e’ve all seen SWAT forces, whether it’s on TV or in the movies.  They’re a finely oiled machine, at once able to quell the most volatile of situations, or if need, be, neutralize hostile targets.  They’re your one stop shop for sticky situations and now you can become a member.  Wait, we know that the sound of gunfire makes you wet your pants, but stick with us for a second.  Even if you don’t know a flashbang from a sting grenade, you’ll be busting down doors and taking down enemies like a pro.

The main gameplay mode in SWAT 4 is Career, which is a single player mode that has you naming a SWAT team leader and then taking your team through a variety of different levels.  In all, there are 14 different levels that you can tackle, and interestingly enough, each single player level can be played cooperatively via the Internet.  What makes the Career mode so much fun is the fact that each level throws a new challenge your direction.  And, if you happen to fail a mission, the next time you play it, locations of enemies and hostages will change, thus ensuring that each play through is different than the previous one.

Missions take place in pretty varying locales, but most stay true to one ideal: neutralize enemies and rescue hostages.  Take one of the earlier levels, for example.  You and your team need to storm the home of a suspected serial killer.  Besides the killer’s belligerent mother, the entire area is nearly empty save the crazed lunatic.  But, you don’t initially know this when you start playing, so every single corner and every single room becomes a potential hiding spot or vantage point for your enemy.  Other levels, however, throw more chaos into the mix, such as a stage that has you trying to neutralize gunmen in a nightclub full of hostages and bystanders.  The night club is a sprawling maze of hallways and rooms, making each new turn around another corner a potentially deadly maneuver.  While most level objectives never seem to really venture outside of the realm of taking down enemies and rescuing innocents, the levels themselves really keep things interesting.  Since your biggest enemy usually ends up being your surroundings, it’s really neat exploring the levels, while also trying to stay alive.

Don't stand too close to your own grenades when they go off

Being a SWAT member, you’ll have more than your fair share of technology on your side when it comes to keeping yourself out of a body bag.  First off, VU Games and developer Irrational Games have faithfully recreated a bevy of real-life SWAT tools and weapons.  Your primary weapon will also be a large gun, such as the 9mm SMG, while your secondary weapon will usually be a handgun, such as the M1911 or even a Tazer.  Since you don’t always have to kill an enemy to subdue them, you’ll also have the option of using non-lethal firearms, such as a specially modified shotgun that shoots beanbags and a modified paintball gun that fires off pepper spray filled rounds.  When it comes to grenades, you also have quite a few options at your disposal.  Flashbangs fill a room with a blinding light, temporarily blinding anyone inside.  CS gas grenades are a bit less intrusive, and release gas that immediately attacks the respiratory system of nearby individuals.  Stingers, my personal favorite, explode and disperse thousands of small rubber pellets, making them a painful yet non-lethal solution for distracting enemies.  The entire weapons and item system is mapped to the keyboard number keys, making it extremely easy to switch through your various armaments. 

With all these weapons at your fingertips, it’s sometimes hard to remember that you also have a four-man team following your every command.  But, thankfully, your team is extremely easy to control.  All squad commands are mapped to the right mouse button.  If you position your aiming reticule over an object, say a door, and press the right mouse key, a small squad command menu will open up.  Once open, you just need to use your mouse to select the command you wish to issue and press the right mouse key again.  It’s easy, quick, and very simple to get the hang of.  Since running around willy nilly will usually end up getting you killed, you’ll really need to practice utilizing your squad to the fullest.  They can assist in nearly every possible situation, whether you command to fall in on your position, cover a door and breach it using grenades, or even split up and take different routes during a stage.  Two of your squad mates will be automatically designated a team color at the start of a level, while the other two will also be designated a different color.  Using the squad command system, you can switch between the two teams and issue commands to either one, which opens up a handy in-game window showing the other half of your team.  You can then use the Home and Insert keys to switch control between your team teams.  What this ultimately ends up creating is the ability to control two different squads without regard to their relative distance, which is incredibly helpful when trying to set up more tactical maneuvering. 

Breaching doors is an integral part of squad success

Also notable is the ability to control a sniper during each level.  Each stage has you teamed up with a sniper that will remain in a stationary position and alert you every time an enemy passes into his field of view.  Once alerted, you can hit the Page Up key to open a small window on-screen that shows what’s he’s seeing, and then a quick press of the Caps Lock key will then let you control the sniper and his aim.  While it’s not too often that you’ll use the sniper to take down multiple enemies, the feature is pretty darn enjoyable considering your SWAT team members don’t have access to a sniper rifle as part of their regular available weapons. 

While killing enemies is always a sure fire way to make sure they don’t kill you, SWAT 4 utilizes a pretty unique system of actually rewarding you for not taking down everything in sight.  Pressing the middle mouse key (the wheel) will make your character shout out at enemies things like “kneel on the floor,” and, “put up your hands.”  Some suspects will comply with your orders and drop their weapons and go prone.  Once they have, you can handcuff them to neutralize them.  Some enemies, however, won’t give in to your orders and will instead shoot at you or run away, making the system a balancing act of usefulness.  Even non-threatening characters, like hostages, need to be yelled at every once in awhile to get them in line.  In the level that has you going after a serial killer his obtuse mother will scream and yell at you and your team members.  Even after repeated shouting at, she was still swinging away and uncooperative.  She eventually got the message after I Tazered her a few times, and the scenario serves as a nice reminder that even the good guys need some cajoling now and then.

Perhaps the most impressive feature in SWAT 4 is its visuals, which fall heavily on the dark and dangerous side of things.  Most levels are extremely claustrophobic, filled with shadows and other dark places that prove to be prime spots for enemies to hide.  Character models are also quite well done and feature a ton of detail and high polygon counts.  But where the game really scores some points is in the little details.  Flashbang grenades, for example, will blind your character if you look directly at them.  If you do, you’ll be temporarily blinding and then get a sort of “burn in” effect of your surroundings until your eyes can come back into focus.  It’s things like this that really give the title some visual punch and while the frame rate seems to lag every now and then during particularly intense scenarios, the overall look of the game is hard not to praise.

Visuals and lighting add a great deal of atmosphere to the game

Aurally, SWAT 4 features very little music, but makes up for that omission with lots of sound effects and voice over dialogue.  You’ll hear constant radio chatter with your superiors, as well as hear hostages cry for help, enemies scream at you, and even some light-hearted banter from your SWAT team mates.  The sound effects for weapons are particularly realistic, whether it comes in the almost bone-jarring blast that comes with a flashbang or the deafening crack of wood when you use a breaching shotgun to open a locked door. 

The only real gripe that I have with SWAT 4 so far is some sketchy AI, which as you progress through the game gets to almost insane levels.  Enemies become so fast and so smart, that it seems your SWAT team mates sometimes have a hard time compensating for it, which needless to say, usually results in them dying on you.  Granted, a mission doesn’t end when you lose a man, but it does make the rest of the level you’re playing that much more difficult.  Also, since you don’t have a map or any other intelligence prior to playing through a level, you sometimes have to take part in some annoying cat and mouse type chases.  Enemies, when alerted, will sometimes run away and hide.  If one of your mission objectives is to neutralize all enemies, that one enemy can sometimes take off without you even knowing, resulting in you having to scour the level just to find them.  Usually, this also ends up getting you killed since they can do a better job of getting the jump on you, which then forces you to play through the entire mission again.  To help combat this annoyance, the locations of enemies and hostages are changed each time you tackle a level, but playing for 20 minutes trying to track down one enemy and then dying is still pretty aggravating.

But on the plus side, SWAT 4 features some pretty enjoyable multiplayer options.  First off, there are four main online modes, including co-op and online takes of the single player missions, such as trying to take down a team that has barricaded themselves inside a building.  With support for 16 total players online, the potential for some memorable online matches is pretty much assured.  You can even create your own mission objectives to play.  Using any Career mission, you can tweak individual settings such as enemy AI and even specific mission objectives to make sure your own created mission is unique.  For a game with such a heavy emphasis on teamwork, it’s nice to see some multiplayer modes that take this fact into account.

Overall SWAT 4 is one heck of a good time.  The tense action coupled with the stellar level design and detailed visuals really create a game that gives you that elusive feeling that you’re really in its virtual world.  True, it may have its share of flaws, particularly the later level enemy AI, but few games out there deliver such a realistic and enjoyable time.  Most of us may not have what it takes to be part of an elite SWAT squad, but at least we can pretend.