variety of scoped rifles.

Generally speaking, Assault operatives are fast-moving attackers who’re meant to serve as your front line, Support operatives are there to heal and enhance their team, Recon is for long-range firepower and information gathering, and Engineers deal with enemy armor.

Within these roles, each GTI operative also has unique active and passive skills, which range from explosive resistance to personal drone support. Every character can hold up their end of a simple fight, but if you want to master Delta Force, you'll want to learn the specifics of each operator’s kit and how they synergize with one another.

For example, you can use D-Wolf's Tactical Smoke Grenades to obscure everyone’s vision in close quarters, then have Luna fire a Detection Arrow into the cloud to temporarily mark enemy locations. If they try to blindly charge through the smoke, you’ll see it coming and have a few seconds’ grace to counterattack. You can also mix Toxik’s Dragonfly Swarm with Shepherd’s Sonic Paralysis to dramatically weaken an entire enemy squad, or place mobile barricades with Uluru’s Quickset Cover as anchor points for Vyron’s magnetic mines.

Initially, these abilities make Delta Force feel more like a hero shooter (like Apex Legends) and less like the realistic tactical action of previous games in the series. Some of the characters’ abilities do border on superhuman, like Toxik’s swarm of micro-UAVs or D-Wolf’s personal exoskeleton. This is Delta Force from 20 minutes into the future.

It still retains a distinct tactical edge, however. Characters in Delta Force are fragile, so you can’t take more than a couple of bullets without going down. You need to be careful about cover, watch your ammo count, and stay near other players. If you get dropped by stray fire, you can be brought back up by a teammate, but that means they’ll be vulnerable for a crucial second—and if you run off into no man’s land without backup or a plan, you’ll likely die. Cooperation and synergy will get you further than raw twitch reflexes, especially in some of Delta Force’s wider spaces.

The maps we’ve seen so far in Delta Force's team-based Warfare mode are massive, including an abandoned cargo yard and a war-torn city block focused in and around a luxury hotel. Every location has several key points that teams want to capture and hold, with tons of hidden areas, approach vectors, and obscure passageways.

The Operations mode is smaller-scale, as befits its focus. You need to carefully balance your arsenal, then enter the field to acquire any resources that aren’t nailed down. Select the best armor and as many supplies as you can afford, but make sure to leave room in your bags for loot. It’s often useful to ship out with less ammo than you’re comfortable with, or bring a worse weapon that uses lighter bullets.

Once you’re in the field, you need to be quick, quiet, and lethal. Each stage in Operations is packed with enemy operatives, and if you die, you’ll lose all the resources you’ve been able to find. Stealth and careful recon will get you a long way, while charging in guns blazing is often a quick ticket to the infirmary.

After you get out, you can turn in all of your loot at the GTI base, then spend it on upgrades and new weapons. Operations has the “one more run” hook of a good dungeon crawler, mixed with the same high-risk/high-reward action as Warfare.

Delta Force features experience tracks for individual operators and weapons. Out of the box, you begin at Level 1 with each operative and available weapon in Delta Force. As you progress, you gradually unlock access to new guns that may suit your play style better, as well as lore materials for operatives (like their psychological dossiers).

Experience comes from myriad in-game activities. Simply hitting an opponent is worth some EXP, as are assists, recoveries, suppressive fire, holding a point, and successful reconnaissance. You don’t have to rack up a high kill/death ratio to level up in Delta Force—simply playing the game is often enough to make some progress. That creates a lot of incentive for playing more passive characters like the Support and Recon operatives. In Delta Force, unlike some big action games, being a force multiplier is just as valuable as being the force.

And if you want to deck out your favorite operative, the in-game cash shop is full of cosmetic options like shiny weapon skins and new outfits—nothing that would actually help you win a match. Delta Force also features an auction house, so you can sell any drops you don’t need to other interested players.

The Delta Force open beta deploys on the Epic Games Store today!