When the police are in a
seemly impossible situation who do they call? Their backup is the SWAT (Special
Weapons and Tactics unit); these men and women train hard every day to be
prepared for anything that might come their way. They are specialized for super
hostile situations where normal police strategies might not work. While the SWAT
teams have guns and are authorized to take lethal measures in severe situations,
their goal is to prevent anyone from dying, which is what makes their job so
hard. Not only do they have to fight impossible odds, but they can’t take the
easy way out and kill their threats, they try to find non lethal ways to bring
enemies to justice. Even though this might be the case, it is said that many
SWAT members love the rush it gives them.
Since this is the case, many people might surely agree that there should be more
SWAT games on the PC. While there are a lot of them out there, only a handful of
them are actually good. Irrational Games has released their newest installment
of their popular SWAT games simply titled SWAT 4. This is the game that many
players have been waiting to get their hands on.
Player’s role in this game is to take a five man SWAT team into extremely
hazardous conditions and try to diffuse them with as little fatalities as
possible. To help in missions not only is your team under one command (yours)
they are also paired up into two groups (red and blue). For instance, if you
surround an enemy in a room, and the room has two doors, you can tell the blue
team to go to one door and than command the red to the other door. You can then
simultaneously tell them to break open both doors throwing some type of flash
grenade in to stun the enemy. Players will have to use tactics like this if they
want to be effective in each mission.
When you are controlling
the groups remotely you have the option of showing what they are doing by a
simple press of a button. A screen will appear and you will be looking through
one of the group members eyes. If you move the mouse to the screen you can do
limited things such as open a door and things along those lines. Commanding your
squadron of SWAT members is extremely easy. All you have to do is click the
right button (this can be changed in the settings menu) and issue orders such as
look around, pick a lock, or kick a door in and throw a flash grenade before
proceeding. The menus will not clutter up your screen and distract from the
action and tension that you are experiencing during the mission.
The weapon selection for this game is really nice. You will be able to choose
from a variety of weapons that can be helpful in many different situations. Some
of the weapons are pistols, shotguns, semi-automatic guns, and more. On top of
that you will have a selection of three “disarming” grenades that will help you
overtake the enemies. The best part of this is if you throw a “Flashbang”
grenade and you are in the line of fire you will be temporarily blinded as well
as the enemy. This further pushes the realism that this game strives to achieve.
One of the better weapons to see in action is the taser stun gun. It is always
interesting to see an enemy stuck with this as they flail around, but for them
it is better than the alternative of a permanent dirt nap.
The mission structure will
take you through jewelry heists to taking on a casino heist. The only sad thing
about the missions is that they really don’t all tie together in some grand
scheme of a major criminal mastermind. Instead each mission is free standing on
its own. Even though this is the case, the missions are very interesting and
will have you engaged until you see the final screen. Players are graded on
their performance on each mission, for instance you get more points for
arresting people than killing them, and so forth.
One of the better things in this game is the enemy AI. While it isn’t the best I
have ever seen in a videogame I will say that it is pretty close. If an enemy is
being followed and shot at, it will try to find cover, duck, and watch you moves
to find a mistake in your strategy and try to exploit it. Also your teammates AI
are pretty good as well. They will pick locks, look around, and do normally
helpful stuff. It will be an extremely rare occasion that you will find that
they get stuck or something along those lines.
The graphics for SWAT 4
are pretty good, until you look at other games that are currently available for
the PC. The thing is that the character models and different environments are
not as detailed as other games currently out there. Even though this is the
case, the game is still attractive. The artists for the game really did a good
job to convey the realism that players see throughout the entire game. The
different places that you will go through during the game have a certain feel of
gritty realism.
The sound effects in this game have been well implemented. The different sound
of gunfire from all of the weapons is extremely realistic sounding. The best is
when the “Flashbang” grenade goes off as if you are too close you will
understand why it is called that. The different voices that people provided for
the game really suits all of the characters pretty well. When an enemy has been
hurt, they will start to whimper in pain, which adds further realism to SWAT 4.
The music selection is really light, and to be honest you will hardly recognize
it as you will be immersed into the action.
SWAT 4 is rated M for Mature.
The system requirements for SWAT 4 are:
AMD/Pentium 4 1.2 GHz
256 MB of RAM
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
2X DVD-ROM
DirectX 9.0c
64 MB of VRAM
2 GB of Hard Drive Space
Keyboard and Mouse
Review Scoring Details for SWAT 4 |
Gameplay: 8.9
While SWAT 4 is pretty easy to play, it will take a while to get adjusted to
the many buttons you will have to use to do things. Having the ability to take
total control of both teams and tell them to do separate things, really helps in
missions as it gets you to think strategically to find the best way to solve a
problem.
Graphics: 8.5
The game for SWAT 4 looks nice, but if you compare it to some of the other
shooting games out there it starts to look pretty dated. Everything could have
been detailed better, including the texture use and character models.
Sound: 8.8
The sound selection for SWAT 4 is really good. Sound effects are done
tastefully and realistically. The voice acting is really well done with the
range of dialog that you might hear if you were on a mission similar to these
people.
Difficulty: Medium
It is much harder to try to subdue criminals than to just take lethal
force on them. In many missions it might be easier to complete if you just take
the enemy out, but the right thing to do is capture him and let the judicial
system deal with him. The realism focus on this game is great because in order
to pass the missions you will have to be an effective commander, if you are not
than you will not get very far.
Concept: 8.4
I really liked how the SWAT 4 focused on strict realism during each
mission. If you enter a place with guns blazing you will without a doubt fail
the mission, or get a rating that is so low you will have to redo it anyways.
The purpose of the SWAT is to stop the bad guys without killing them, and the
game really focuses on that.
Multiplayer: 8.7
The multiplayer for this game is really good. If you would rather play
with human controlled characters over computer AI then you will be able to play
through missions online or over a LAN environment. This adds a whole new
dimension to the game, and makes it extremely fun. The other multiplayer modes
are pretty standard for games of this nature.
Overall 8.8
SWAT 4 is a really good game that forces players to constantly think of
new tactics and try to stay one step ahead of the enemies. This game is not for
trigger happy individuals because the goal is to try to keep everyone, yes that
means the enemies, alive. If you think you have what it takes to become a member
of the elite SWAT force than you will want to pick this game up and try it out.
It is a nice break from other shooting games, and you will find that it is a
blast to play.
