SWAT 4: Gold Edition

SWAT 4 is a game all about refining your tactics, communication skills and learning to cooperate with your team which is what makes this a great LAN game. The game presents you with many different types of scenarios to explore such as shootouts at night clubs, hostage situations in convenience stores and raiding a serial killer's house. No mission plays the same twice due to the randomized NPC placements and bahaviour patterns forcing you to think on your feet or risk having your entire team killed due to a single mistake. The game also offers opportunities for "competitive" player in the multiplayer host menu which I haven't tried myself, but at least one has the option. There is no other game like SWAT 4 that takes realistic tactics and turns it into a fun mechanic, therefore I give it a 5 star rating.

"Slow is smooth, smooth is fast" During a time that tactical shooters (Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six) were stripping down their tactical elements to appeal to a twitch shooter audience, SWAT 4 came out to expand on their already successful franchise. SWAT sets itself apart from other tactical shooters by making the role of being a SWAT officer realistic. Instead of killing every suspect you see, you are restricted to the SWAT rules of engagement, meaning you have to carefully plan every map, making sure you clear everything so you are always in a advantageous position. The SWAT rules of engagement force you to yell at a suspect to lay down their weapon and surrender to you. Suspect and civilian bystanders will be stubborn, run or won't surrender forcing you to use non-lethal methods to get them to comply with your orders. You can't even engage a suspect that is running, the suspect has to either point their weapon at you or a bystander allowing you to use lethal force, if you use force before a suspect threatens you or a bystander than your get a deduction to your total score. SWAT combines the squad elements of previous Rainbow Six game (Raven Shield, Rogue Spear) with the realistic rules of engagement for SWAT. Adding real SWAT elements like the optical wand, 911 brief, and an non-lethal arsenal to bring down suspects. If you enjoy the older Rainbow Six games this is definitely a pick for you. If you've liked the tactical elements of games like Counter-Strike and Raindow Six Siege, and Vegas, this is a game to consider trying. I've had a hard copy of this game for nearly a decade now and I still play it, other tactical shooters I've tried have always been stripped down and never had as many tactical elements as SWAT 4.

SWAT 4 Gold, which includes the original and the expansion, was basically the best Police FPS bar none. You are cops, and your job is **NOT** to kill everybody in the house. Ideally, you are to intimidate bad guys into surrendering, and secure them, but Tazer is an option (if you brought them). Mirror under doors to have an idea what's behind the door, gas or flashbang a room, order your two elements separately with context sensitive menu with execute codes, defuse bombs, rescue hostages, SWAT life is not easy. Enemies are NOT nice, and they sometimes will shoot through doors if they sense you're on the other side, and they don't give warning unlike you. Remember, you are cops, not anti-terrorist operatives with a license to kill. The maps are varied, and buildings have multiple levels, and some of the locations are HUGE. And what's even more interesting, the enemies are randomized. While you are to expect X perps, sometimes, the game adds an extra one or two perps, and they wander around with their own tasks. Wait in a room, patrol, and so on. They even have their own morale and decide whether to surrender or not! So no two games are EVER the same, even in Single Player! The animations are a little stiff as this is, after all, a decade old, and there is no internet multiplayer. But as a police tactical shooter, this game had YET to be equaled.

Game is full and feels real. When I use tatics used by real SWAT teams I feel smart. The random placement of enemies is greart and allows for replayabilty and gives you that blind feeling of danger being right around every corner.

This game has aged incredibly well. thanks to being able to edit an ini file you can run it in modern resolutions with no problems (I play it at 2560x1440), and in higher resolutions it actually looks fine, and runs really smoothly. If you like playing co-op games this is an absolute MUST BUY. There are so many funny situations that take place during a typical game, and the missions never get boring, thanks to the way the locations of enemies/items is randomised. I can't recommend this enough, even the single player content is very decent.