Unfortunately, I played the two current best tactical shooters before coming to SWAT 3, I had heard a lot of people say this was the best of the lot, but I regret to say that's just not true. While the squad commands for the time seem amazing, sometimes the AI just does some really stupid things and won't obey orders - like cover a door so terrorists don't come through it mid-mission. The other problem I have with the AI is that the menus don't describe the setting particularly well - lower actually means time to consider actions in ms before proceeding, not overall response time. It would make more sense to lower the AI reaction time by increasing this number, but whatever. It really doesn't affect the problem where the enemy AI can generally see you around corners well before you can even see they are there. This is my biggest gripe because it means, unlike SWAT 4 and R6:RS, you can't really safely take point and participate in the missions beyond issuing orders. You'll absolutely have to have your squad do everything for you because the only thing that is safe to pit against this game's AI is the game's AI via your squad. My personal opinion having put 4-5 hours into SWAT 3 is just to skip it because there are better tactical shooters available if you have never played any before.
By the time Saints Row 3 is over, you are basically a super hero (can unlock invulnerabilities to all damage, if you so choose). The next logical step seems to be to just become a super hero, which DS/Volition went ahead and employed. The game is fun purely as a super hero sandbox collect-a-thon platformer. I was a bit disappointed by the number of gun upgrades, though, as most of the ones I was interested in were unlocked from the start. You can further upgrade/customize them as you get more 'cash' in the game. There also seem to be a few bugs still in the game at this point, such as random hangs that force either a system restart or task manager intervention. Another common bug were special moves that should end boss battles weren't triggering, making it kind of suck when you are fighting an unkillable, not particularly challenging enemy for several minutes before you realize something is wrong. I picked it up for $5 on a sale, though, so while these bugs are annoying, it's still definitely a good game to pick up on the cheap.
