SWAT 4

"...you bang the door & cuff the suspect...(ad nauseum)"

Swat 4 is a tactical first person shooter that gives you the opportunity to be a member of an elite swat team upholding the law in many high risk situations. Swat 4 also manages the impossible by taking the dreadfully exciting scenario of storming a building full of armed criminals, & turning it into a slow-plodding affair with about as much excitement as an episode of "pacific blue".

So what exactly is wrong with the game? It's not the graphics that's for sure. The characters models & backgrounds are highly detailed & look spectacular. Is it the sound? Your fellow officers clunky dialogue are a tad irritating, especially when they keep repeatedly ordering you (their boss!) to get out of their way. But otherwise the voice over work is quite reasonable & authentic sounding. And the soundtrack that plays when the action starts is suitably pumping. No it's not the sound so then it must be...

...the gameplay. Once again we're at the make and break point of any game & herein lie the problems for me. First of all the basics: In single player mode you're the commander of a 5 man team (including you) and you have to enter various structures to rescue hostages & arrest / kill in the hostage takers.

You command your team by giving them various commands accessed through a point and right click, drop down menu that appears. You issue orders such as "fall in", "gas & clear the door", "restrain the suspect" etc. You can also take greater control over a teammate by controlling him through a helmet cam in a pop up window on the side of the screen, and issuing orders in the same way.

Different options will be available depending on what your crosshair is pointing at the time you right click. You can break down your team into "red" & "blue" elements or control them all at the same time ("gold"). A sniper element can also be used but they are next to useless. The aim of the game is try not to kill suspects & normally by the time the snipers say they've spotted a bad guy, he'll be gone before you've opened the snipers viewing reticle.You have numerous breaching tools,weapons (lethal & non-lethal) as well as an "optiwand" a camera on a stick that let's you look around corners and under doors.

So far so good. Now let's talk about the A.I. When it is good, it is very, very good, but when it is bad it is horrid. One time I was playing through a mission and everything had gone swimmingly well: no dead suspects, no dead teammates no dead me. I had one more room to breach and clear but before I go to it, a teammate blew away a handcuffed hostage, with a shotgun, for absolutely no reason, causing an instant mission failed message!!!

That's right if you die or a hostage dies it's mission over. When you rescue all the hostages and kill / arrest all the bad guys you go to a mission debrief. You lose points if bad guys, hostages, you or your team mates take a bullet or you don't make regular status reports and pick up surrendered weapons. You also lose points if the game deems your use of force is unjustified. This system is broken. One time a bad guy started unloading a shotgun on me so I blew him away. The game said it was unjustified use of deadly force & I didn't have the points necessary to go on to the next level.

The number of points needed out of 100 to go to the next level depends on the difficulty level. You need 0 points on easy & a high 90's score on the hardest difficulty. Good luck getting that with the dodgy A.I however. In order to achieve the highest possible score I started equipping my team & my self with all non lethal weapons. Here's where I encountered another bug; sometimes the bad guys are completely invulnerable to non-lethal weapons. My team once flashbanged a baddy, then proceeded to shoot him full of pepper balls & bean bag shotguns. It did nothing. He just stood there completely unaffected until he shot and killed all of us.These might seem like minor problems but with no mid level saves, a bug which costs the mission & an hour or so of playing time is completely devastating!

The next problem is the pace of the game. Your basic movement rate is a slow crawl & if you're wounded then amazingly it drops to almost standing still. I went spent the best part of another hour trying to chase down a fleeing suspect through a 3 level structure, before finally giving up in despair.

Even with a bug free A.I & increased speed you still have to deal with a basic truth. The game consists of nothing more than breaching a door & cuffing the suspects. While this is interesting the first few hundred times, it will wear thin long before you finish career mode. There is a multiplayer option but it is the realm of griefers & I will speak no more of it.

Pros:
Great graphics. Police & Tactical fans may get a kick out of it.
Cons:
Inconsistent A.I. Extremely repetitive gameplay.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 08/07/08

Game Release: SWAT 4 (US, 04/05/05)