IGN: SWAT 4 hands-onTweetNews ID: 345 Date: 2004-10-07 Source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2004/10/08/swat-4-hands-on?page=2 The grand tactical series is back on the PC and this time in the hands of trusty Irrational Games. BY DAN ADAMS 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. Before each mission starts, players will have the chance to listen to a briefing, check out maps, load out the team, and listen to a 911 call should there be one. Mission types include hostage rescues, arrest warrants and so on. Missions we had the time to check out included arms dealings and illegal bookeepers and gambling along with undercover cops that had lost contact and needed to be found. But according to Irrational, you can also expect to run into problems during the course of a mission that weren't necessarily planned for, throwing all of your hard work into the trash. What's more, all of the suspects around the house will have morale ratings that will govern their behavior when confronted with a group of heavily armed and organized police officers. Some will give up immediately while others will argue for a while and need a tazering, while others still will tell you to F off in no uncertain terms and proceed to fire bullets at you. Morale is effected by several things. Pepper spray, for instance, has the added effect of draining a suspect's will to fight. But shooting a cop, well that's likely to encourage him and maybe even his friends. As you would expect by now, all of the single player missions will be available for co-op play with up to four players. On top of that, each of the missions can be tailored with different enemies, numbers of enemies, weapons they use, and beginning morale. So you could potentially fill an entire house with fanatically driven homeless guys carrying AK47s. Throughout all of the missions, both single and multiplayer, levels were packed with things. Lots of things. No more empty warehouses with a couple of odd crates to hide behind, but interesting things that make sense. Bottles, trash, boxes, food, tables, paper, meat, forklifts, clothes, merchandise, arcade machines, counters, kegs... you name it and they probably modeled and included it. All of this stuff comes together to form realistic looking environments. And on top of that, it all looks really good.  Textures are wonderful and detailed, from the molding on the ceiling, to the ceramic tile covered floors. When you add the proper lighting models to all of the areas, they suddenly become quite beautiful. Characters are also very well modeled, detailed, and animated. Hell, everything you see in this game was given serious attention by the art team. As you would expect, SWAT 4 comes with all of the bells and whistles like normal mapping and the like. At first glance it's almost surprising that this the Unreal Tech considering the heavy detail. It seems like most other Unreal games we've seen have had a slightly cartoony look to them. Because the game looks so good, even in multiplayer, you might expect it to run with some hiccups, but the whole experience today was smooth as pie. The only twinges were when the host of the LAN game was tweaking game rules on the fly. Multiplayer was certainly a popular draw in the tent today as players hooked up in teams to fight it out over two different multiplayer modes. There will be three in total, including the missing VIP mode where criminals will have to protect a VIP from capture. Once the SWAT team manages to capture the VIP, the tide will turn as the suspects will suddenly have to whack their one time friend (now a liability) before two minutes expires. The modes we saw today consisted of team deathmatch and the more popular mode where four or five bombs spawned at different locations around the map and the SWAT team had to find and diffuse them all. When either the good or the bad guys were near a bomb, a beeping noise could be heard to zero in on the target. This is a necessary thing as the bombs move locations every game. Unlike the similar game type in Counter-Strike, SWAT 4 is a slower paced and deliberate game. Run speed is noticeably slower, especially when wearing heavy armor, and will get hampered once the locational damage kicks in. Every shot you make that hits will be counted in a certiain part of the body. Hits to the legs will slow a man down (and cause a limping animation) while hits to the arms will cause the reticule to be spread farther, making it harder to aim. Of course, the best, and most potentially embarassing part of the whole equation is the non-lethal takedown. Depending on the weapons chosen, several methods of taking down opponents without killing them will be possible. Beanbag shotguns will stun a man as will, not surprisingly, a stun gun, which is surprisngly fun to use, and a CS gas ball gun (basically a high powered paintball gun with balls filled with pepper spray). There's also the non projectile weapons such as gas, flashbang, and the nifty stinger grenades that are filled with a bunch of balls that hit a guy and cause some serious disorientation. All of the effects of disorientation are quite... well, disorienting. And during that time, players won't be able to use any weapons, leaving themselves vulnerable to humiliation by handcuffing. Handcuffing a guy basically has the same effect as killing him, but man... it doesn't feel as good as going down in a hail of bullets. SWAT 4 looks good. It was a lot of fun getting the chance to play both parts of the game and we certainly hope to get our hands on it again soon for some multiplayer matches larger than two on two (the game supports 16 players total). Alas the game won't be released until early next year... but at least it looks like it'll be worth the wait.
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