Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Within the city, crisis and turmoil are an everyday, every second occurrence. When ordinary means of law enforcement are not an option, there is a group that is called upon to dole out justice to those that believe they are above the law. This highly-regarded and specially trained unit is SWAT. In SWAT 4, you are the element leader of an authentic Special Weapons and Tactics team within the big city where danger looms large. From intense hostage situations to Homeland Security threats, your Amazon.com Product Description
Looking for a tactical shooter that asks you to do more than charge a building, guns a' blazin'? With a focus on sparing as many lives as possible, SWAT 4 not only raises the stakes, it raises the realism to a new level. Choose your loadout carefully and only go lethal when all else fails and the lives of innocents or a squad member are at stake. In SWAT 4, you're the leader, nicknamed "Boss," and it's your job to command three other specialists through a variety of missions in every corner of a perilous, crime-infested city. Your special weapons and tactics squad consists of basic specialist types, an Assaulter, a Breacher, a Scout and a Non-lethal Specialist. These specialists can be customized to your tastes, and you can pick weapons that suit your mission objectives and plan. In keeping with SWAT 4's focus on non-lethal, life-preserving engagements, you can choose weapons such as tasers, flashbang grenades, and a bean bag-hurling shotgun. Of course, many situations turn hot, and the baddies you'll face will be well armed, so there is a complete selection of lethal firepower, as well. Your missions will focus on neutralizing criminal elements and taking as many suspects into custody as possible. How you do that is up to you, but the game demands restraint, stealth and an eye for gaining the tactical advantage over opponents. You'll use items like the "Optiwand" to look around corners and under doors to scout for foes, before rushing in and subduing a suspect with pepper spray, CS gas or, if things turn ugly, live rounds. Be careful, though; killing innocents will end your mission immediately. As squad leader, you make the ultimate calls about whether to enter rooms, open fire, or retreat. You'll command three other capable comrades with the only goal of keeping people alive. SWAT 4's intuitive command system will have you giving orders and organizing your team effectively in no time. All commands are contextual, meaning the game provides possible options depending on the situation you're in. This allows you to make decisions quickly, because when lives are at stake and the action heats up, one thing you don't have is a lot of time. The SWAT franchise is well known for great multi-player action, and SWAT 4 is no exception. You can play online in one of three modes, Barricaded Suspects, V.I.P. Escort, or Rapid Deployment. Each mode comes with unique challenges and makes special demands on your powers of cooperation and command. Keep a cool head, and keep the body bags to a minimum. |
Customer Reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 SWAT 4, Apr 28, 2023
Graphics is good but the AI and the gameplay needs a little comment.
1st , we always get penalized if we saw a suspect and did not have them disarm without usind deadly force ! And a lot of time you see a suspect with guns and you have to shout several time for him to obey your orders ! but the split second he don;t he get you wounded ! very annoying.
The sniper control is a joke ! you have to ALWAYS go to the sniper and take the shot and leave your team vulnerable to attack when the sniper see s suspect! No illuminated rectical on the scope also! so in dark spot, you cannot see the rectical!
Overall, game play is okay! but I wish they would improve on thje game play and AI!
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
 SWAT 4 Delivers..., Apr 22, 2023
Despite what some say, SWAT 4 delivers as it is supposed to. If you were a SWAT 3 fan, then say hello to SWAT 4, a more graphically advanced edition with some AWESOME control and a much improved "drop down" command menu, including the ability to command a "red" and "blue" element at different times, or the WHOLE element at once.
The bad guys are smarter, sneak up on you, and change positions. Some give up easily, others run, and others fight back. It's replay value is AWESOME, and Im sure multiplayer is just unreal...I just havent had the time to get to it yet since Im on mission 5 of the single player!!
This is not meant to be a Max Payne or Half Life 2 game, its a stricly "SWAT" oriented game, slow in pace, much like a Splinter Cell. This is NOT a run and gun, its a strategic first person shooter for SWAT series fans.
Be aware that it takes a few minutes to set up the keyboard the way that is most comfortable, and you may change the config a few times in the control panel before you set it for good. Having the controls set up to where you can access all commands easily is key to keeping this game exciting and not annoying!
The system requirements arent too bad...but PCGAMER reccommends a 2.4ghz P4 and a 128mb graphics card. For reference, Im running it on a 3.4ghz Extreme Edition CPU, 1 GB of RAM, an X800 XT 256mb graphics card, and surround sound.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
SWAT 3.5?, Apr 21, 2023
After waiting nearly 5 years for what many strategic shooter and CO-OP fans considered the best game ever, SWAT 4 has been a disappointment for most of them.
Admittedly, SWAT 4 had some big shoes to fill, following up on a game that still, after so many years, could stand up to most of the new releases. Its replay value was nearly infinite, and friendly and enemy AI have yet to be matched.
SWAT 4 has one main improvement, and those are the graphics. Levels are much more detailed, and will create a more immersive atmosphere that its predecessor. But even they are far from outstanding. Some of the animations that most players will see hardly ever are done quite well (e.g. officers swinging over a fence), whereas others that one will see perhaps a dozen times every mission (suspects being arrested), look extremely clumsy and unrealistic.
The sounds in general are adequate, even though the voice acting is a bit bland, but it is bearable. As the gameplay is concerned though, the sounds are more or less just decoration, as the lack of 3-D effects makes it impossible to use the sound to locate enemies.
Now to the list of disappointments:
The main showstoppers are the AI, the scoring system, and the load times.
Friendly AI has quite and arsenal of suicide methods: Either it gets killed because it waits for the enemy to shoot first before it fires, or it tries to clear a room, but overlooks half of the enemies (even when being shot at), or it runs carelessly through areas that weren't cleared before, or it disobeys orders, chasing one suspect, and getting killed by another. All these behaviours that are totally out of the player's control, and therefore quite frustrating.
The enemy AI on the other hand, is at times quite smart - running away, hiding, circling around, and even closing doors behind itself to 'cover its tracks'. Unfortunately, it's also very obedient. Once confronted by an officer, even if not handcuffed, it will never run off again or grab one of the many dropped guns that may be right next to him. When it comes to reaction times though, they can go from gun down, facing away from the player, to deadly accuracy within a split second, without giving the player even a chance to yell his compliance commands.
Not issuing compliance commands, on the other hand, opens up another issue with this release - The unrealistic scoring system: No matter how obvious the threat to hostages or the officers - unless the player issues compliance commands first (which are, more often than not, his very last words), there will be severe points penalties, which will prevent him from proceeding to the next level.
And - replaying a level is not that simple either, since there are no save-games, and a restart of the current level will take SEVERAL MINUTES before one is back in action.
While gameplay is quite frustrating at times (because of inadequate friendly AI or superhuman opponent reactions), the maps nevertheless don't quite offer the same kind of challenges SWAT 3 maps did. Most of the new maps consist of two floors that feature some corridor with rooms going off them, but none of them offer any real strategic head scratchers.
SWAT 4 has a new mouse-controlled interface that may seem intuitive at first, but for a serious player (who wouldn't mind taking the time to learn a more sophisticated control system) they are more of an annoyance than an improvement. Since one has to click and move the mouse to work your way through the action menus, that means it is impossible to quickly issue or change orders, or to act and order at the same time. It is claimed that there is an 'old-style' interface available, but what is actually implemented in this version doesn't have any of the elegance and unobtrusivemess of the original interface.
In short - for a seasoned SWAT 3 player this installment will probably be a great disappointment, and for a new SWAT fan it might be a better idea to get a cheap copy of SWAT 3 and play that until a patch comes out that might address the aforementioned issues.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Not as well executed as SWAT 3 was, Apr 19, 2023
OK, I'll start on a positive note. The 4th instalment of SWAT uses the Unreal Tournament 2004 engine, which provides fantastic graphical and audio effects. The textures and scripted animations (for example, cockroaches) are excellent.
Now the negative: the game itself is lacklustre and offers nothing new over SWAT 3. In fact, SWAT 3 was better in some AI respects... read on..
The gameplay is exactly the same as SWAT 3, except that the enemy AI has been brightened up a bit. The bad guys will run away if shot at, and take cover in dark corners to spring ambushes.
"Good", you think, except that the SWAT officer AI is dense. Very dense. This is due to the "fire only when about to be fired upon" logic which spoils the game.
Every time the AI sees a suspect with a weapon they will shout "drop the weapon" - so far so good- but if the suspect declines to drop the weapon, the officers will not incapacitate the suspect and ensure he drops the weapon, instead they will repeat themselves forever, until either the suspect turns around with the weapon in hand and takes one of the officers out (it happens a lot - the bad guys turn really fast) or the officers kill him. Bearing in mind the officers don't seem to turn that fast, you can lose all your officers with this very random event, no matter how careful you are.
If you try to take the bad guy out before he gets the drop on your fellow officers, and you haven't issued a "drop your weapon" statement, you will have points deducated from your mission score. This is very frustrating.
The danger is compounded further by limits of AI communication. You cannot tell your officers that there is a bad guy round the corner, if you use your "opti-wand". So when you say to the team "clear the room" they will go in oblivious to the threat. They may bump into each other as well, with the end result that all of them are shot dead by a loony with a shotgun.
In these cases you normally try and take the bad guy out yourself, but he spins round too fast... and you're dead. You can't save during missions, so you have to restart from scratch.
You cannot tell your officers to look in a certain direction. They can move to certain points in a room, though. Guarding certain doors can be hairy sometimes, as a result.
Ha, and if you run out of ammo (easy to do on automatic firing mode) you can't take any from your downed colleagues???!!
I just felt like I was playing a game of rock-scissors-stone in SWAT 4. I never felt that my actions would affect the outcome of a mission, it was down to luck what direction the terrorists were facing in a room, and whether they'd shoot my men first or they'd be shot.
The first few missions are enjoyable but then everything gets difficult and you will probably end up working vigilante when the AI team are dead. Considering that some baddies need multiple shots to die (body armour?) and you can't pick ammo up on the way, you might end up out of ammo and can't complete the mission anyway.
Don't get me started on the snipers... they are useless!
If you're a lucky sort of person you might enjoy this game. If you're not, you will probably end up hating it. I would wait for a patch before buying the game, to be honest.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Disappointment, Apr 15, 2023
After loving to play SWAT 3, I was looking very forward to SWAT 4. I hoped for mind-blowing graphics, numerous weapons and a overall great game. Get ready for disappointment. First of all, the game has NO story. The bad guy you apprehend in one mission (complete with his history and criminal affiliations) you never hear anymore. Why even give me a history, just tell me to go in the building and handcuff everybody and if they pull a gun, shoot them. The graphics aren't that great, maybe I am spoiled by all the other games (yes, just about everyone that has come out in the past 6 months) that have better graphics. Weapons, unless I have to unlock more (which won't be happening because I am uninstalling this game after I write this review), are seriously lacking. Only a handful of primary weapons and they are mostly all variations of the same couple with no advantages except they are louder and look different and there is even less pistols. Also, your team AI is hit and miss. You do all the dramatic stacking up at the door, "breech, bang, and clear", etc and then when your team goes in, all armed with submachine guns and shotguns, 2 die by a pistol shot from a crackhead. Your better off just telling your team to follow you everywhere and back you up.
My advice, don't buy this game.
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Based on 24 reviews.