SWAT 4: The Stetchkov Syndicate [PC]

Download and Buy SWAT 4: The Stetchkov Syndicate at Yahoo! Games on Demand.

A game like SWAT 4 is a no-brainer for an expansion pack. There were only a handful of maps, weapons, and gadgets in the original game, leaving plenty of room for a $20 add-on. So along comes Stetchkov Syndicate with a few more maps, weapons, and gadgets. These are welcome additions, but ultimately, this pack could have offered SWAT fans so much more.

The title of the expansion refers to a crime syndicate associated with the missions on each of the seven maps. The original game was a set of unrelated missions that nicely captured how a SWAT team might serve a dangerous warrant on Tuesday, rescue a bunch of hostages on Wednesday, and then maybe resolve a robbery gone bad on Thursday. But this time, the missions slowly congeal to lead you to an encounter with the Russian mob in a warehouse. Along the way, you'll rescue a rock band held hostage, storm a destroyed government building, break up a seedy basement drug lab, and come between battling gangs in a bloodied subway station.

These new maps are great. The government building has been gutted by a bomb, adding a ruined middle section where the third floor hallway can shoot down into the second story bathroom or the flooded parking garage in the basement. It's a very clever touch that provides SWAT with one of its most memorable maps, perhaps even upstaging the best of the maps from the original game. Many of the add-on's maps have this sort of multilayered gameplay, which is a welcome change from the boxy room-then-hallway feel.

The new guns and gadgets don't add much to the mix, partly because unlike the Rainbow Six series, SWAT keeps weapon stats under the hood. Is that new European submachine gun better than the old GB36 assault rifle? Who knows? You'll just have to try to find out. (The answer: no). The Colt Accurized Rifle, which is what they call the new sniper rifle, is only useful in a few rare situations and is more of a liability than an asset in single-player. In multiplayer, however, it makes it far too easy to shut down certain areas. The grenade launcher is a lot of fun, but it's too limited since you can only bring along a single type of ammo.

The weapons come into a play a bit more when you run multiplayer games that divide different weapons among officers and suspects. Suspects get a cool machine gun pistol and the officers get the fancy new Cobra stun gun that can fire twice before reloading. It can make a huge difference to run naked (i.e., taking advantage of the new "no armor" option) when you're trying to get somewhere quickly. But on the whole, none of the weapons feel new so much as variations on the original themes.