The third mission in SWAT 4: The Stetchkov Syndicate is a perfectly clear example what the game is all about: decision making under pressure. The mission puts you in charge of defusing a hostage situation involving a group of armed maniacs that stormed an auditorium intent on ridding the world of devil-worshipping rock stars. I had approached the stage from the rear with Blue Team backing me up, only to see that one of the perpetrators had taken a band member by gunpoint. I had Red Team come through another entrance to gas the backstage area, but this had no effect. On a catwalk above the stage, another gunman who spotted the standoff opened fire on me and my team. Blue Team returned the fire, killing him – this startled the man with the hostage. My team and I urged the man to surrender. Clearly aggravated, he turned to what he felt was his only option: he shot his hostage and ran offstage. An innocent dies, and a mission fails. SWAT 4 puts a lot of power in your hands as the player. The control of two fire teams to assist in neutralizing hostiles and the arsenal of high-powered automatic weapons to do it with; the ability to preserve life and the power to take it.

Immediately noticeable in The Stetchkov Syndicate is the more aggressive, and at times unpredictable, AI. Suspects will no longer stay on their knees once they’ve submitted to a flashbang or gas grenade. They will occasionally pick up their weapons and run away, or worse – open fire in room full of hostages you’re trying to protect. This adds a significant amount of weight to the decisions made under fire. Is a suspect apprehended immediately, or do you secure the entire room, running the risk of them escaping only to ambush you and your team later? The behaviour of enemy AI is not random – it is irrational. It makes every mission both challenging and entertaining.

The Stetchkov Syndicate includes a story interspersed in its meager seven additional missions, in an attempt to create some kind of higher purpose to the game. The story is very dilute – the missions are only loosely strung together by the Stetchkov Syndicate, a group that is putting guns in the hands of the small time crooks you’ll be facing in the first few missions of the game. Even though the story provides an ultimate goal – putting an end to the gun dealers by sacking their warehouse in the final mission – in the end it didn’t matter, because the improvements in gameplay grossly outweigh any slight players may have felt in the first game’s seemingly random encounters.

In keeping with the theme of decision making under pressure, the fourth mission drops you and your team into the partially demolished offices of the Department of Agriculture after a group of heavily armed farmers accidentally detonated one of the bombs they were holding the building hostage with. After you’ve found one of the remaining bombs, a timer begins. You have fifteen minutes to find the rest of the bombs and defuse them, while neutralizing any hostiles and securing innocents along the way. There’s no time for the systematic approaches that may have been successful on the preceding levels. This mission was about prioritizing. As the clock unsympathetically expired, I was forced to burst into rooms throwing gas grenades ahead of me, hoping that it might catch any armed suspects off guard. I used a pepper ball gun instead of a lethal weapon to make sure I didn’t accidentally kill someone during this hasty room clearing. I felt helpless the first few attempts of the mission, but not to the point of frustration resulting from arbitrarily assigned time limits. There was a singular purpose to this mission, and along with its many distractions provided a genuine test of skill.

The Stetchkov Syndicate also has a series of unlockable equipment that is available after the successful completion of each mission. A new taser is available from the beginning, but you can expect to find a grenade launcher and night vision goggles available by the end of the campaign. Night vision goggles are more of a convenience thing, as flashlights can be used by default – you just run the risk of alerting adversaries to your presence. As devastating as the grenade launcher sounds, it’s quite effective at stunning all of the occupants of an enclosed room using a Stinger grenade (an explosive that fragments into a cluster of nonlethal rubber balls). These new additions become invaluable against the game’s challenging AI.

Though by far the best addition to the game is the “Hold Command” feature, which is something that makes planning assaults a lot easier than trying to coordinate through each fireteam’s viewfinder. Part of Rainbow Six’s appeal for me was the ability to plan out an entire mission on a map before execution, and create a series of “go” commands so each fireteam waits before executing key maneuvers. When done right, holding commands in SWAT 4 can lead to impressive looking room-by-room takedowns that look like they were culled from police training videos. And when they result in the live apprehension of suspects and the safety of hostages, there’s something strangely satisfying about the whole thing.

After getting used to using the Hold feature in my routine, I noticed a shortcoming about remote command issuing via each fireteam’s viewfinder. If you issue a command through the viewfinder (for example, mirroring under a door), you never hear the results unless you are physically standing near the team performing the action. In the face of the game’s reverence for realism, having to accept that my fire teams cannot communicate to each other through their radios is absolutely ridiculous.

But what of Massive Incorporated’s streaming ads? It’s something I completely ignored in my review, but it seems to be the reason SWAT 4 is getting any attention at all, after Sierra’s dubious partnership with the company put actual ads into the game world with the version 1.1 patch last summer. Unfortunately, installing the expansion automatically updates the game with this patch, so there’s no real way around it. Massive assures gamers that no player-specific information is collected, but I have my doubts about any piece of software that passively contacts a remote server with encrypted data. While Massive’s methods are a bit suspect, and Sierra has essentially taken advantage of the players that are supporting this game, I can’t say they had an adverse effect on the gameplay itself. The ads make sense in the game environments (they showed up as movie posters, mostly) and they were easily ignored in favour of the immediate tasks at hand. Similar to how banner ads on websites have become commonplace, I’m not sure that this approach will yield the kind of results advertisers are expecting.

For players of the original SWAT 4, this expansion doesn’t need a recommendation. The recently released Gold Edition would be an ideal way for those that missed out the first time around to get acquainted with one of the best games released last year. The Stetchkov Syndicate effectively confirms SWAT 4′s status as the model upon which tactical shooters should be based. While SWAT 4 may be a policing simulator first and foremost, that shouldn’t mean that military tactical shooters can’t adopt the same AI behavioral models for both adversarial and team NPCs. Let the tactical shooter return to its implications of logical decision making under fire instead of sophomoric gunplay. Because the power of carrying a gun should also include the responsibility of knowing when to use it.

SWAT 4 is a masterpiece of the tactical first-person shooter genre. It is also the best game that was released in 2005.

This game needed to be made. The genre is being diluted with action-heavy clones that are less about what was started with Rainbow Six, and instead focus on using heavy-handed assault tactics while in control of multiple characters. Games like SOCOM, Ghost Recon and even Rainbow Six in its current incarnation are guilty of taking the attractive elements of the genre (playing pretend in the military, the guns, the “kick some ass” mentality) and doing away with silly things like “strategy” and “actually reflecting real-life tactical operations”. It’s difficult to pinpoint how this came about, because as realism has less of a bearing on these games it becomes less tactical and more shooter. Bringing things right back where they started: the first person shooter. It would be monumentally disappointing to lose a genre before it had a chance to fully develop.

While SWAT 4 is by no means a military game, its implementation of teamwork and tactics is as finely tuned as its streamlined command interface. You’re put in charge of a five man squad, with you as the leader. The remaining four members make up the Blue and Red fire teams, which are available to command as you see fit. Use a mirror to check underneath a door, breach it with C4, storm a room with CS gas grenades or flashbangs – there are options for every possible situation. Unlike Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon, you’re only in control of the squad leader – you can’t control individual members of your fire teams. As in SWAT 3 you get a sniper team in missions that involve multi-storey buildings with visible windows. Within the mission you are able to control the sniper through a viewfinder to neutralize a target. It seems pretty abstract at first, but when you consider that sniper teams are mostly sitting around waiting for a clear shot in these types of conflicts it’s completely reasonable.

The first few missions of SWAT 4 are training wheels that assist in familiarlizing you with the basic controls and typical situations you’ll be put in. You can easily beat these early missions with a score of 70% or higher, because the gun toting suspects aren’t that aggressive. It gets you comfortable with the notion of yelling at a suspect to capitulate instead of nailing him between the eyes. In fact, it gets you into the habit of giving commands to the two fire teams and hardly ever shooting a gun yourself. It makes you feel like there are multiple solutions to every single encounter.

Therein lies the game’s greatest asset: creating multiple, viable options for the player to execute. It isn’t enough that you’re given the basic premise for every conflict through the briefing and a small set of key objectives to complete. The game allows you to achieve these objectives in any order, which will often be as they arise. For example, the prime suspect or required hostage could be anywhere within a level – it’s up to you to seek them out or deal with the often immediate need of neutralizing all hostiles first.

As in its predecessor, SWAT 4 gives players the ability to ask for compliance from the game’s many NPCs – hostile or not. In this manner, the game offers a non-violent solution to every encounter. Whether the player chooses to go this route is entirely their decision, though it has some bearing on the mission’s final score. In this regard, the harder difficulty levels require absolutely no casualties for a perfect score.

Allowing a peaceful resolution of conflict introduces an entirely new approach to combat: giving hostiles the benefit of the doubt. I could shout “hands in the air” or “get down” repeatedly, only to have my target open fire on me and my squad. This was demoralizing at first, but that is the point where alternate methods can be used for submission. CS Gas grenades, flashbangs, and pepper spray all come in handy when trying to subdue both hostiles and civilians. Though this all depends on their context of usage – throwing a gas grenade in front of a hostile may only cause him to run away, but coordinating an assault on a room by both fire teams can be as shocking as the gas itself. You can also attempt to shoot the gun out of their hands, or shoot at their legs if they’re trying to run away – this will be enough to get them to see they have no recourse in the situation. I used this as a last resort; shooting a hostile is always risky when trying to subdue them, because this would result in a point penalty for using excessive force (assuming they would have eventually surrendered by my efforts). Through this system of apprehension I was able to see the mutliple layers of strategy, and how truly rewarding the gameplay can be if the many avenues of suppresion are willing to be explored.

In the case of civilians, restraining them can be a challenge even if it’s for their own good. Allowing them to run around when startled is distracting, and any hostiles in the area are not concerned about putting a few bullets in them to get to you and your team. Though I did find some slightly odd behavior: even when there are 3 heavily armed SWAT officers staring down a civilian, it would sometimes take a CS gas grenade or a can of pepper spray to get them to comply.

Once hostiles and civilians have been subdued, they must be secured with the standard plastic zipcuffs, and their status (whether alive or dead) must be reported back to the command center outside of the mission area. All weapons that are dropped by hostiles must also be collected as evidence. Any officers that are incapacitated must be reported. Every one of these items contributes to a mission’s final score, encouraging a kind of meticulousness completely in-line with the rest of the game.

In general SWAT 4′s AI behaves satisfactorily. The fire teams will do exactly what they’re told – exactly – which would lead to unfortunate instances where my entire squad was eliminated after moving into a room that wasn’t checked first. There were some occasions where hostiles would simply charge down hallways only to be shot, but for the most part they run to different parts of the buildings and hole up waiting to ambush you. In the missions with large buildings the door wedge becomes absolutely indispensible: by wedging closed doors as your teams pass through you can effectively corral all hostiles into a contained area and deal with them in a controlled and predictable fashion.

The real testament to the game’s longevity is the way it randomizes everything on the maps. Specifically, all hostiles, civilians, prime suspects or individuals to be secured are in a different place every time you play the mission. As the maps become more difficult, you will find yourself retrying them multiple times. Though they will still manage to feel distinct. Sure, there were dark corners and certain locations that proved to be popular among the ambushers/hostage takers, but the mission unfolded (or collapsed, depending on how I was doing) in a different way every single time. I wasn’t bored. I wasn’t frustrated. This was police work; a training program. In Rainbow Six you could just memorize the terrorist’s locations, knowing exactly what corners to peek around and the hallways to run full speed through. SWAT 4′s missions are meant to encourage finesse, skill, and cool-headedness. Furthermore, custom single player missions can be set up adjusting different variables such as the number of hostiles, civilians, and apprehension ratio – this feature alone makes the available internet play almost irrelevant.

Given the nature of the game itself, having a series of thirteen missions sharing no common thread except you and your team isn’t detrimental to SWAT 4. It’s a simulation, and the mission maps are simply vessels for exploring the game’s interpretation of urban close-quarters combat. The upcoming expansion hopes to address this perceived shortfall with a new series of story-based missions. I’ll be playing this expansion regardless of whether I feel this new approach is necessary.

In SWAT 4, Irrational has created a simulation with the utmost respect for how high-risk policework is truly done: defuse armed-hostile situations while protecting human life wherever possible. You may find yourself strategizing more by taking a back seat to the action and giving field commands, despite your ability to take a hands on approach. The worst thing SWAT 4 does is make you second guess yourself, which usually costs the life of a team member, or worse – your own. But for an unparalleled experience of the tension of close quarters combat, I consider this an acceptable risk.

SWAT 4 successfully integrates a fluid interface, real time tactics and a completely believable simulation. And like its predecessor, it’s a welcome change from the tactical shooters that typically let you shoot first and ask questions later.

The SWAT series has changed form three times since its first release as Daryl F. Gates Police Quest: SWAT, a spin-off of Sierra’s recognized adventure brand. Tacking on Gates’ name to the title would add credibility, as the former Los Angeles police chief basically invented the whole SWAT (special weapons and tactics) concept and had a hand in the game’s design – though it ended up as some kind of one-man FMV adventure. SWAT 2 would take an isometric real-time strategy approach, introducing more of an action element to the game but also allowing you to control an entire squad. Finally, SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle would arrive after Rainbow Six established a new genre: the tactical first person shooter. Sharing similar design elements, SWAT 3 would still hold its own as a fairly realistic interpretation of these elite police units.

I played SWAT 3 shortly after I completed Eagle Watch, the first expansion for Rainbow Six. The inability to completely plan a mission beforehand made me extra cautious in my approach to the gameplay, because in SWAT you were dropped into a mission and had to deal with tactical situations as they happened – you were never informed of how many adversaries you were facing or their last known locations. The situations were often chaotic, and the civilians weren’t always being held at gunpoint – they would sometimes be running around just trying to get to safety, creating a highly distracting battlefield.

I liked that you were able communicate directly with the aggressors: yelling such things as “drop your weapon!”, “Stay down!” or “hands in the air”, sometimes causing them to open fire. Though they would occasionally comply, allowing you or one of your squad mates to approach and restrain them. It was an obvious movie-like interpretation of this kind of police work, but it allowed every mission to unfold in a believable manner, where not every guy with a gun in his hand was necessarily a threatening target.

Along with a new engine adapted from Irrational’s Tribes Vengeance, all of these elements are back in SWAT 4. Though where the game really impresses me is the interface. It fosters a completely seamless experience where the novice can issue “default” commands as the situation applies, or the experienced can delve deeper into the on-screen context sensitive drop down menu and issue a particular command to be executed. Moreover, the interface seems to be designed to let you sit back and let your team do all the work, allowing the player to effectively become the leader. The team AI is very adept in this regard – the only time a team member was incapacitated was because of my carelessness, after I asked them to run into a room without using proper breach and clear tactics. The enemy AI is also unpredictable – rarely will they immediately open fire, and this causes you to approach each possible hostile with caution instead of running nonchalantly through the mission, finger poised on the “Fire” button.

Though this is all seen through the eyes of a fan of SWAT 3; I would hardly call the mission selected for the demo exciting. This may be detrimental for prospective newcomers, and that’s a damn shame. In SWAT 3 and the first two Rainbow Six games, reconaissance and non-deadly force missions were always part of the package, conveying the message that to “win” doesn’t mean putting a bullet in the enemy. Though sound in their presentation of tactics, games like Full Spectrum Warrior and Close Combat: First to Fight are putting less of an emphasis on enemy apprehension or de-armament and instead opt for simple neutralization – adapting the aforementioned mentality of shooting first and asking questions later. It’s nice to know SWAT 4 is taking a more civilized approach, even though the game essentially revolves around the same “player versus the bad guy” model. I’m fully aware of what’s happening to the Rainbow Six series, so I’m glad that Irrational has taken care in trying to reproduce what made SWAT 3 so enjoyable. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the full version this April.

Browsing through some of the material confirms my belief that this will be another ultra-realistic war shooter, and like Full Spectrum Warrior has taken great pains to recreate the experiences of modern warfare. But instead of Pandemic’s military advisors, developers Destineer have supposedly involved more than 40 active-duty Marines who only a short time before were dodging bullets in Iraq. In fact, your team in the game will be made up of real-life soldiers, the bios of whom are listed on the official site. The boundaries of reality are blurred accordingly.

What I found even more interesting was in the “Making it Real” section of the site. There’s an innocent link to the “About the Marines” page, where an additional link to the U.S. Marines official site lies after the brief description, available “for additional information”. Conversely, there is a disclaimer on Full Spectrum Warrior official site that reads: “The Full Spectrum Warrior game is not sponsored or endorsed by the United States Army.” Clearly the distinction was made on the latter, but the former does nothing less than insinuate that the game is some kind of recruitment tool.

The average FPS gamer may think they know how to fire a gun, but as an article in December’s issue of Computer Games notes, I hardly think they have any idea what it’s like to be in 40 pounds of equipment in stifling desert heat, or how to correct their aim for recoil on an actual weapon. It’s still just fantasy to them, and these aggressive tactics by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps just further reinforce some comments made on my review of Full Spectrum Warrior. These games may be just the push they need to investigate the armed forces in earnest, and perhaps enlist. It may very well end up to be the most effective form of advertising we’ve seen to date.

Describing the success of the U.S. Army’s pet project America’s Army, an article in the Globe and Mail compares it against Canada’s own policy for drumming up interest in the younger population to join the Canadian Forces. Major Ken Orr, Sr. Staff Officer at the Canadian Forces Recruiting Group Headquarters says that there are CD-ROMs available that provide virtual tours and information about each branch of the military, but nothing as interactive as a game. This perfectly echoes Canada’s stance on the military.

Before I firmly plant myself aboard a soapbox, I should divulge that I recently finished reading J.L. Granatstein’s Who Killed Canada’s Military?, which puts together a compelling argument about Canada’s military capabilities, and essentially established the following windy tirade. The number of enlisted soliders currently serving in the Canadian Forces is at an embarassing low: 60,000 soldiers in all ranks, for a population of 32 million. Defense spending is equally low, with most of our purchases being decommissioned or unwanted equipment from our allies. Given the recent accidents that have befallen our military, it’s clear we are in no shape to participate in warfare in the 21st century. Granted, we are world renowned for our peacekeeping efforts, but what most people don’t realize is that peacekeeping in today’s political climate is more like peace enforcement, and without the proper training, equipment and personnel to carry out these activities we aren’t much help to the United Nations. Most importantly though, we are in no way fit to defend ourselves from attack, instead always relying on our gung-ho neighbours to the south. I find it ironic that anti-Americanism is so rampant in Canada right now, given that they are technically our last line of defence (and before you start proclaiming the love other countries have for us, note that the Atlantic is pretty fucking wide). I also find it a bit naive of Canada to continue to assume that no one will ever attack or invade us. Call this media influenced alarmist thinking, but I find it sad that the best Canada will be able to do in a time of crisis is call Washington for help. I agree no blood should be shed for oil, but I think we’re collectively missing the point: as a country we should be ready and able to stand up and protect our own interests, first and foremost.

all we want from you are the kicks you’ve given us

Or so the trailer would have you believe. I really have a hard time accepting this latest attempt by UbiSoft to make their critically acclaimed series more accessible. Maybe it’s the lack of helmets, and the soldiers sporting non-standard haircuts and different uniforms. Or perhaps it’s the selection of America’s latest hot-bed of activity, the Middle East, as the setting for the game.

The screens released a couple of months ago showing off the game’s new “goggle interface” that “fully immerse[s] you in the game experience” almost had me in conniptions. Fans had a hard enough time with Raven Shield, which for the first time in the series’ history actually made the weapon viewable in first-person mode. It was removable in the options, of course, but the reaction is what’s important. The graphics are less than inspiring as well, obviously a result of Lockdown being a multi-platform release. And everything about the gameplay preview points to this being a standard first person shooter, removing everything that made its predecessors unique or interesting to play.

I also love how the game features list rag doll physics as if it means something. Ever since Unreal Tournament 2003 started using havok (and in case UbiSoft’s PR department has forgotten already, Raven Shield used the new Unreal/havok engines as well) it’s been pretty much standard in every FPS on the PC. Then again, this title clearly isn’t aimed at fans of the original – it’s aimed at gamers who want to kill terrorists and wouldn’t know a squad tactical shooter if it kicked them in the balls. This would also explain Lockdown’s “unprecedented multiplayer”. What, like totally different than the multiplayer that was available from Rainbow Six in 1998?

What seems to be the spiritual successor to Rainbow Six is Close Combat: First to Fight, a training simulator developed by the U.S. Marine Corps. I saw some of the gameplay demos a few weeks ago, and I am absolutely impressed. Following in the footsteps of Full Spectrum Warrior, the tactics of fire and suppress are used again, but with an entirely new approach to interacting with the environment. Vehicles can be used, and you can actually go inside buildings, where room takedowns are similar to those in Rainbow Six. Morale is apparently used as well, making poor or just plain bad orders have an effect on your squad; though this also applies to an overwhelmed enemy that may just retreat after seeing their comrades cut down around them. I’m a little uneasy about the setting, and the graphics aren’t exactly top-notch either, which surprises me considering the game is only being developed for the XBox and PC. Military shooters such as these are becoming a double-edged sword. If you want realism, you have to swallow the propaganda; otherwise you succumb to the curse of accessibility, making the game more of an arcade shooter than something actually worth playing.

bottle up and explode