Customer Reviews

SWAT 4 Gold

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am a huge fan of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield so I found this game just recently and decided to go with it based off of other's reviews. I am very happy with it, as it is so similar to Raven Shield in many ways. This is a tactical shooter first and foremost - meaning it is not a run and gun game. You direct (or lead) a four-member SWAT team into rather disturbing real life "situations", NOTE: there is a particularly deviant map at a cult hideout that would make this game a no-go for kids. In this game the goal is to NOT kill suspects unless absolutely necessary, and they push what necessary means. You actually get graded at the end of a round and its very hard to not get points detracted. The varying levels of difficulty require different scores to pass, for instance EASY requires nothing but survival and to not kill key civilians or targets. If you kill without giving threats a ridiculous amount of warning time, you will be penalized (see below). Here are my pros and cons:

PROS

Great graphics despite being older, they are better than Raven Shield, yet nowhere near FarCry/HL2 standards, but it looks as good as you would want it to on a rig that could handle those two for this type of game. The maps are very detailed and realistically rendered.

Immersive, you really feel in the moment with your team and you tend to get tense when things go unexpectedly. The maps are the best I have seen for small-scale tactical gaming.

Choices in gear matter, be warned - you cannot kill anybody but those either shooting or getting ready to shoot you, your team members or a civilian. This is a very tactical game and it challenges your thinking.

Unique, this game is going to challenge your FPS skills as well. You can lean around corners (but not while moving), use an under the door camera wand, throw flash bangs, CS gas, stinger grenades (rubber ball loaded grenade that stuns suspects) or use hand held CS for tactical advantage in a map.

Weapons are excellent, but they are real world SWAT weapons so they are no-frills. This is worlds away from Rainbow's endless load out options but much more realistic. You have the usual suspects: MP5, AR-15, UMP, auto shotgun and pump action with handguns going Colt 1911 and the Glock 19. The non-lethal shotgun, taser and CS paintball gun are actually quite effective and nice as you can shoot anyone with them and not get penalized. You also can choose a special breaching shotgun for doors, you have C2 otherwise - you cannot use that entry shotty to kill effectively though.

CONS
Bulky team interface makes using your team member head cam view almost unusable - this makes me rarely break my team up so I can see what everyone is doing. You can see through their cams, but it takes too long and is too cumbersome to use in action. You also cannot give delayed commands like Zulu in Rainbow, meaning you have to tell the team to go in manually through the interface. This makes two point entries a challenge as you need to use the remote unit's headcams, tell them to go - switch back to your view and hope you are quick enough to get into the same room in unison.

If you tell someone to surrender (a key mapping you will use more than any other in this game) and they don't drop their gun - yet don't point it at you, you have to wait till they threaten somebody or you can also shoot their leg, gas them, taze them or so forth - you have NO melee options. Failure to do this results in an "Unauthorized use of lethal force" penalty to your score - 10 points per infraction in a 100-point maximum schema. This causes extremely annoying situations when your team enters a room with five suspects and four civilians with everyone screaming "get down", "hands up", "drop it" - invariably you neutralize a non-threat. I assume SWAT members in real life do not wait for a guy running at them in a small room with an assault rifle to aim for them when there are other people shooting at them already. So realism suffers a little there for game play, as otherwise you could mop up with your AR-15.

No saving - which means if you are going through a long and challenging map - you have one shot at it. As the lead man you also cannot get killed, your team members can, but you will be penalized for this at grading time. Also if you are wounded badly - you move VERY slow - slow enough to make it impossible to finish if only half way through some maps.

That's far from everything, but I just wanted to add a recent review for those of us who don't go after only brand new games. I would have given it four stars except the package is a great deal for the money. The interface, threat system and lack of an in game save make me hold back on calling it a must have for anybody but genre fans. SWAT 4 is still very good and with the expansion pack - well worth the investment for those who like tactical shooters. If you are uncertain, check out the demo, but if you like Rainbow Six - don't waste your time, buy this now.

SWAT 4 is the best of the hard core serious tactical simulations. This is a pretty authentic game and really fun. I have been a law enforcement officer for 11 years, and SWAT 4 has some training value like Fire Arms Training Simulator and other police trainers.

There are some annoyances. The game has excessively conservative use-of-force requirements. Based on the totality of most of the missions (hostages, injured civilians, shots fired, multiple bad guys with gas masks, rifles and body armor), someone holding a gun is a justifiable shooting in real life. You aren't going to give the bad guys a chance to harm anyone else (even by escaping) once entry is made.

Fortunately, it is possible to set the requirements low enough that use-of-force penalties won't fail you so you can unlock all the missions. Still, your team will always follow their artificial intelligence and get killed when they didn't have to.

I notice that the bad guys rarely execute hostages. This allows the SWAT team to take its time in most missions. In real life, if you have 10 citizens bleeding to death and active Columbine-type shooters, you would be under some time pressure.

There are some other unrealistic aspects such as only a five man entry team against a dozen body armored terrorists in a huge facility, and others, but the game is still the most realistic I've played as well as the most fun. Making split second life and death decisions is the most difficult aspect of law enforcement--you can end up dead or in prison. SWAT 4 makes it fun.

I love this game more than any other game I have for my computer. I have never had so much fun playing a computer game. Swat 4 Gold also includes the The Stetchkov Syndicate expansion . Since it is an older game the system requirements are not that high.

In this game you play the role of a SWAT officer who lead four other officers through many situations ranging from a High-risk warrant to taking out terrorists. The game itself is so much fun to play and very frustrating at the same time. It is fun because every time you start the level the criminals, hostages, and wounded civilians are randomly placed around the map so no play through is the same. You are also equipped with an arsenal of weapons and tactical equipment to use against the criminals.

Even though this game is very fun it is also very difficult. You can be killed in around 1-5 shots based on where you are hit. Depending on where you are hit affects how your character operates. If you are hit in the leg, you move slower and if you are hit in the arm your aim isn't as accurate. Bringing what I feel more realism to the game. Though this game is tough, nothing is more satisfying than beating a level that that you had so much trouble on.

Multiplayer is also really enjoyable, all are team based. Barricaded Suspects has a criminal team and a swat team and you earn points by killing each other or swat arresting the suspects. Escort VIP has you protecting one player from the criminals. Rapid Deployment has your team disarming five bombs placed around the level along within a time limit. And finaly co-op where you and up to four other friends can play out the story based missions. In the expansion you can do this as well as play custom missions made from you or other players.

If you can deal with the frustration over this difficult game you will find this game extremely fun. I highly recommend this game to any gamer, and it should be a part of your collection.

All together it is a great game. I love the easy way to command your team. You simply look at something and right click and you can issue a variety of orders. Also you can order half of the team (red/blue) to do an action or the whole team to do someone at once by toggeling the caps lock key. What makes this game amazing is the amount of depth as well as the ease to command your team. Games like tom clancys I could never play because they seemed so complicated when coming to commanding your team.
Also the depth before the mission is great. In some cases you can listen to the 911 calls that were made before you arrive, and get a timeline of the situation.
Also the graphics are great. I played this when I had a Acer laptop 1.6 GHZ.
The AI is smart as well, and gets smarter as you take on greater missions.

An fantastic game, and it will change the way you think. It's realistic whenever I see a situation on a movie or TV show I usually see how unrealistic it's handeled by the swat team compared to how it would be proffesionally done which they game teachs. Interesting that a game can teach you stuff...
A good buy around. Every time a mission is different, because there is random placement of the enemies.

You'll hear the phrase I chose for this review title a lot in this game. The partner AI is rather buggy - in fact, that's the only thing that keeps the game from being as fun as it could be. It is fun developing and implementing tactics, movement plans and combat strategies in this game, and the single-player campaign for both the core game and expansion is extremely well-designed in terms of the various locales you visit, but the partner AI drags it down a notch.

In short, your four SWAT team members are idiots. From running in front of you s you are firing at a suspect to merely dropping a flashbang at their feet and blinding the entire team or badgering you about standing in a position they feel they need to be in because they can't do their job standing eight inches to the left. Their aim is spot-on, though, and they rarely miss when they start opening up on the targets. it's only when it comes to executing given commands that they give you problems. Unfortunately, you have to give them commands a lot because they have zero initiative.

Level design is superb. The buildings, inside and out, look realistic as you explore them. Be it a suspect's house, an office building, a diamond wholesaler or a convenience store, the designers knew what they were doing and made sure that not a polygon was out of place. And the attention to detail is staggering. Graffiti on the walls and dumpsters in some areas, chunks of wall missing to expose support beams, even down to moths buzzing around lights and roaches crawling on the floor. Not one detail was overlooked here.

Sounds are spot-on, as well. Music tracks seem straight out of a cop movie and each weapon has a distinct sound when fired (and if you equip each SWAT member with a different weapon, you'll know who's firing at any given time just by listening; it's not something you need in the course of the game, but it sometimes helps to figure out who has wandered off where if the game bugs out). The only downside is the voice acting. While TOC (Tactical Operations Command, the ones you report to and receive orders from) and your SWAT team have distinct voices and sound realistic, suspects and civilians tend to use the same recycled voice files in most missions, including the expansion pack.

The only other downside is that, to achieve the maximum possible points (you need a minimum to clear the level and move on, depending on your chosen difficulty) you have to arrest suspects rather than kill them and you have to report every arrested/wounded/killed suspect to TOC, as well as any injured/dead civilians you come across. You must also handcuff civilians who've not been wounded and report them to TOC, as well. Finally, you must also collect -every- weapon dropped by the suspects to get maximum points. This can be a problem given the game's physics, which sometimes let weapons bounce up onto shelves and the like, or slide under desks and even into solid walls where you cannot collect them. Coupled with the idiocy of the partner AI, and the fact that if a SWAT member or yourself is wounded or incapacitated during the missions (or you die, the mission ends) you get penalized at the end. There were multiple times I had managed to complete all of the mission goal, but I had been wounded and all four of my team members were downed in the course of it and it cost me so many points that I failed. So, yes, it can be frustrating at times, but the game is still incredibly fun and challenging.

If you don't already have this game, I highly recommend it. The "Gold" edition, which I purchased, has both the core game and expansion in one package, which gives you more missions, more multiplayer options and new weapons and equipment. For a 2005 PC game, it has definitely held up and aged well.

It's been quite some time since I've laughed so hard with a video game. My brother and I like to link games and play them cooperatively. While there are annoyances with game play (e.g. door begins to open and suspects shoot you through the door without even seeing you) we are starting to mod the game to correct these problems. But that's a different story...

My comments are concerning coop play, since most reviews probably concern the single player game. Some of the reviews I read are awesome in breaking down the game play, so read those comments. For coop, this game can be very challenging. I play it on a local LAN with up to two of my brothers and a friend. With a 4 man team every mission becomes a tactical pleasure to complete. You can plot out which doors to enter and how to approach each room. You control the situation.

The missions start off small, handling a limited and low number of suspects and hostages. Then they grow more involved and the firefights can get quite active. One of the greatest annoyances is in the damage you take. We were getting shot once and dying before we even opened the doors. So, without tweaks the fun factor drops off greatly. After some digging we found an .ini file that showed the coop damage was being doubled! Bah! Once we took care of that problem it was more livable and more fun.

SWAT Gold contains the original game as well as the Stetchkov expansion. Comments from the suspects get quite humorous. It is also fun using mace and the taser. Taking the equipment to do every mission non-lethal is very challenging and almost impossible for some missions. But the gratification for completing them in those cases is quite high.

The replay value from this game is very high as well. Once we started modding the game we all agreed that it is a keeper. I'll play this game as long as I can still get it to run. Plus, sometimes it is just funny to abuse the suspects. Oops, bad cop! Probably flashbacks from playing all those Rainbow 6 games.

I am running
64bit Vista
2.4 processor, Nvidia geforce 8600m gs, and 4g ram

I play Swat 4 all the time, with the graphics all the way up, and have no problem.

This game is really good. A lot of people have said Swat 3 is better, but I disagree. This game has better graphics, and gameplay. Remember though, your a POLICE officer, not part of a ANTI-TERRORIST group. You try to keep suspects alive if possible, not kill everything that moves.

EDIT: Saw another review detailing the "NEED" for a patch before playing on newer systems. There IS a patch but the game played fine on my Windows 7 64 bit system before I ever downloaded it. Still haven't seen any difference after patching.

Anywho...

The game cetainly has some age on it but it's still a great game.

It's no run and gun shooter to be certain and is quite challenging. The graphics are acceptable to good depending on your anality about the issue. These days they're pretty dated but the quality is there which is what matters and the gameplay is so good that the graphics definitely take a back seat. The game can be run on very high settings with even the most mediocre of systems. That in itself is a big plus.

It has a simplified mission editor as well that allows you to not create maps but to choose existing maps and put in as many baddies as you want, adjust their skill levels, weapons, etc... You can add in numbers of civilians and adjust their demeanor as well... You can determine primary and secondary objectives... All this gives the game substantially high replayability.

About the only problem I have with this game is with the AI pathfinding and your squadmates occasional absolute refusal to get the hell out of your way. This wouldn't be so bad if they didn't insist that you get out of there's even when you aren't blocking them. The pathfinding is rarely an issue but when you're dealing with unknown doors and hallways you want your squadmates to take the most obviously safe route to their destination. This isn't always what they do and sometimes going the stupid route gets them dead.

At any rate, Amazon has already laid out a fair description of the details of the game so there's really no point in going into much of that. Suffice it to say that even in 2012 this game is very definitely worth having. There's not another one like it and nothing similar appears to be on the horizon. I recommend you snatch it up while you still can.

When I ordered my copy it came from an outfit in the UK (Harleys International) and it worked fine on my American computer but it doesn't appear that that's where they're coming from anymore. The shipping time was estimated to be a month to a month and a half but no kidding I had this game at my doorstep inside of EIGHT DAYS and paid for nothing but standard shipping. Maybe Harleys International has their own fleet of jets or something, I don't know.

Great game. Lot's of fun. Highly recommended.

This package contains both the original SWAT 4 game and the expansion pack "The Stetchkov Syndicate". Both the original game and the expansion provide great gameplay. You must gear up a SWAT team to achieve several mission objectives played out through multiple scenarios. There is an overarching story line that connects all the scenarios, but my favorite thing about this game is the ability for an advanced player to alter the game's physics and the gear characteristics (there is no in-game menu for this - players must edit core files and this can totally screw up the game if you don't know what you're doing. That's why I'm not telling you anymore than I am.). This makes for an infinite number of ways to replay scenarios. Want your enemies to have infinite life so you HAVE to arrest (as opposed to kill) them? Totally doable. Want them to be more resistant to surrender? You can do that too. The best thing players can access in-game is the scenario editor. It allows for a whole slew of customization options for editing the scenarios such as setting objectives, number and type of suspects and hostages, the suspects' armament, lots of stuff. You can then take your custom scenarios online and play them with friends. Warning: this game DOES require a patch to work on most newer systems. Sierra online is now defunct, so you are going to need to find the patch elsewhere. Run an internet search for "Patch for SWAT 4" and you should be able to find it. I don't endorse or recommend any particular site, and I recommend that you exercise caution when determining which site to download it from. I flat out recommend AGAINST downloading it from a torrent site as this is just begging for malware. In summary, this is definitely a game worth having, but the need for a patch from a defunct company makes getting it to work somewhat annoying at the outset.

The reason for my purchase behind this game is because an internet reviewer did a lets play series on it and I got hooked!
so I've owned it for a while now and i gotta say if your a fan of first person shooters this will be a great addition to the collection! if your trying to get away from Battlefield or Call of Duty and try to find something different then this is your game.