SWAT 4

SWAT 4 is the peak of "tactical shooters". There's really no other game like it, a game that will put you in the shoes of the leader of a swat team who's job is, of course, to take care of various high-risk operations involving violent confrontations with dangerous criminals, terrorists attacks and hostage takings. But, even with that description alone, it doesn't really explain what playing SWAT 4 is really like.

You see, S4 is not only a first-person/ tactical shooter, it's also a simulator. What makes it such a thing is it's high level of grounded realism, both in the shooting mechanics and the way that this operations have to be handled. Before starting every mission you're given a little briefing: explaining what's the situation, who are the people involved, what's the number of suspects and civilians on the place, and selecting the point-of-entry for the team to take. You can also check the timeline of the events and the 911 calls respective to each mission, to get even more info on the matter. After that, you proceed to select your equipement: primary gun, secondary handgun, granades and gadgets. After that, off you go into the warzone.

Thing is, in this game, you have to keep things as cool as possible. A swat member who enters a room shooting everyone without a previous warning is not a good swat member. You have to draw upon real police tactics to get things properly done, otherwise, you'll fail.

At all times you're followed by 5 teammates (element) and, occasionally, snipers. To succesfully complete a mission you have to fill a scoreboard, which will depend on a number of specific tasks: taking care of suspects with the least ammount of lethal force (incapasitated or arrested), rescuing hostages uninjured, collecting evidence left by the suspects and getting your element with the least ammount of injuries by the end of the mission. The magic of S4 lies in the fact that no operation will ever be the same twice so, everytime you play, things will surely not happen in the same way they happened before. Maybe the first time you encountered no enemies in the first room you entered but, the second time, you could be facing three armed guys in that same initial room, forcing you to take a different course of action.

Anything can happen in this game and there are plenty of options to take for each kind of scenario. Let's say there's a room in front of you and there are baddies inside. Now you choose how things can be done: you can be careless and go into the room screaming "POLICE, PUT YOUR HANDS UP!!!" like a madman and hope for luck to shine on you, or, you can be safe and ask to your element to throw in a flashbang before entering the room so all suspects can be left stunned and free to be arrested.... or are they?! Well, sometimes there might an asshole who resists to be arrested, it could be both a suspect or a hostage, and you'll have to force them into submission either by using a pepper-spray, a taser gun or a non-lethal weapon like a shotgun with rubber shells and a pepper-ball gun. You can also throw a punch but that was added later on for the SS expasion pack (more on that later). Your teammates at first might seem like they're just there for realism but, the more you play you'll realise that you need them badly at times, since the game naturally grows more difficult as it advances and just one guy with a gun will not be enough to get through.

All this ammounts for thrilling gameplay, but that's not really what makes SWAT 4 such a beast. The core and soul of the game lies in it's atmosphere. Gritty, cold, grounded and even eary at times. There's a constant feeling of danger on every mission because you know that an armed baddy can go all "surprise mofo" on you at any given moment, so those situations require your total attention; leave your eyes and ears wide open at all times, since that can make the difference between success or failure. I've never felt so tense while playing a videogame, you know those people who hunch over when they're scared? That almost never happens to me but whenever I play this goddamn game it happens, and it's fucking awesome. I'm not going to lie, this game can be scarier than many horror games when it feels commited. I won't spoil it, but the second mission is actually kinda disturbing, serious shit man.

There are some minor problems. For example, the element's I.A. can be annoying at times, they'll get stuck on walls or even trap inside a narrow room or hallway since they're always behind you and it's impossible to go through them, you'll just have to wait until they back up so you can pass. Also, and this might be the biggest fault, the score system is kinda weird. According to the game, no use of unnauthorised forced is allowed and, if done as such, it will cost you points but, sometimes it's very hard to distinguish what is unnauthorised force and what is not. Like, sometimes there's a armed suspect in front of you who reacts quite fast and raises his gun but doesn't get to shoot you in time because you managed to do it before him, but you see that apparently counts as unnauthorised use of force because the idiot didn't shoot although he was definetly going to. So you have to get shot in order for you to shoot at an enemy, which is kind of dumb.

On the performance side, I've never encountered any serious glitches nor it ever crashed on me. The frame rate might have minor drops during messy gunfights but nothing too bad, it's almost unnoticeable. But the loading screens can go for long sometimes; actually, I remember one time I thought the game froze due to the time I spent on a loading screen to the point where I thought of restarting my PC, just to discover that it was only the game, well, loading the level.

The game had an expasion pack, "The Stetchkov Syndicate", which follows a narrative related to a slavic drug cartel. Most interesting of all, a lot new additions were included to the gameplay: 7 new missions, new unlockable weapons and gadgets (very good weapons btw), the inclusion of body armor and two more multiplayer modes, along small details like (as referenced before) tha hability to punch and the suspects I.A. being much more aggressive than before. As expansion packs go, this one is really good and, if modded, it could become the main way to play the game, since all the added features make it a much more complete package.

Which leads to the next point: mods. The SWAT 4 community prooves to be a loving, caring one who's constantly working on new mods which include new missions, weapons, skins, fixes, etc. So it seems to be a case similar to Doom or Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, where the game's legacy has lived on due to the hard work of the modding community which tries to improve on it every year, constantly giving us new playable content to enjoy, unlike (*bad eye) Activision who seem to have 0 plans on ever continuing the series.

In the end, SWAT 4 is a gem. A game like no other who manages to be one the most engaging FPS out there even without the necessity of a plot. Your only concern here as a swat leader is to save lifes and bring justice to the place. No money or hot chicks at the end. If you're looking for an accurate depiction of police work in gaming, here you have it mate. It certainly seems to make justice to the real thing, which by the way, it should go without saying that swat officers are some of the biggest badasses in the world and they deserve all the respect they can get. Real life heroes.


10/10