Summary Swat 4 is one of the best team based tactical games I have ever played. It is one of the few games that awards you for capturing culprit's alive. However on higher difficulty levels you feel the lack of refined control. I wonder if anyone has ever finished the final levels on elite level. It seems impossible to me.
Swat 4 is a game in which you are the team leader of a special police team. Your task is to bring a hostile situation to a good end: to capture the criminals and to rescue the civilians. For this you are in command of a team of four man called a segment, divided in two man sub-teams, called elements. If you do it perfectly you get a maximum of 100 points. Points are subtracted when you kill felons, allow criminals or civilians or team-members to be injured. fail to report in and leave weapons lying about. If a civilian or hostage is killed the game has failed although you are allowed to finish the mission. If you are killed the game ends.
At the start of a mission you are given detailed information about the situation. However this is not like Rainbow Six in that you get an accurate description of everything. Sometimes you get a proper plan of the premises, sometimes this is lacking and you have nothing but a vague sketch to go on. Usually you get an idea of the opposition, but not always precise information at the numbers and their equipment.
After you have studied the background information you can choose your gear. You have a wide set to choose from: lethal weapons, like shotguns or non-lethal weapons like a teargas dispenser. As sidearm you can choose a proper pistol or a tacer, which is a pistol that fires an electrical charge. This very useful in disabling people for a short while or prodding them into surrender. Then you can choose stuff like wedge's to block doors, c2 or breaching gun to burst them open and several types of grenades to disable people. You can only equip so much, so you have to choose wisely. Whatever you choose always take the spy tool with you, because that allows you to look under doors and around corners.
Once you have chosen you gear you go in. The situations are sometimes tense. You are not allowed to just bang away at people. You have to properly warn them or can only return fire if they start combat first. Otherwise you are penalized for using excessive force or even using unauthorized deadly force. This is totally new as in most games, like Rainbow Six, you just kill the bogeys and nobody cares. This is particular difficult when hostages or civilians are involved. You have to take out terrorists prepared to shoot victims on first sight. You can of course neglect this, but to advance to the next mission you need minimal amount of points.
Swat offers a lot of diverse situations with different settings. In general it get's more difficult as the game progresses. There is however no connection between the missions. This was once criticism on the game. Rainbow Six had a story connecting the situations, swat 4 has none. I don't mind though, as it doesn't make the experience any less.
Swat also offers nice visuals and proper support of sound(if you listen carefully you can note enemy movements by their footsteps) and music. Although sometimes the mood enhancing music is annoying because it throws a lot of noise at you when the situation develops into a fight.
While I like swat very much, on higher difficulty small problems become big problems. First the handling of grenades are problematic. Particular in L-shaped room gas fails to affect people at the other end. The solution is to drop the grenade somewhat further in the room. Alas you have no way to order that, the only way is to do this is to do it yourself. In addition your team-members can't throw a grenade down or up or around corners. Also when they are ordered to drop it into a room they move up at both side of a door. The effect is sometimes that they are seen by bogey when the doors is opened and shot. Instead you would like to open the door and then throw the grenade through it from a distance. Again you can only do it yourself.
One other thing is that your team-members are at times difficult to control. At the sight of someone they will start shouting that they should put up their hands warning everyone around them that the police has arrived. Sometimes you just want to make a quiet entry to take up tactical positions or block doors before ordering people to surrender. In addition when a bad guy is moving in sight the team-members have a tendency to pursue them even into an uncleared rooms sometimes getting themselves killed. Also while there is an option to control each element via remote commands, it is a hell of a job to synchronize the attack of both elements. Sometimes you want to take out a room from two directions. Also you can't order to drop two grenades in a room at the same time: mixing gas with a flashbang.
Despite these problems I like swat very much and still enjoy it. Swat is a good game.
Addendum In an expansion of Swat 4 the stretchkov syndicate there have been added some things to the game. Three things are noticeable. A grenade launcher allowing you have a huge amount of grenades. A tacer containing two loads. Bogeys that sometimes could become hostile after they have surrendered so you must tie them down to prevent this.(in the normal game they stayed put after surrender even when you left them sitting untied with their weapons on the floor.
Swat 4 is a game in which you are the team leader of a special police team. Your task is to bring a hostile situation to a good end: to capture the criminals and to rescue the civilians. For this you are in command of a team of four man called a segment, divided in two man sub-teams, called elements. If you do it perfectly you get a maximum of 100 points. Points are subtracted when you kill felons, allow criminals or civilians or team-members to be injured. fail to report in and leave weapons lying about. If a civilian or hostage is killed the game has failed although you are allowed to finish the mission. If you are killed the game ends.
At the start of a mission you are given detailed information about the situation. However this is not like Rainbow Six in that you get an accurate description of everything. Sometimes you get a proper plan of the premises, sometimes this is lacking and you have nothing but a vague sketch to go on. Usually you get an idea of the opposition, but not always precise information at the numbers and their equipment.
After you have studied the background information you can choose your gear. You have a wide set to choose from: lethal weapons, like shotguns or non-lethal weapons like a teargas dispenser. As sidearm you can choose a proper pistol or a tacer, which is a pistol that fires an electrical charge. This very useful in disabling people for a short while or prodding them into surrender. Then you can choose stuff like wedge's to block doors, c2 or breaching gun to burst them open and several types of grenades to disable people. You can only equip so much, so you have to choose wisely. Whatever you choose always take the spy tool with you, because that allows you to look under doors and around corners.
Once you have chosen you gear you go in. The situations are sometimes tense. You are not allowed to just bang away at people. You have to properly warn them or can only return fire if they start combat first. Otherwise you are penalized for using excessive force or even using unauthorized deadly force. This is totally new as in most games, like Rainbow Six, you just kill the bogeys and nobody cares. This is particular difficult when hostages or civilians are involved. You have to take out terrorists prepared to shoot victims on first sight. You can of course neglect this, but to advance to the next mission you need minimal amount of points.
Swat offers a lot of diverse situations with different settings. In general it get's more difficult as the game progresses. There is however no connection between the missions. This was once criticism on the game. Rainbow Six had a story connecting the situations, swat 4 has none. I don't mind though, as it doesn't make the experience any less.
Swat also offers nice visuals and proper support of sound(if you listen carefully you can note enemy movements by their footsteps) and music. Although sometimes the mood enhancing music is annoying because it throws a lot of noise at you when the situation develops into a fight.
While I like swat very much, on higher difficulty small problems become big problems. First the handling of grenades are problematic. Particular in L-shaped room gas fails to affect people at the other end. The solution is to drop the grenade somewhat further in the room. Alas you have no way to order that, the only way is to do this is to do it yourself. In addition your team-members can't throw a grenade down or up or around corners. Also when they are ordered to drop it into a room they move up at both side of a door. The effect is sometimes that they are seen by bogey when the doors is opened and shot. Instead you would like to open the door and then throw the grenade through it from a distance. Again you can only do it yourself.
One other thing is that your team-members are at times difficult to control. At the sight of someone they will start shouting that they should put up their hands warning everyone around them that the police has arrived. Sometimes you just want to make a quiet entry to take up tactical positions or block doors before ordering people to surrender. In addition when a bad guy is moving in sight the team-members have a tendency to pursue them even into an uncleared rooms sometimes getting themselves killed. Also while there is an option to control each element via remote commands, it is a hell of a job to synchronize the attack of both elements. Sometimes you want to take out a room from two directions. Also you can't order to drop two grenades in a room at the same time: mixing gas with a flashbang.
Despite these problems I like swat very much and still enjoy it. Swat is a good game.
Addendum In an expansion of Swat 4 the stretchkov syndicate there have been added some things to the game. Three things are noticeable. A grenade launcher allowing you have a huge amount of grenades. A tacer containing two loads. Bogeys that sometimes could become hostile after they have surrendered so you must tie them down to prevent this.(in the normal game they stayed put after surrender even when you left them sitting untied with their weapons on the floor.
