SWAT 4

When Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six came out, it was an impressive game. Beyond games like Doom or Quake, Rainbow Six put a lot of emphasis on getting into places and being tactical, rather than blasting things until they fell over. Not only did this attract many Clancy fans into playing computer games, but it launched a whole new genre of video games: the Tactical First Person Shooter. To this day, Rainbow Six still remains to be one of the most complex shooters on the market, matching a realistic shooting engine with smart AI and intellectual rigor- the kind of planning that no-one expected to come from a game featuring an automatic weapon.

But sometimes, it seems, gaming companies like to try to emulate this. The latest attempt is the First Person Shooter game ?SWAT 4?. Build around a police SWAT team, the concept of this game is simple: beat missions and restrain hostiles while keeping yourself and your team safe. At the end of each mission (about 10 mins of gaming each), you are given points on your ability to handle the situation you were given (for example, not killing everybody) and ranked thusly. In this way, you progress through the challenging situations presented to you, and continue to rack up reputation and skill.

It is of course no surprise to me that this is exactly what we've seen from Rainbow Six, except placing the concept in some unmentioned city. You and your team of four ?intelligent? teammates will break your way into houses, restaurants, and even stores to rescue hostages and detain those who made them such. Of course, the rules of SWAT 4 are slightly different than that of Rainbow Six: instead of killing everyone, the concept is, surprise surprise, to rescue everyone possible and keep the amount of dead people to a minimum while detaining the majority of them with plastic handcuffs (?zip cuffs?, they actually exist). This turns the entire game into what essentially amounts to a very long and boring trek through many rooms in order to detain crazy people. Unfortunately, I'm not kidding.



The game itself is rather unimpressive, I must report. While the game is by no means cheap or underdeveloped, I could not shake the feeling that the entire game was rather lazily created, and that it was nothing more than a modification for some other video game engine. Little tiny things in the game manage to be big annoyances because of this, such as a rather cheaply developed menu system and some rather small maps to trek through. Would I not know this is a fully independent game, I would have bet money that this would have been a really cheap Half Life 2 modification. The graphics themselves seem to be lacking as well, some of the textures and general level design feeling as if they belong to a game that was made three or four years ago, not something modern.

As for the sound and ambiance, the game again misses some key features and sounds rather bland. Most of everything is voice acted as expected, but the general quality of the voice acting seems rather stereotypical. Hostages sound scared, the SWAT team sounds kind but gruff, and the people you attempt to capture are always crazy. The system is built a lot like Rainbow Six for commands, so it is of course no surprise that the game sounds a lot like Rainbow Six, too. ?Open, Flash, and Clear?.

The big kicker in the game tends to be that it is rather unoriginal. All of the levels generally feel to be quite the same, with ramped up AI per situation. The game itself is nothing but a generic shooter in that facet. For example, one level in SWAT 4 was very obviously taken from the concept of ?The Silence of the Lambs?- and instead of being scary, it comes off as being rather boring, especially since it took me under two minutes to get the ?Gold? ranking on the level on my first try. There is such a thing as being easy for the first few levels, but there is also such a thing as being a pushover.



The multiplayer is one of the few things that stands out in this game. Instead of doing the typical deathmatch mode, the game allows gamers to team up and assault any of the missions available in the game. This, of course, comes with the obvious drawback that everyone is generally going to be a retard and get killed, yet it still manages to be fun. I'm always a big fan of co-op gaming opportunities, and the sheer ability to play with other people makes this game infinitely more enjoyable. As I've said before: a game may suck, but make it co-op and give everyone microphones and you have a party. Hell, any game is fun multiplayer so long as it isn't insanely bad. I think that's why the Gametrash crew still plays Monopoly almost every day.

So, I yet again have to disagree with the majority of the reviews on the subject of SWAT 4. SWAT 4 is by no means a bad game- it has the fun kind of tactical abilities that many gamers love to pieces. However, SWAT 4 is not anything original, so unoriginal, in fact, that it may irritate other gamers. The game is still fun, and presents a good way to kill a bunch of time and not spend it getting carpal tunnel with other shoot-em-ups. So, I have to give SWAT 4 a 4: appropriate for it's title, appropriate for the amount of fun I had.

4 star(s) out of 5

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