**SPOILERS**
I'm playing a mission in a hospital. Armed (and armored) gunman are chasing down a diplomat they wounded in an earlier attack. I'd failed the mission multiple times already, in at least two cases due to my own stupidity, but four or five other times due to bad AI. The idiots chase anything that moves, running blithely past other gunman and getting killed.
This play through, predictably, wasn't going much better. I'd lost two of my four officers already. Things get extra tense when you don't have enough men to cover all the entrances and exits. I thought I'd caught a break, though, as I managed to sneak up on a bad guy facing the wrong way. I yell for him to drop his weapon. He does not comply. My two backup officers yell for him to comply. He starts to turn around. I fire.
Oh wait. I'm dead.
How did he shoot me before fully turning around and raising his weapon? I have no idea. But if I can't win three against one, enemy facing away, the game is over. It's time to pack it in.
Stupid Waingro.
**SPOILERS**
So now that you know why I gave up on completing the game, why am I still going to write a review? Unlike most games I don't finish, that I just give a one to (I guess I should see if Gun will run on this new PC, eh?), SWAT 4, in the nine levels I did play, provided an experience that deserves discussion. Consider this an unofficial review, if you want.
Gameplay
At its core, SWAT 4 is a game about tactics and procedure, like the earlier Rainbow Six games. If you don't do it by the numbers, you or your team, or a hostage will die. This means you station your men to entryways. You use special SWAT devices to wedge doors shut. You use the optiwand to check corners and under doors before you move in. You control the situation.
As I am still mostly a run and gun man, I suck at this. But I learn (the hard way). The problem is, even if you do all of those things, you can still easily lose the game. Your AI buddies will break formation to run off after a suspect and die. Your AI buddies will keep yelling at a suspect to comply until he or she kills them. Sometimes you just take one in the head and it's over. The AI rushes in before tear gas can disperse and take effect. Flashbangs just don't work half the time. This is may be realistic, but it's no fun. And this is on normal difficulty. There are two levels higher than that.
I suppose I could just yell freeze and start shooting if they don't drop everything instantly, but I'm trying to do things by the book here. And even still, if a guy is pointing a weapon at me, but he's on the other side of a specific type of glass and I shoot him, I get cited for unauthorized use of deadly force. It's sad because the game is so close to providing a really tight experience. Even the co-op is broken. You can't fill in any empty slots on your team with AIs, so it's only good for exactly five players. This game is a tragedy. And since the Rainbow Six franchise has gone all Gears of War on us, It remains to be seen whether tactical shooters are over. Maybe I should go play some of the Insurgency mod for the Source engine and see.
Theatrics
As I mentioned in a previous article, the game is dark. By dark, I mean you will encounter most forms of evil that humans are capable of. Most games about law enforcement that I've played just say, "These guys are bad. Go get 'em". The mission briefings before SWAT 4 are always packed with details you'd rather not know, telling you how the situation got so screwed up that they needed SWAT in the first place. Robberies gone bad, apocalyptic cults, assassinations, and serial killers are all in there. And that's just in the levels I've seen.
The problem is in the execution. Some of your targets are morons. Some are pros. But they don't really feel much different. Sure, the cultists babble about eternity. The pros just yell back profanities if you tell them to throw down their weapons. But there's still something missing, and they all seem pretty brainless, in the end. I think it may just have come down to not having enough audio barks. I mean, I know people don't really say everything they're thinking like they do in the Thief games, but SWAT 4 errs on the other side, leaving all of your enemies feeling like robots. The stilted animation (especially in the faces) doesn't help at all, either.
The only people you really hear much from are the civilians who all complain about being cuffed. Unfortunately, there's no button that says, shut up. We can't be sure who's a bad guy so we have to cuff everybody. Well, there is. It's the pepper spray button. But it just makes them complain differently. :)
Aesthetics
The game looks pretty good, especially for being two years old, bringing you environments both dilapidated and opulent (although they do dilapidated better).
The sound work is pretty good too, with just footsteps and tools making noise when things are quiet, up to the cacophony of grenades and yelling and firearms when clearing a room with a lot of hostiles and hostages.
Final Score
3 of 5
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