Swat 4

Working on a preview of this one and it’s pretty fab so far. Anyone else look at it?

I enjoyed the multiplayer beta. It’s was a little too easy for people to grief their teammates using the non-lethal weapons (beanbag shotty, pepper spray, taser, grenades). I imagine that the live version would have some server side controls or voting to handle griefing.

It shined when you could work with a friend. One guy tasers or beanbags the VIP or opposing players and the other guy arrests him. I have high hopes for the coop mode(s).

I liked that the VIP was random and I liked that the VIP had a decent amount of weaponry and accessories.

Looking forward to purchasing it. Right now, I expect to work through the missions on co-op with a friend or two.

It’s really cool to go through the career missions and replay some of them for the random placement. It’s a very solid single player game so far.

I’ve got a copy sitting at home. Missing a disc for installation, though.

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I, uh, have the game.

They didnt mail you both discs? That sucks.

The more I play the more I love it but I don’t see a co-op. maybe it isnt in the preview. This is definitely a keeper though.

We spent a few hours testing co-op today. We had 4 players, but I think it goes up to 5.

It’s been fun. The scenarios have a nice feel to them, and the random spawns keep things interesting if you play more than once.

My favorite moment has been the kidnapper’s mom (Gladys), who doesn’t want to cooperate with the SWAT team. After she whines for a few moments and refuses to calm down, it’s immensely satisfying to tell your team “OK, guess we’ll just have to use the taser.” :-)

SWAT4 is a First Day Purchase for me. I like me some SWAT4 co-op!

Oh cool. Everytime I’ve looked on the web browser I haven’t found anything but I imagine you guys play it on the LAN. Yes, the kidnappers mom is pretty awesome.

Aye – we had 4 people on a LAN, within shouting distance of each other. It’s been a long time since we played the Rainbow Six games, so there were some coordination skills we needed to dust off. There’s no radar, which means it’s easy to lose a team member if they wander off. Even something as simple as going through a doorway can get complicated if you don’t coordinate properly. Having a team leader with the optiwand calling out plays at each doorway makes things go much smoother.

Overall, we’ve had fun with the co-op. What the game will probably need is a community building lots of new maps – there’s a “quick mission maker” in the main menu, but it really just lets you edit parameters for the existing scenarios. If the community started cranking out quality scenarios, I could imagine people playing them all day. :)

I’m just pleased that it doesn’t seem as tedious as some of the Rainbow Six games.

Jason - I got the last CD and should be up and running tonight. Shoot me an email or PM if you want to try out co-op.

I’ve seen/read about some of the map-making tools, and since it’s not terribly different from UT, it shouldn’t prove too difficult for fans to start soon. SWAT 3 benefitted significantly from its user-created maps, it’s just that they couldn’t start making maps until after the release of SWAT 3: Elite Edition’s mod tools in late 2000/early 2001.

Ok. I’ll do that. I’m pretty curious about the co-op

I was a big, big SWAT 3 fan (I think it was one of the best post-release supported games I ever played, in terms of free, developer-created missions being released for download, and multiplayer functionality being delivered post-release, just as promised).

I played the multiplayer SWAT 4 beta a bit (via Fileplanet) and really wish I could get a chance at trying the co-op, though it doesn’t sound like a co-op demo is forthcoming, from what I read.

I guess my only concern is that like SWAT 3 you’ll need a group of players who understand the game and how it differs from an all-out shooter to be effective. When I used to play SWAT 3 co-op, it tended to be feast or famine. :P

One minor reservation I have about the multiplayer is that there aren’t a lot of options for co-op in the preview build VU sent out. In single player, you can set up all kinds of missions with variable numbers of bad guys, civilians, and your choice of victory conditions.

But in multiplayer co-op, you can’t touch any of this. I seem to recall SWAT 3 offering all sort of options for multiplayer with civilians, without, setting the number of bad guys, and so forth. Also, it looks like you don’t get an AI team in multiplayer co-op. I think SWAT 3 allowed this.

I could be mistaken. Still and all, a wonderful multiplayer game and a welcome change of pace.

-Tom

My SWAT 3 memories are getting foggy – perhaps it’s time to reinstall, though I put all my add-on missions on Zip disks and don’t have a Zip drive. :P

My recollection is that you could fill in “empty” slots in co-op with an AI guy. If you played the team leader, you could dole out commands both to the AI guys and to the actual players. The players would see line drawings, arrows etc. pointing them to what you wanted them to do, but sometimes these were a little unclear, and newbies generally had no idea what the commands given to them meant.

SWAT would let you set the number of enemy and neutral AI up to some ungodly number each. Beyond just filling out your own team with AI you could add extra squads which would function autonomously. So yes, despite your gaining years, you’re not wrong.

According to the developers, this isn’t a feature in final game, either. For whatever reason, the coding won’t support QMM missions in the co-op mode.

It’s possible someone may figure out a workaround with mods…