Swat 4

Games
1

Sorry, I guess I’m kinda spamming the forum today, but this was just too funny. I got my copy of SWAT 4 today, and I was doing the tutorial which has, as you would expect, a firing range. It’s an indoor range, and standing in the rafters above is one Lieutenant Bond, your instructor. So I shoot at the targets for awhile and I’m ready to move on, but the Lieutenant keeps attracting my eye. I start to wonder what I imagine every single person who does the tutorial will wonder: “Hmm, will the game actually let me shoot him?”

So I level my M4 at Lt. Bond and pop a round into his face. Sure as spit, he falls down from the rafters in a perfect, realistic display of ragdoll death physics. Then I see the red words “You have failed the mission” display on my screen. What? What mission? This is a tutorial, right? Nope. Guess not. I’ts a mission. So I’m taken to a debriefing screen and what do I see listed as Objective #1 for the Tutorial Mission? “Do not kill Lieutenant Bond.” I just about fell out of my chair laughing.

2

Heh…

When you got some time, be sure to post some more impressions. I really liked Swat 3, and have been considering picking this up.

3

Well, I hope you really liked SWAT 3, because then you’ll really like SWAT 4. SWAT 4 is just like SWAT 3, only one more. It’s basically the same game.

That’s a good thing, though. Irrational didn’t mess with success. The best close tactical game ever remains the best. The graphics are much improved, of course, and there are some welcome additions, like the ability to see through your elements’ eyes (including snipers). Also the command interface has been improved, with the inclusion of “smart commands.” (All this means is that the game has a good idea which command you may want to use at any given time based upon which team you have selected, what you’re pointing at, etc., and automatically defaults to that. Of course, you remain free to override it.)

Beyond that, there’s not much to tell. I’ve only played the first mission, but it played exactly like the missions in the previous game. You have to move carefully, and avoid shooting and killing as much as possible. You’re scored based upon how appropriate your actions were in each confrontation, and if you actually care about getting a high score (which translates into being the best goshdarned boy scout in LA), then the game becomes much, much more of a challenge. To give you an idea, on Easy difficulty, I scored a mere 60 out of 100 my first time out, in which none of my officers took a single bullet and no civilians were harmed. In fact, the suspects never got off a shot. But I still only got 3 stars out of 5 because I was a little too hard on the bad guys. I felt so bad (sniff).

Anyway, if you loved SWAT 3 and want more of that kind of action in a package that’s sweeter in every way, SWAT 4 is a must buy. If you’re feeling ambivalent because you didn’t really like SWAT 3 all that much, then I’d say you’ll probably be happier spending your money on something you’re really crazy about.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, there’s also multiplayer (one type: SWAT vs. Suspects) and an integrated mission maker. I haven’t tried either one.

EDIT Part 2: I also forgot to mention the hellishly long loading time at startup. It must preload a lot of stuff, because it takes a good three minutes–no exaggeration–to even get to the first (of like 5) splash screen on my machine (P4 1.7GHz, 1 Gb DDR RAM). After that, the missions themselves take about 30 seconds to load. Once loaded, though, the game plays very smoothly (my vidcards’s a Radeon 9800 w/128Mb).

4

Gonna grab it from Fry’s tomorrow. Picked up the preorder box that included SWAT 3. Figured it was worth waiting to save a few dollars because Fry’s is selling it for $34.99.

5

there’s a few multiplayer modes, all of which pit SWAT vs suspects:

  • VIP escort, where SWAT has to get the VIP from point A to point B. Instead of simply killing the VIP, the suspects have to capture and hold the VIP for two minutes before assassinating him, which makes for a bigger challenge.
  • “Rapid Deployment” - Bomb defusal, where SWAT needs to shut down a set of bombs scattered around the level under a time limit.
  • “Barricade” - essentially team deathmatch, with bonus points for capturing other players instead of killing them. Break out the taser! :)

And then there’s 5-man co-op, which I hope takes off online. We had a blast testing it in-house.

6

Can you do 2-man co-op?

7

You can do 5 player co-op (Swat 3 supported 10, via two 5-man teams). A big change from SWAT 3 online is that there is no differentiating between element leader and the red/blue teams. In SWAT 3, as element leader, you could give actual commands to the squads, and they would see icons and paths on the map showing them what to do. In SWAT 4 (if I’m understanding what fan sites have complained about) you can’t – if you want to do element leader/squads you’ll simply have to chat your way through that aspect.

The best fan site for SWAT 3/4 is probably 10-David:
http://www.10-david.com/?p=news

8

there’s a few multiplayer modes, all of which pit SWAT vs suspects:[/quote]

You are correct and I’m just wrong. Misread the manual on that one. Sorry about that.

9

What if you just have two guys tryign to play? do you command more, have a smaller outfit, or are you just screwed? I dug Ghost Recon the mostest because of its co-op play.

10

I don’t know if this is SWAT logic or game logic, but I just replayed that first mission, being more careful this time. I was doing great, up until I ordered my guys to Move & Clear a door instead of Move, Bang & Clear. One of the perps was inside and shot a SWAT officer. So the perp ends up dead, which was o.k. at that point, but my final score ended up being higher than it was the first time around, when there were no friendly casualties!

(It would have been even higher than that, except in all the excitement I kinda sorta forgot to mention to headquarters that my guy was writhing on the ground, moaning, with a big ol’ .45 slug in him. I guess you’re supposed to say “Man down” or something like that. Anyway, they jacked me for five points for that, the bastids.)

11

In the demo, I ended up outfitting all of my guys with the beanbag-shotguns to boost my chances of arresting live suspects. That’s an easy way to boost your score, since you don’t have to worry about improper use of deadly force.

  • Alan
12

Mutt, you most likely fired on a suspect without them firing at you or pointing a gun at you in the mission. You’ll get a bigger penalty for this than losing one of your officers.

Anyhow-

I’m on the 4th mission (nightclub). I’ve been playing on hard up til now… it took about 15 tries to pass the 3rd mission on hard. I’m finding that it’s just RIDICULOUSLY hard to pass any mission past 3 on hard. It’s also too easy to pass them on Normal.

I feel like the score limit for hard should have been 65-70, not 75. I can’t tell you how many times I failed a mission because I had a score of 70. And this is for totally ridiculous reasons… like I’ll flashbang a room, run in, tell a guy to go onto his knees. He wavers. I keep screaming get on your knees. He turns around and shoots at me. I shoot back and hit him in the legs. He’s then incapacitated, which takes like 5 off my score… I mean COME ON! What the hell am I supposed to do? I followed every procedure in the book here.

I can’t imagine what playing on elite difficulty is like… nothing below 90 is acceptable.

EDIT: I just read in the manual that, not only do you have to get 75 points to pass, but the enemy AI is much more clever. Damnit this is frustrating. I want GREAT enemy AI, but I don’t want to have to redo the entire mission for the 15th time for getting 1 point less than the requirement. Especially given how unfairly they score you.

13

I feel your pain, flyinj. This is tough. I remember SWAT 3 being similarly picky, though. There must be some technique we’re just not picking up on, since I know there are SWAT fanatics out there who can get perfect scores. Maybe you’re just supposed to stand outside and scream through the doorway at him, or use a stinger to “convince” him or something.

EDIT: Yeah, that’s the ticket. I just got a 98 on the second mission. Concentrate on nonlethal strategies, like stingers and pepper spray. Don’t just let your guys go charging in everywhere, either. They don’t seem to ever use nonlethal means (unless you force them to by outfitting them with pepper spray guns). What I did on that house was have my guys wand the doors, then I would open them myself, toss in a grenade, and enter first. In the case of the killer, I got him to drop his shotgun by blasting him with pepper spray until he cried uncle. This was on Normal, though. Maybe they don’t give up so easy on Hard. Still, I imagine the basic approach is the same. Don’t fire lethal rounds unless you absolutely have to.

On a different note, have you noticed how people’s ages all calculate out to the year 2008? For instance, if it lists someone’s date of birth as 1980, it also lists their age as 28. Weird. This is true for everybody. Was Sierra just gonna sit on this game for another three years, or are they hoping that they’ll be able to fool some people in 2008 into thinking SWAT 4 just came out that year, or what?

14

I believe the game is supposed to be set in 2008.

Anyhow, I tried the method of using a beanbag shotgun in mission 6. It worked like a charm… I got an 80/100 with 5 suspects out of about 16 killed… the rest arrested. Also one officer down. On hard. Also, as always, I flashbang/gas/stinger every room I breach. I’m almost always out of the things when I’m near the end of a mission.

The problem is, I wanna use the big guns and blow these punks away! I don’t want to have to go through the whole game throwing BEANBAGS at these guys. Although, I have to admit, it’s quite humorous to watch the reactions of the perps as you nail them with beanbags :). Let me shoot them in the legs!

Overall, the game is FANTASTIC. It’s Swat 3 through and through, but so much better.

My main complaint, even more than the finicky scoring, is the framerate can be really bad at times, and my rig can run HL2/Doom3/Far Cry like a bat out of hell at high settings.

15

What if you just have two guys tryign to play? do you command more, have a smaller outfit, or are you just screwed? I dug Ghost Recon the mostest because of its co-op play.[/quote]
One of the few drawbacks I found with the game is that you can’t mix co-op players with bots to round the teams out. If you’ve only got two guys, that’s all you’ve got … and it’s a much bigger challenge.

16

Hey! No, you are kidding right? You can still shoot guys in the leg, right? Come on, that isn’t funny. And what is this beanbag shit? How can you possibly pass on a mission without putting the fear of god into the bad guys? I was hoping they were actually going to add a “Fear of God Meter” into the game. Hmmmmmmmmmm…

Chet

17

Oh, you can shoot them in the legs… and they react accordingly and limp around. The problem is, sometimes a leg shot kills them outright. You can also shoot guns out of their hands.

I wonder if that is actual SWAT doctorine… shooting guns out of people’s hands.

18

I got a perfect score playing the demo mision lone wolf (as in with no team to support me). Shooting suspects in the leg is perfectly acceptable, as long as you shout comply and they resist it (they don’t comply with your commands basically). Just take care not to shoot them to much. One shot to make them comply, and if they don’t do it again.

And remember that warning shots work wonders. Do a shout, shoot combo: shout comply while you fire shots close to them. Also softening them up with stingers is great.

SWAT 3 adviced to shine your flashlight in their face, shout comply and fire warning shots. It seems to work wonders in SWAT 4 as well.

19

Hey! No, you are kidding right? You can still shoot guys in the leg, right? Come on, that isn’t funny. And what is this beanbag shit? How can you possibly pass on a mission without putting the fear of god into the bad guys? I was hoping they were actually going to add a “Fear of God Meter” into the game. Hmmmmmmmmmm…[/quote]

LOL. My feelings exactly. Where’s my chainsaw, dammit?

Seriously, though, there is something extremely pansy-feeling about running around slapping people with rubber and making them cry. At times, it can feel more like you’re playing Xtreme Paintbrawl than the life-and-death kind of game it really is.

20

Just to clarify on an earlier question: yes, you can play with just two people in the co-op modes.

The scoring system is hyper-picky and requires a Rosetta Stone to decipher. Generally, you need to be a boy scout and follow proper police procedure. If it’s completely annoying, you can play on “Easy” where you only need to complete the basic objectives. Over on 10-David, we’re working on a guide to decipher the entire scoring system.

Personally, I really like this challenge. There are plenty of games I can run amuck, blasting away at things, but the precision and perfection this game requires is downright sexy.