In short, this game has the sort of mission based depth only vaguely glimpsed at through the looking glass of the high concept, Steam indie games (your Slayer Shock's, your Hotline Miami's, your X-Com: Enemy Unknown, etc.) In many ways it's most comparable to the better, or rather the best, of the Hitman games, in their sheer wealth of solutions to very simple combat encounters. Moreover, in both games, scores prioritize "Ghost-ing", or a highly stealth-based playthrough, for the uninitiated. The difference is, in other Hitman, or in Deus Ex, or in Thief, you aren't, under any illusion playing the "good guy". And unlike in other tactical shooters, you are not taking lives; you are saving them. On higher levels of difficulty the level cannot be completed if people die, when they could have or should have been arrested. SWAT 4 is the ultimate counter-thesis to discussions of detrimental effects of video games on the human psyche. It, like other games in the SWAT series, simulates the inherent stress of being a "good" person, and a "good" guy. From the get go, five lives, including your's, are in the palm of your hands, later levels have you manage the lives of fifty, sixty people, who, as in real life are dumb as dogshit. And in many games, an oversight as great as poor Ai would diminish immersion and depth, but as I said, it's like real life. Citizens resist your commands, but we all know the person who would do that, even if their life were at risk. This is a game about creating tiny stories, not an over arching plot, but an interweaving network and spiderweb of a cynical world of criminals and psychopaths and morons and the occasional pervert. And everyone of them becomes the pieces of an obsessively detailed puzzle. It is an Irrational game after all. In the end, the question of whether or not to buy this game comes down to a few simple criteria. Do you like the Looking Glass, simulation, ethos? Buy this game. Do you like obsessively replaying games over and over? Buy this game. Can you focus on more than one thing at a time? Buy this game. Otherwise, avoid it like the plague. Believe me, I pity you.
