SWAT 4

SWAT 4 for PC is another installment in a series of tactical action games depicting the work of SWAT. SWAT 4 was developed by Irrational Games, a studio popular for such acclaimed titles as System Shock 2, Tribes: Vengeance or Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich. The main mode included in SWAT 4, that is, the career, gives an opportunity to lead a team of police officers belonging to this elite unit. The game offers 16 dangerous missions and those require the player to rescue civilians that are held hostage by terrorists, or to apprehend an extremely dangerous criminal. The game doesn’t depict recruits becoming elite SWAT operatives over time; rather, it just confronts the player with subsequent missions, and the job is to complete them in the best possible way. During a pre-mission briefing, the player becomes acquainted with the details of the operation; afterwards, the player chooses the weaponry and equipment for their team – these are the last steps before the mission begins. Apart from the career mode, the game features the training mode, as well as two other variants, namely instant action and quick missions.

Mechanics

The creators of SWAT 4 pointed out that their game definitely belongs to the group of realistic simulations. The player will find here a wide variety of weapons that real SWAT teams actually have at their disposal (Colt M-4 rifle, Benelli M4 Super 90 shotgun, smoke grenades, gas grenades, etc.), as well as a large amount of equipment used by the terrorists (AK-47 rifle for example). The same applies to different kinds of additional equipment, such as bulletproof vests, explosives for opening doors, or special cameras, such as Opti-1. Before each mission, the players are totally free to chose their equipment. The devs from Irrational Games decided on Epic's Unreal Engine when creating SWAT 4 – the game utilizes the video effects provided by DirectX 9.0, as well as Pixel Shader 3.0, which was one of the latest technological advancements in video gaming at the time of the release. On the other hand, the acclaimed Havoc engine was used to represent the physics in the virtual world, including aspects such as bullets' flight trajectory. What is important however, the creators did not implement bullet rebound effects deliberately, because the presence of those could result in too much collateral damage (this applies especially to the game's multiplayer component).