Back in the mid 2000s, everything Irrational touched turned to gold. The SWAT series, originally a Police Quest spin-off, had gone through two very different, very mixed iterations before finding its footing as a first person squad-based tactical game in SWAT 3. And then Irrational turned it into a masterpiece. Swat 3 was a good-looking game in its own right but using the Unreal 2 engine allowed Irrational to find nuance in darkness. Any yes, Swat 4 is frighteningly dark. Particle effects, neon lighting, shadows and much improved animations push it to another level. And the same is true for the sound work. However the the most remarkable technical improvement Swat 4 makes is in terms of controls: where Swat 3 used an unwieldy menu based command system which seemingly inspired Operation Flashpoint, Swat 4 does away with all of that and introduced a clever context sensitive system controlled entirely by mouse. It's so much faster, cleaner and intuitive that frankly I'm surprise this hasn't been copied more often. All of that serves the much improved level design. In Swat 4, every mission is amazing. Emergent story telling takes the place of a framing narrative and you'll need a high tolerance for sleaze once you discover the secret basements and underground casinos and learn the stories of people misguided or simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. Swat 4 has 21 short stories for you and it will leave you breathless. It's a shame the expansion set Stetchkov Syndicate was never properly integrated into the game because it not only continues the main game's excellence but also adds two vital features: you can now punch hostages and suspects alike in order to force compliance. Don't ask, you'll need it. Secondly, you can now time your teams' actions via the CTRL button, syncing their breakthrough attempts through different doors for instance. It's a little glitchy but extremely useful. And now, get out of your own way and buy this game.
