When the police are in a seemly impossible situation who do they call? Their backup is the SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics unit); these men and women train hard every day to be prepared for anything that might come their way. They are specialized for super hostile situations where normal police strategies might not work. While the SWAT teams have guns and are authorized to take lethal measures in severe situations, their goal is to prevent anyone from dying, which is what makes their job so hard. Not only do they have to fight impossible odds, but they can’t take the easy way out and kill their threats, they try to find non lethal ways to bring enemies to justice. Even though this might be the case, it is said that many SWAT members love the rush it gives them.

Since this is the case, many people might surely agree that there should be more SWAT games on the PC. While there are a lot of them out there, only a handful of them are actually good. Irrational Games has released their newest installment of their popular SWAT games simply titled SWAT 4. This is the game that many players have been waiting to get their hands on.

Player’s role in this game is to take a five man SWAT team into extremely hazardous conditions and try to diffuse them with as little fatalities as possible. To help in missions not only is your team under one command (yours) they are also paired up into two groups (red and blue). For instance, if you surround an enemy in a room, and the room has two doors, you can tell the blue team to go to one door and than command the red to the other door. You can then simultaneously tell them to break open both doors throwing some type of flash grenade in to stun the enemy. Players will have to use tactics like this if they want to be effective in each mission.

When you are controlling the groups remotely you have the option of showing what they are doing by a simple press of a button. A screen will appear and you will be looking through one of the group members eyes. If you move the mouse to the screen you can do limited things such as open a door and things along those lines. Commanding your squadron of SWAT members is extremely easy. All you have to do is click the right button (this can be changed in the settings menu) and issue orders such as look around, pick a lock, or kick a door in and throw a flash grenade before proceeding. The menus will not clutter up your screen and distract from the action and tension that you are experiencing during the mission.

The weapon selection for this game is really nice. You will be able to choose from a variety of weapons that can be helpful in many different situations. Some of the weapons are pistols, shotguns, semi-automatic guns, and more. On top of that you will have a selection of three “disarming” grenades that will help you overtake the enemies. The best part of this is if you throw a “Flashbang” grenade and you are in the line of fire you will be temporarily blinded as well as the enemy. This further pushes the realism that this game strives to achieve. One of the better weapons to see in action is the taser stun gun. It is always interesting to see an enemy stuck with this as they flail around, but for them it is better than the alternative of a permanent dirt nap.

The mission structure will take you through jewelry heists to taking on a casino heist. The only sad thing about the missions is that they really don’t all tie together in some grand scheme of a major criminal mastermind. Instead each mission is free standing on its own. Even though this is the case, the missions are very interesting and will have you engaged until you see the final screen. Players are graded on their performance on each mission, for instance you get more points for arresting people than killing them, and so forth.

One of the better things in this game is the enemy AI. While it isn’t the best I have ever seen in a videogame I will say that it is pretty close. If an enemy is being followed and shot at, it will try to find cover, duck, and watch you moves to find a mistake in your strategy and try to exploit it. Also your teammates AI are pretty good as well. They will pick locks, look around, and do normally helpful stuff. It will be an extremely rare occasion that you will find that they get stuck or something along those lines.

The graphics for SWAT 4 are pretty good, until you look at other games that are currently available for the PC. The thing is that the character models and different environments are not as detailed as other games currently out there. Even though this is the case, the game is still attractive. The artists for the game really did a good job to convey the realism that players see throughout the entire game. The different places that you will go through during the game have a certain feel of gritty realism.

The sound effects in this game have been well implemented. The different sound of gunfire from all of the weapons is extremely realistic sounding. The best is when the “Flashbang” grenade goes off as if you are too close you will understand why it is called that. The different voices that people provided for the game really suits all of the characters pretty well. When an enemy has been hurt, they will start to whimper in pain, which adds further realism to SWAT 4. The music selection is really light, and to be honest you will hardly recognize it as you will be immersed into the action.

SWAT 4 is rated M for Mature.

The system requirements for SWAT 4 are:
AMD/Pentium 4 1.2 GHz
256 MB of RAM
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
2X DVD-ROM
DirectX 9.0c
64 MB of VRAM
2 GB of Hard Drive Space
Keyboard and Mouse

Gameplay: 8.9
While SWAT 4 is pretty easy to play, it will take a while to get adjusted to the many buttons you will have to use to do things. Having the ability to take total control of both teams and tell them to do separate things, really helps in missions as it gets you to think strategically to find the best way to solve a problem.

Graphics: 8.5
The game for SWAT 4 looks nice, but if you compare it to some of the other shooting games out there it starts to look pretty dated. Everything could have been detailed better, including the texture use and character models.

Sound: 8.8
The sound selection for SWAT 4 is really good. Sound effects are done tastefully and realistically. The voice acting is really well done with the range of dialog that you might hear if you were on a mission similar to these people.

Difficulty: Medium
It is much harder to try to subdue criminals than to just take lethal force on them. In many missions it might be easier to complete if you just take the enemy out, but the right thing to do is capture him and let the judicial system deal with him. The realism focus on this game is great because in order to pass the missions you will have to be an effective commander, if you are not than you will not get very far.

Concept: 8.4
I really liked how the SWAT 4 focused on strict realism during each mission. If you enter a place with guns blazing you will without a doubt fail the mission, or get a rating that is so low you will have to redo it anyways. The purpose of the SWAT is to stop the bad guys without killing them, and the game really focuses on that.

Multiplayer: 8.7
The multiplayer for this game is really good. If you would rather play with human controlled characters over computer AI then you will be able to play through missions online or over a LAN environment. This adds a whole new dimension to the game, and makes it extremely fun. The other multiplayer modes are pretty standard for games of this nature.

Overall 8.8
SWAT 4 is a really good game that forces players to constantly think of new tactics and try to stay one step ahead of the enemies. This game is not for trigger happy individuals because the goal is to try to keep everyone, yes that means the enemies, alive. If you think you have what it takes to become a member of the elite SWAT force than you will want to pick this game up and try it out. It is a nice break from other shooting games, and you will find that it is a blast to play.