Police Quest: SWAT 1+2

Scotty Wixel was my character name and let me tell you... it was a blast working on this video game as an actor!!! I have always been a HUGE gamer and I was so blown away with the idea of Sierra Online designing a game in a movie format as opposed to animated characters. It was filmed at a production studio located in Oakhurst CA (just outside of Yosemite National Park). We spent several days training with actual SWAT members from the LA Police Dept. I was hired to work on this project for over 2 months at S.A.G. scale and had a wonderful time with the cast & crew!!! If you have any questions, please reach out and ask. Thanks!

Owned this game years ago, couldn't play til now. Very cool game, however major flaw upon GOG release, can't save games (at least on Swat 1) DOS box issue apparently. This game requires saves. I don't recommend download unless its patched in the future. As of Feb 2011 it is broken, go to forums to see if it is patched.

Please note that this review only concerns SWAT 2. I have not played SWAT 1, but I understand that it is largely a FMV adventure game, which makes me wish these weren't bundled together because they're completely different in terms of gameplay. SWAT 2 is a tactical sim like no other. Being good at this game means never killing anybody, using as few units as possible, and wrapping up a mission before the AI blows it (sometimes literally) for you. On the flip side, you can play a separate terrorist campaign, where you must take hostages, coerce them into aiding you, and fleeing before the police surround you. Though you'd expect a terrorist campaign to be an afterthought in a game that trumps the late SWAT chief Daryl F. Gates as one of the producers, both campaigns are surprisingly fleshed out, offering a great depth of strategic options, tense missions and a dark story of conspiracy. In the SWAT campaign, you take control of elements of SWAT officers attempting to neutralize a hostile situation before anybody winds up dead. This could mean saving a daughter from her abusing father, foiling a bank robbery, or stopping a full-blown riot. Each mission demands a different approach, but you can generally ease (if not outright diffuse) the conflict by attempting negotiations. Missions start off nice and quiet, but the moment a gunshot or explosion goes off (highlighted by a change in the soundtrack), negotiations cease and you must resolve the situation immediately by whatever means. This is where SWAT 2's structure gets interesting: the AI dynamically decides whether or not it wants to play along, and you must adapt to whatever move the suspects make, especially if they decide to make a quick getaway or execute hostages! On the terrorist side, you play as the charismatic Guevara-wannabe Dante following orders from the enigmatic Basho. Your missions generally involve breaking into a building, taking hostages, and making your escape. Sometimes you must convince hostages to perform a task for you or join your cause. This is a flawed but interesting mechanic, because you sometimes must play with the hostage's psychology but don't have the option to directly communicate. So there's a lot of guesswork on your part whether the hostage is susceptible to Stockholm Syndrome (will join your cause just by being in the room with your guys for a while) or can be broken down if you start shooting other hostages. Coercing one or two bystanders can be fun, but missions with a lot of hostages (like one that involves a crowded high school, all the more shocking post-Columbine) tend to be sloppy. Whichever campaign you play, the tactics available to you largely depend on who you bring to the mission. You have a surprisingly deep pool of officers or terrorists to assign, and different skills and qualifications (like explosive experts, medics and k-9 units) change the role that unit can play. This also means that the death of an officer or terrorist could be a huge tactical blow, so you're pressed to keep your guys out of danger as much as possible, adding to the tension. There's a lot of fun to be had in SWAT 2, not only for the tactical depth but also the accidental hilarity. There's crude enjoyment in playing as SWAT and unloading clip after clip on bystanders and other officers to hear your debriefing sergeant scream at you. The huge amount of photograph portraits all look like people you would find tailgating an Allman Brothers concert circa 1995, and some of the acting is delightfully cheesy. Not enough praise can be given to the game's sound design as well. Gunshots sound incredibly clear and powerful for a mid-90's game, all the main characters are competently voiced, and the music tracks are gritty and suspenseful (especially an epic track that plays late in the SWAT campaign whenever the action heats up). All praise aside, SWAT 2 is not for everyone. A lot of frustration can be had in the fact that you aren't given enough information before a mission to properly choose your officers and equipment. If anybody dies at all during a SWAT mission, you lose out on a perfect rating, even if it's a terrorist that slipped up planting a booby trap in the first 10 seconds of the game. Hotkeys are clumsy to learn, and navigating with the mouse means taking time to issue urgent commands. Worst of all is the last quarter of the SWAT campaign, which puts you up against snipers that teleport to their positions out of nowhere, forcing you to replay the mission to learn their spawn points or lose entire elements of officers and VIPs. But while SWAT 2 is not a fair experience, it is a fun and deep game that puts a huge spin on top-down tactical strategy games of the era. Later games in the series are brilliant first-person tactical shooters, but SWAT 2 is the only entry in the series to involve as much strategy, variety and hilarity as you will find in these two campaigns. P.S. I have been planning to remake SWAT 2 using Neverwinter Night's Aurora Toolset. Contact me if you'd be interested in helping out :-)

Just to share in case anyone needs a little more information on setting up SWAT 2 -- on Windows Vista, I got SWAT 2 to by disabling User Account Control (as explained on the GOG Support section). On top of that, if you find the videos not playing properly (eg, without sound), you need to install the IV50 codec and it will. Great game bringing back memories.