I just started playing SWAT 4 for the first time and I am blown away. It's impressive how it captures that slow, tense pace, and the tension of having to give a suspect the chance to comply before pulling the trigger. I think it manages to convey some of the moral complexity of being a cop that is so hard to understand from the headlines, which is kind of amazing for a game.

The thing is, I was having a hard time with my itchy trigger fingers, trained on years of FPS games, when I realized I could just equip myself with a less-lethal option, pepper gun or bean bag shotgun. That prevented lots of lost points to unauthorized use of deadly force, while the AI squadmates handled the real bullets and never resulted in penalties.

I almost feel like it's cheating though because it seems to work so well. Are less lethal weapons just not this effective IRL? Do you guys bother with the less lethals or avoid them?

I'm playing coop with a few buddies and I'm not sure this is changing anything but I often have to bean bag suspects several times, up to like 5 while spamming the surrender/get down command, and they often still run away and are able to get a gun and hit me a few times. I'm not finding the bean bag shotgun particularly effective, though I know that will knock your breath out in real life, and I often pelt them in the face a couple of times and they just flinch. The OC gun seems more effective in game but if I end up using it in close range without a gas mask it sometimes catches me too.