SWAT: Urban Justice [PC]

Download and Buy SWAT 4 at Yahoo! Games on Demand.

Pop quiz, hotshot. You're playing a first-person shooter. You come to a door. What do you do? What do you do?

Okay, this isn't much of a quiz because the answer is almost always, "Walk through it and shoot everyone." But with SWAT 4, the answer isn't quite so simple. At a time when so many shooters seem to blend together, SWAT 4 has a lot to offer that you simply won't find anywhere else. From the sense of teamwork, to the interesting new weapon balance options, to the multiplayer modes, to the places you'll go, this is a game that stands on its own.

Among SWAT 4's "other answers" are: a) Go through and shoot everyone, trying not to hit hostages; b) Blow it open with a shotgun and try to arrest everyone; c) Send your team in ahead of you; d) Tell your team to toss a flashbang through and then storm the room; e) Look under the door with an optiwand, or f) Wedge the door shut for now and try to clear other areas first.

Any one of these answers, which are by no means your only options, is correct. What's more, since the game dynamically determines where the bad guys are and how they'll react, you can never be sure that going through the door will be anything like the last time.

The single-player game is a series of missions with a team of four AI-controlled officers under your command. You can easily issue orders by right-clicking to bring up a context sensitive menu. This lets you hang back and drive the game from the back seat. Alternatively, you can take point while your men cover you from behind. There are even options to split your team up and manage them through inset windows, but this takes a lot of multitasking.

The team AI is solid, although it can be hard to figure out how to get the drop on a suspect as opposed to getting dropped by one. Complicating matters is the fact that some suspects will open fire easily, whereas others are inclined to run away -- a lot of missions will end up with casualties. There are also times when your clump of shuffling, shouting officers look more like Keystone Kops than highly trained law enforcement officials.

But on the whole, the developers at Irrational Games have made a game that plays out as a collaborative experience rather than another exercise in lone wolf running and gunning. To be fair, they've also laid open the game as a sort of sandbox, which offers lone wolf running and gunning among its many options. You can make custom missions using any level and setting various parameters for how many enemies you'll face, how they'll react, and what your objectives are. This feature makes SWAT 4 the most replayable PC shooter this side of Unreal Tournament.

SWAT 4 also marks the welcome return of police tactics to first-person shooters. Ideally, you'll want to subdue suspects rather than just shoot them. At the harder difficulty levels, you won't be able to score high enough to pass a mission if you inflict too many casualties. To accomplish this, you get a "yell" button (great fun in multiplayer games) and an arsenal of non-lethal weapons that can be used to encourage a suspect to surrender (even greater fun in multiplayer games). It's far more satisfying to taser or mace an enemy than it is to shoot him; in an odd way, it's at once more sadistic and more humane.

The non-lethal weapons have different strengths and weaknesses. The pepper spray paintball gun is a rapid-fire weapon effective at long range, but it will replace your main weapon. The beanbag shotgun doesn't fire as quickly but hits harder. Tasers have long reload times and are only good at short range. Flashbangs and CS gas can be easily avoided by your target if you don't surprise him. Of course, you can always try to aim for the leg with a pistol. Unlike many other tactical shooters where your loadout is a matter of comparing minutiae like accuracy and damage ratings, choosing your equipment in SWAT 4 makes a big difference in how you play.

This comes into play just as much in multiplayer matches, where most of the game types are built around the difference between lethal and non-lethal weapons. In the basic deathmatch-style games, you get five points for capturing someone, but only one point for killing him. The VIP mode, in which you have to capture a particular member of the other team rather than kill him, does a great job of emphasizing what makes SWAT 4 different and, indeed, special. There's also a bomb defusing mode, which plays very similarly to Counter-Strike, since there's no reason to let guys on the other team live.

Unfortunately, the cooperative multiplayer game, in which you work with other players to make your way through a single-player level, feels half-baked next to the rest of the game. You can't bring along AI teammates, which you could do in the previous SWAT game. This sacrifices much of the appeal of playing cooperatively. Co-operative gameplay would have a lot more longevity if you could build your own missions. You can use the context sensitive menus to command your teammates, but there's no built-in mechanism for team roles.

The levels are crammed full of atmospheric detail (including some clever artwork for posters, signs, and ads), which lends the maps a lot of variety. From the construction around the tenements to the warm brick office building interior to the once-sterile but now bloodied hospital to the cluttered arcade game warehouse, the different locations have a distinct look and feel. The environments are only moderately interactive, with occasional bottles that can be knocked over or glass that can be shot out. Games like Max Payne are about shooting wildly, but something like SWAT is about slowly creeping around and taking careful stock of your surroundings; kudos to Irrational for making them so distinctive and detailed.

At a time when realistic shooters involve invoking a real war and turning it into a shooting gallery, Irrational Games deserves a lot of praise for making a shooter that's not just about shooting people. By building gameplay around non-lethal weapons, they've honored not only the police they're modeling, but the power of guns. Even if its just for scoring more points, any game that makes you weigh the consequences of firing a gun at your target as opposed to giving him the chance to surrender is a rare and wonderful thing. That it's also this well done is just gravy.