SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle

"If you want it any realer, go join the force."

So real, all that's missing is the dounut crumbs on the cops shirts. Now I must say that I can't give a full review because I've only played the demo, which has all of one mission, but I believe that I got a very good feel of the game. Now if you don't know, a SWAT team is a team of specially trained police officers that go into hostile situations to eliminate a hostile threat and or rescue people being held against their will. Now this game is so real that the only way to get any closer to the real this, IS the real thing. Now, you may be asking yourself this question, ''If it's so real, I must have to have a state of the art computer to run it.'' Not so. Now in the age of daily increasing computer speeds, I was more than happy with the performance my computer gave me, and in todays gaming world, my system would not be considered the ideal system. I ran SWAT 3 with a Intel Celeron processor at 466mhz with 64 RAM. I have no special video card or anything and the game ran perfectly.
Now enough about that, on to the review of the game. One of the best things about this game is the AI. I've played the demo time and again, and I never know what to expect. In the demo I have, there are 5 ''hostils'' that I must take care of. Now, some would say that after playing the game that many times, I should have had the location of everything memorized. Again, not so. The people were never in the same place twice, and never reacted the same way. Example: In the demo, you must go into a small building and rescue a hostige while caputuring a ''gang leader.'' Usually, there would be an old man in the front of the shop, and he'd either throw up his hands and surrender, run through the building yelling, ''The police!! The police are raiding!'' or he would reach behind the counter and grab his gun, in which usually, one of the other 4 guys with me would take him out.
Another strong suit of this game is the ease of control. It's set up like most game these days; you move with the arrow keys and aim with the mouse. You use the number pad to talk and give orders, and the F1-F12 keys for certain items. It really couldn't be any easier.
The sound is more than great! I personally liked to turn all the lights off, put on my headphones and play in the dark. This gave the impression of looking through the visor of your helmet just like the guys were doing. The sounds of this game will give you a start every know and then when you get really into the mission.
One thing really stands out in my mind when you talk about realisim. In this game, one shot is all it takes to end a mission. If you get shot in the chest, you may survive due to your vest, but one in the head and it's all over.
If you like to do alot of running, eating dounuts, and having bullets wiz by your head, go become a cop. If you wanna skip the training, and paperwork and just get to the seek and destory, this game is for you. An all around great game.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 02/20/00, Updated 02/20/00