SWAT 4 review

May 10, 2005- Permalink

I’ve been playing SWAT 4 (Publisher: Vivendi Universal / Sierra Developer: Irrational Games) for a few weeks now and the folks over at Irrational Games should give themselves a pat on the back. Great graphics, difficult missions, and a choice of weapons and tactics make the game an easy way to spend a few hours.

In most first-person shooters, the player has to kill everything in sight, but that sort of freewheeling use of ammunition is usually frowned upon in most big city police departments. You know things like killing innocent bystanders and destroying property unnecessarily can sometimes take a toll on one’s police pension. That restraint gives an added tension when you enter a dance club in SWAT 4 that’s been taken over by rival gangs. You have to decide in a split second whether the person crouched in the corner is merely hiding from the violence or planning to shoot you and your fellow officers. That doesn’t mean that you are supposed to be killing all the bad guys either. The career mode of SWAT 4 gives higher points to successful arrests. Apparently, the legal system has this whole “trial by jury” thing that they like to do.

Some of the scenarios are quite disturbing, including a high-risk arrest warrant service on a __Silence of the Lambs__-like serial killer that had me turning on all the lights and reaching for a comedy flick. I guess killing ‘droids on a far-off space station doesn’t have the same personal resonance that quietly searching through a suburban home does.

If I did have one complaint, it would be that suspects die too easily. Several times my SWAT team confronted an hostile suspect that just didn’t want to give up easily. I’d aim for the foot or leg and he’d die just as fast as if I’d popped him in the head. In those situations, I should be calling for the paramedics and not the coroner.

SWAT 4 is rated M for mature.