SWAT 4: Gold Edition

You're in my way, sir. If you don't get the reference, I feel bad.

You play a member of Swat, the counter terrorist/criminal Police Force taking down bad guys for all sorts of reasons. What makes this game so good is that it adheres to a somewhat dark realism. From the moment you receive your authentic call to enter the doorway of the suspect premises you are on alert. This isn`t the sort of game you can just wander in and expect to come out alive- at least not on the harder levels. The suspects are randomly placed and from there wander about which adds a huge level of replayability and stops the game from getting repetitive or boring. You must CHECK EVERYWHERE. One shot almost certainly kills so lack of attention will make you or your comrades pay dearly. The suspects aren`t shy about screaming obscenities at you either- just like in real life. Another thing I really like about this game is, unlike so many others, you are trying NOT TO KILL. You see a suspect with a gun, you are expected to warn him and hope he drops his gun. If he looks like he`s going to fight you shoot to kill. But in that vital second between you warning and his dithering, you have to make a lightning-flash decision... `Kill him or not?` There are times I`ve shot dead a suspect who was actually surrendering cos I was certain he was going to shoot- oops! Then there are times you take too long and he shoots you or a teamm8. Sometimes your AI chums do the deciding for you. The AI works pretty well for what must be quite a complex thing to program for it to work as it does. It`s also fun tying up people, especially smart-arse civilians who can`t understand why they`re wearing restraints. And of course, one of my favourites part of the game is when one of your men counts down, you turn away, he blows a room door open, flash-bang it and storm in from two sides to clear the room in a second, SAS style. Wonderful- really feels like how it would be. A great game and including the expansion! Certainly worth buying at the price it is now!

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.

This game's focus on nonlethality combined with its realism makes it a very planning-oriented and deliberate tactical shooter. It creates a very engaging cadence between careful stealthy infiltration and frantic breaching tactics. I highly recommend the Swat Elite Force Mod for a lot of new features and quality of life additions, adding a lot more depth and tactical options. There's a plethora of fan-made maps out there as well, which are admittedly a mixed bag to sift through, but with a lot of gems to discover,

I remember when this game was released. It had numerous bugs, and the SWAT team AI was unreliable at best. Despite that, it was way ahead of its time. Combat is fluid, the tactics are realistic and the random positions of enemies ensured that no replayed mission was ever the same. It's very, very repayable. When missions go wrong, it's frustrating but you generally accept that YOU messed up. When you succeed, saving all the hostages and walking away with your team intact, there's an unparalleled sense of satisfaction. In some of the earlier missions the atmosphere is spot on. As you progress, missions just seem to get bigger, and harder, and the atmosphere is lost - but they're still good missions. A solid game, and worth anyone's money.