After years of starting new campaigns and never finishing them, I finally saw the credits roll on SWAT 4!

And it kicked total ass, I'm not going to pretend this is a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination but by god if it isn't one of the most intense, consistently gratifying shooters I've ever played. The SEF mod also vastly improved my experience, and while I wish it didn't move the original mission structure around, the progression of the missions still felt like a satisfying climb in terms of mission difficulty.

The environment, sound design, and high stakes make this one of the most memorable shooters you'll ever play. Every corner holds danger, the darkness that permeates through the levels is constantly grabbing at you, and there's plenty of times where I nearly jumped out of my seat.

I do really wish the gun play and weapon animations were more on par for 2005, and my Squad would occasionally die in hilariously stupid ways, but otherwise SWAT 4 kicks total ass. The gaming industry lost something truly special once Irrational closed their doors. Please give SWAT 4 a chance if you've ever had any love for Rainbow 6 or any other tactical shooter.

É um pouco estranho resumir SWAT 4 como um jogo frustrante e divertido, mas não existe outra combinação possível, o nível tático presente no jogo deixa qualquer um nas nuvens, porém o sistema de pontuação e os próprios bugs gerados por ele acabam destruindo a grandiosidade e frustram aqueles que só querem algo do gênero.

Mesmo sendo um jogo desenvolvido no início da década de 2000, SWAT 4 possui um charme único e que por algum motivo acabou não criando raízes fortes o suficiente para estabelecer um novo nível no gênero de jogos táticos, essa é uma situação triste se analisarmos que com a tecnologia de hoje, as possibilidades de um jogo desse nível seriam assustadoras (e perfeitas para quem gosta daquele realismo).

Por isso, se você curte passar 1 hora em um único mapa só para perder graças ao último inimigo que se escondeu em uma porta, esse é praticamente um jogo obrigatório e o fato de não existir muitos outros só impulsiona a recomendação.

Apesar de ser de 2005, o jogo continua muito bom. Logo no tutorial já fica claro que ele foi feito com amor pelos desenvolvedores, algo que não acontece com tanta frequência nos dias de hoje. Ele é um jogo divertido, difícil e que exige que você seja bem tático. Pra vocês terem uma ideia, os espelhos realmente funcionam direito e você consegue usá-los para ver ao redor de paredes. Nem Cyberpunk conseguiu fazer isso direito.

O game não é vendido na steam, mas vale a pena dar uma olhada numa gameplay no Youtube e, se gostar, ver de comprar ele na GOG quando estiver em promoção por uns R$8 reais.

SWAT 4 might be the most famous tactical shooter around, and it can be still enjoyed even today! However, the unmodded experience shows it's age a little bit too much. Let me explain.

SWAT 4 is a squad based tactical FPS where you lead your team of four into highly dangerous environments, which usually consist of 2 floors, sometimes with multiple (2) entry points.

The objectives are mostly to take out the bad guys and save everyone. Later, there are more tricky ones but those are just slight annoyances.

What makes this game really frustrating is the AI, which is either super smart or dumb as hell (this usually effects your team, not the enemy). The different thugs, gangsters, robbers have inhuman reflexes sometimes and pinpoint accuracy, taking you out with one shot, which restarts the mission.

What I did not like even more however is the fact that no matter how tactical you are, sometimes you or one of your teammates just.. die. Flashed a room before going in? The AI does not care, they just oneshot everyone down.

Different enemy types aside (some wear masks, some wear body armor), these happened with every type of bad guy, so it is mostly just the AI being.. well, bad.

AI aside, the level variety and the actual layout of the levels are really good and creative, but the level order is a bit wrong. The Old Granite Hotel should be the last level of the game (the vanilla game's campaign) in my opinion, because it is by far the most challenging mission in the game.

Despite everything I just said, I had a great time with SWAT 4, but my score went down by half a star because of the frustrating nature of the AI.

I will review the expension pack separetly, I just wanted to log the Gold edition because I have that.

Acquire this game, put it on the highest difficulty, and play the first level. It's that good. Despite the dubious idea of a police FPS, this game portrays the far more paranoid and anxious side of CQC than any other shooter released. Not to demean other shooters as being juvenile or unrealistic, as SWAT is far from a realistic game itself, but what it is, and what makes it unique, is that it's a focus on the psychological aspects of a first-person shooter without overt narratization or storytelling. Put less pretentiously, it's like watching incredibly loud and extremely tense SWAT arrest videos on youtube over and over again, but (ostensibly) divorced from America's gross socio-political context and the dubious idea of a "non-violent" police force. It's exhilarating.

After seeing the launch of Ready or Not I felt like playing SWAT 4: Gold Edition.

It's a 2005 game and in the mechanics it shows, no aiming from the crosshairs and no way to eliminate mouse acceleration.

Fortunately there are mods on Moddb that modernize the game: Elite Forces, Elite Forces First Responders; Back To Los Angeles (you only need to install one of the three).

I am playing Elite Forces First Responders, which I recommend.

But the thing I wanted to talk about is the unsurpassed ability to convey the authenticity of the game setting through the use of spectacular level design.

Tactical FPS, lead a five man SWAT team into some more realistic scenarios and some ridiculous ones. You end up going against cultist, a Christian anti rock group, white supremacist, and militant farmers along with some more generic robberies gone wrong or a failed assassination attempt.

Lethal and nonlethal weapons and gear can be equipped to each character. You can order both teams of two separately or together and can see through a camera in your hud to see what they to a sniper team sees. Tense gameplay, though some odd decisions when it comes to needing to handcuff civilians who often don't want to surrender (I guess because they don't give you enough people to get them out of the building) requiring you to have a taser or pepper spray to make them surrender. Same odd moments when enemies refuse to drop their weapon when they are blinded or hit by gas and surrounded by your team.

A lot of detail spent on each mission when it comes to the locations, briefing, environment design, and creating areas that work well with the mechanics that have changes from difficulty and randomization. Very good to very questionable AI. Expansion makes improvements when it comes to order, equipment, and an added melee button that is used more to stop the odd never surrendering situations.

Anything above the easy difficulty requires you to finish a set mission with a certain score with points earned for completing it, not being wounded, not losing each member of your team, picking up all evidence and guns, reporting everything, capturing or wounding instead of killing anyone. With points lost if you injure one of the other SWAT members or injure or kill any armed suspects that aren't threatening you (or in most cases that are clearly threatening you and might have just killed multiple people, clearly not an accurate police representation.

Player made mods can combine the main and expansion campaigns (allowing you to use the new options and equipment in the old levels), add widescreen and 1080, add in cut content like traps, and there are player made map packs.

Becomes much easier when you realize the power of the paintball gun.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1378360357060706305