Ever wondered what it would feel like to a member of an American S.W.A.T. unit? Getting your hands on automatic firearms, cool gear, grenades that have gas and rubber balls, and you get a cool helmet. Yes, dreaming of kicking a door in and just dropping everyone in sight, and leaving to go out for drinks and cigars with the rest of the unit. Think again sunshine, nothing becomes more painfully clear while playing, these are Officers that are being forced to shoot another human being. This isn't a battlefield in a forign nation buddy, this is on American soil, and you're facing off against a citizen. S.W.A.T. 4 takes you through several missions ranging from hostage rescure to bomb defusal. You will be in charge of arming your entire unit as well as yourself with a small range of weapons and less than lethal specials. Take great care in arming for each mission, your life and your unit's life depends on it. Have civilians in the mix? Load up with Hollow Point ammo to prevent over penetration. Someone giving you a hard time? Give 'em a jolt with a taser or pepper spray. Not sure what's behind the door? Use your camera. Yes, your gear is critical to room clearing, and your tactics and how you play is the difference between life and death. Unlike other games, the shooting in S.W.A.T. 4 is gut wrenching. Real life rules of engagment apply, and you will need to radio all activity back to TOC. As you progress it becomes clear to you that people out there do this for a living, and S.W.A.T. 4 is ruthless in letting you know what they face. The fear of not knowing what to expect and the fear of having to open fire. Your play style reflects on your tactics. Will you put your team in danger and put innocent civilians at risk? Or will you carefully plan your details to make sure suspects come out in hand cuffs and not body bags? Think hard, one wrong move and you may hear the words that every Officer in the world dreads to hear: "Officer down."
In 1992, John Woo delivered his Magnum Opus, Hard Boiled which was met with luke-warm reception in Hong Kong. When it hit the American market, the response (pun intended) was explosive. John Woo did what nobody thought could be done, he dethroned Die Hard. From its fast paced action to its beyond over the top shootings, Hard Boiled went on to become a legacy and a staple for the Action genre and to this day still sits high as King. Mr. Woo has been credited with the effect known as "Bullet-Time" A time crawl sequence where characters are able to focus thier shots and you can see bullet travel. This is the most well known in films such as "The Matrix" and other games such as "Max Payne." You can also use this ability in game with an unlock that you gain at the start of the game. It allows you to focus your shots, and depending on where you shoot, you will see a greusome animation that is in sync with your shots. Throat shots play a nice struggle and gurggling noise for example. Stranglehold is Hard Boiled's sequel, but it is not without its flaws. For example, the length of the game is the main weakness it holds. Only seven levels with a completion time of four hours, you may not feel like you got your money's worth if you bought this at its original release back in 2007. Now released after over a decade in the abyss at a shiny new price of $9.99, you have nothing to loose. Other flaws include lack of options. There are none. No, I'm serious the only option you have is screen ressolution and dynamic shadows, no graphical detail control. Flaws in gameplay are minor but can be a bit annoying. While it has its flaws and down falls, Stranglehold has a unique blood pooling system that I have not seen since. Instead of a blood pool spreading on fallen enimes, the blood trickles and travels. It is quite morbidly facinating to watch. If you love fast paced action, this is your bag.
I'm sure a lot of people were excited for the next installment and the past years updates and releases looked good, but the final product is horrible. You can complete it in 2 hours 55 minutes without speed running, and that's even finding all the notes and reading them. The description is laughable. "The darkest, most horrific tale ever told in a videogame." That is the biggest flat out lie I've ever seen. The story is one of the most boring I've encountered and is as clear as five pounds of dog feces. You do nothing, you walk and walk maybe pull down a lever or turn a valve then walk and walk and walk. You do not have a choice at all to explore because 98% of every door, window, and cabinet is locked. You can't even pick up 99% of objects. The graphics are awful, the voice acting is mediocre at best and never again will Frictional Games see any money from me. How dumb are they that they thought The Chinese Room was going to make this good? There is no forgiveness and no excuse.
Don't get me wrong, I love games with age but there is no excuse for this. The menu is a joke with no Options button so after trying to figure it out you have to click on the Eagle. Since this was released around the time the WSAD configuration was coming out, I expected the arrow key movement. Everything is mapped just so, you remap the UP key to W for movement up, something else is deleted and needs to be remapped and so on forcing you to leave it at default which is destroyed. Unless you have three arms and hands then it's a perfect layout. You cannot get a tutorial to figure it out, it just plops you in the first mission, but before you can do that you must go through a painfully long time of reading every single Officers bio and then assign them. After forty minutes of just reading everything and then going to the first level it's a mess. No idea what to do or hit and you can't control anything. This makes SWAT 1 look like an idol and SWAT 2 a good game. Do not touch this, purchase SWAT 4 GOLD or SWAT: TARGET LIBERTY for the PSP from the PlayStation Store, because those are the only two worth buying.
So the previous title is an icon in its own way, these two are icons aslo, sadly they are in the bad way. Rember the anoyance you'd get every time you'd click on one of your commandos in the first and expansion? You'll be begging for that after all the anoyance you get with these two. The second starts you off dead in the middle of a mission with no explination, worst yet, there are no tutorial levels. You'd think you wouldn't need it, but you do because the controls have been re-maped. After trying to figure out everything you can't even see your commandos, they are brown on brown dirt with brown bushes. It took me close to ten minutes just trying to find one to play. It's more grief then it's worth. The third is no better, in fact it's worse. The camera is destroyed, the controls at best are horrid and again you can't figure out how to control anything. These two are perfect examples of game companies pure greed for cash and no thought of fans and players.
