SWAT: Urban Justice [PC]

The World Cyber Games is an interesting experience for a bunch of different reasons. Aside from the amazing gamers showing off their uber-talents, some publishers and tech companies decide to show off some of their products so that these hardcore players can go back and tell there friends all about them. Vivendi was one of these publishers showing off a few titles and one of them, which I had a great time playing, was SWAT 4 in development at the Irrational Games Boston office. They're trying to make it as realistic as possible, getting back to the "sim" roots of the series while making the interface easier to use for the average gamer. From what I've played, they've done a great job of this, even managing to add more options for players while keeping the learning curve way down. Along with this, the game uses a version of the Unreal Technology in very good fashion, creating some full and believable environments in which to take down some baddies.

The franchise was in flux for a while. Quietly, Vivendi had handed the project off to Irrational telling them to scrap Urban Justice all together and start over. So they did and have been working on the game for a long time now. It shows. Next year, early most likely, we'll have another tactical shooter to make fans of realistic shooters happy and sappy.

While most of what we had the chance to play was multiplayer (which I'll happily dive into in a second), we also had the chance to to test out the new single player mode and the new interface for dealing with all of the commands. If you played SWAT 3, you'll remember the awkward keyboard shortcuts to getting your sqaud to do anything useful. Not so this time around, the interface is easy and allows a good number of complex clearing procedures to be handled quickly. If anyone has played Rainbow Six 3, they'll know the command dial system. SWAT 4's will work along the same principals, but with a few more options. Anywhere in a level and at any time, the player can right click to bring up a list of commands to give the squad (or squads should they be split into teams of two). The list will pop up with all of the commands available depending on where the player was pointing the reticule. So if a player points at the ground and right clicks, there will be a list full of movement types of commands while if a closed door is clicked on, there will be several more available including a new breach, sting, and clear command that utilizes the nasty little stinger grenade (which I will also get into in a second). Anything that you can do yourself, your teammates can also do including shackling, breaching, lockpicking... anything.

On top of the ease of this system, which I can tell you is really easy to use from my experience, players will be able to use their equipment easily in the right situations with a context sensitive reticule. For instance, if you come up to a closed door you can A) Open it with the use key; B) point the reticule at the lock which will bring up the option to breach with a charge or a shotgun; C) point at the handle and pick the lock should the door be locked; or D) point at the bottom of the door where a wedge can be placed to block the door or a camera can be slid under to see inside. That's really up to the you and how you like to go about things. Whenever the icon appears indicating that something can be done using a piece of equipment, all a player has to do is hit the fire button on the mouse and the action will be carried out without having to equip any tool first.

On top of that, you'll have unprecedented control over your team, even should they be split. While you can only take control of the team leader (meaning if you die, you're dead and don't take another team member's spot), you can access and look at the view through any team member's helmet at any time. This means if you've split the groups into two seperate entities, you can look into the remote team's helmet and see what they're seeing. You can even control the camera to look around and give orders using the same right click system you use in the regular view. Awesome, yeah?

One last surprise waiting for you on your team is the friendly sniper that will be sitting outside, surveying the building that you and your team have infiltrated. If the sniper spots any bad guys, he'll radio in quickly. At that point, you can switch to his helmet cam and take control of his aim. Move the little reticule around and take out any shady characters before they can escape or flank you.

All of the single player missions will be isolated. All that really means is that the missions won't relate to each other across any kind of cohesive story. Each of the missions will have replayability that we haven't seen in many tactical shooters like this. Every time you play through a mission, enemies will be spawned in different areas around the map keeping even old timey players on their toes. Even the designers say they don't know exatly what to expect from the enemy. No more level memorization to pass, only solid tactical decisions.