I
can vividly remember the nights I spent glued to the old boob tube
watching my favorite police shows: Baretta, Starsky & Hutch and
most notably SWAT. Remember the pulsing red line that went with the
intro music as the SWAT team jumped into action? Remember the sniper
twisting his cap around backwards so the bill wouldn’t interfere with
his sighting on his scope? Remember the rapelling down the side of the
building?
If you’re like me your first taste of SWAT was in those police shows.
In 1996 Sierra released another in their ongoing Police Quest series
entitled SWAT. Along with many others, I enjoyed the game for what it
gave us: a chance to actually be right down in the trenches with a SWAT
team.
As
fun as the game was at the beginning, the fun ended when we
realized it was a rigidly controlled game and there was no room for any
freelance tactics. Still, the game did well and gamers wanted more.
Sierra listened and decided on a RTS version for the follow on SWAT 2.
Boasting extensive real world research through the help of former LAPD
Chief Daryl F. Gates and current SWAT team members this game is a great
realistic tactical sim with a twist. Not only can you play out a campaign
as SWAT, but also as terrorists!
Being
one of the many fans of the Police Quest series I couldn’t wait to get
my hands on this one, I was treated to a nice demo E3 and that whetted my appetite for the final. Once the game was safely
and securely in my hands I popped it in and fired it right up.
Browsing
through the nicely designed manual as the install process ran I noticed
something unique about it. There are actually “spoilers” in the manual!
That’s not something you find in every game manual and I thought that
was a good and bad thing. Good because it can help you in a tight spot
and bad because it’s human nature to be curious and just say “hey, just
for THIS mission I’ll peek at what I should do”. It is in no way a
strat guide, but it does help direct you in some ways as to how you
could accomplish
the mission objectives.
You
can choose up to 5 man elements from a pool of officers, both male and
female. Each officer comes with his own unique strengths which you can
further build on through training. Once you send an officer through
training they will be unavailable for the upcoming mission, so keep
that in mind when looking to build the skill set you need. You can also
pick 2 man sniper teams, but you only really need one sniper to have a
sniper team. I personally use a two man team and have one sniper in
position while the other corrals hostages.
All the modern SWAT equipment is available to you, from pistols, sub machine-guns,
mirrors, entry explosives to ballistic shields, tear gas and gas masks
etc. Depending on the environment you’ll be operating in you will want
to outfit your officers accordingly. You don’t want to go wasting money
buying tear gas launchers and masks in an outdoor environment for example.
Outfitting is as simple as selecting the officer and clicking on the equipment
you wish to use, each piece has its own price value which is deducted from
your operating budget.
Be
aware of your budget and try to keep within it at all times, always
thinking
missions ahead instead of just the single mission you are now facing.
The
budget is something that can dwindle quickly if you use things like
helicopters
and armored tanks in each mission as they cost the city money to use.
On
the other hand when you play the terrorist side you’ll want to steal
everything you can, because you can keep weapons you recover during
your missions. This is the way terrorists operate, begging, borrowing
and stealing anything not nailed down.
Once
you’ve selected and outfitted all of your elements it’s time to select
each one you wish to bring on the mission. With that done you head into
the mission and start at the assembly area where your SWAT van is located.
From here PO Alvarez who is the CNT, your chief negotiator, will usually
call you and give you a quick sitrep on the situation and ask your permission
to start negotiations.
Being
an officer of the law you will of course grant
the chance to do so and will hear him calling out to the suspects to
surrender. He may also give you a throw phone for you to drop where a
suspect can
get to it. Using this the CNT can continue negotiations while you set
up
your team. Negotiations usually break down and it’ll be up to
you to move, so it’s best to use the time he’s speaking to move your
elements into position.
Your
snipers serve as not only a way to “reach out and touch someone” but will
call out possible suspects and hostage locations as well as their disposition.
At the bottom of the mission screen you will have a smaller scale map of
the operating area you’re in with markers where your teams locations are
as well as the locations of suspects, hostages and wounded individuals.
Each are color coded to denote the disposition of the person: blue are
your forces, yellow are hostages, green are suspects and red are wounded
personnel.
The
first thing that needs mentioning is the small size of your officers
in the gameplay screen. While this isn’t a game killer, it can be a bother
to try to pick and move different officers without the hotkeys. It can be very tricky to control individual officers and also
find them within structures you will be operating in.
One thing that would
have really helped here would have been a rotating map screen where you
could see the rooms you are in from any angle. It would also help when
rescuing hostages as they sometimes like to hide behind walls and can be
downright hard to see, let alone get a grip on.
Besides
the small view I like the looks of the mission screen you play in. The
terrain is nicely done with painted lines in parking lots, even including
graffiti on building walls. While I’ve never seen the streets of LA look
so clean, the graphics are quite nice. The only thing missing is the ever
present smog. :) It must be that LA from TV we all know and love that the
Sierra artists were trying to capture.
One
of the best aspects of this sim is Sierras excellent usage of a true “fog
of war”. If your officers turn away from a suspect or hostage they only
see a ghostly outline of the last place the person was seen. This adds
a nice dimension to the game as you truly do have to pay attention to unit
facing. This increases the realism factor quite a bit and is done with
an outstanding touch. You also cannot see into structures until you have
entered them, then the ceiling disappears offering you a standard inside
isometric view of the map screen.
Orders
are issued in the standard RTS way of clicking on a unit (or using a hotkey)
and clicking on the area of the map you wish them to go to. You also use
your mouse pointer to use a weapon or other device such as the hooligan
tool. By simply hitting the space bar you can quickly switch between movement
and a firing sight or to the tool you need to use. This is a quick &
simple way of giving you the flexibility you would have in a real world
situation on the ground.
You can also use a “lock” to lock or unlock your
orders, which means you can either have your orders carried out the moment
you give them or you can stack them and have them carried out when you
issue an initiate order. This in and of itself raises this game above a
regular RTS game as most of them turn into crazy click fests. But the RTS
games are getting better and are realizing that in a real world situation
you would give several steps to be carried out before sending your men
into harms way.
Once
given a movement order your elements move in standard SWAT fashion with
weapons in low ready, although the graphic shows what looks to be pistol
in high ready. I believe this was done in a compromise for the smaller
graphic size. You can have them move quickly or slowly, and they can kneel
behind cars and other objects for cover.
Once
intent on taking the place down you have the option of different types
of entry, either dynamic or stealth. A stealth entry is by using the hooligan
tool and jimmying the door open before entry. It would also be smart to
remember to ALWAYS mirror your corners with your hand mirror to see what
could be waiting for you around the bend. Or you can do the old fashioned
hollywood method of using the battering ram to knock the door in and take
the place down less quietly. The choice is yours based on the current situation.
Another
nice addition to this game is the continual coaching by Daryl Gates himself. He’ll give you pointers as you move through different aspects of your mission.
These really prove useful the first few times through in helping you with
the learning curve but can become tiresome rather quickly after that. Luckily the only way to get these pointers
is to click on a button in the interface that will start the audio coaching,
so it’s not force fed to you every time.
You’ll
not always need to fight your way through these missions as the object
of the police force is life preservation and not life taking. Sierra has
gone to great lengths to make sure the missions don’t get reduced to a
major slugfest and will take much more in the way of brains than brawn.
I think the AI is some of the best I have seen in a game yet, but there
are some rather annoying tendencies as well that get under my skin.
While
it may be true that hostages may run away or fight an officer who is trying
to rescue them, it can get very annoying when you spend a minute chasing
the hostage all over the screen. It can also become downright frustrating
when that hostage is determined to hide by a near wall, in essence becoming
invisible to the sight of the gamer (another example of where a rotating
map screen would be useful.) The only way to get your hands on a getaway hostage is to waste precious seconds or even minutes attempting to get the hand icon (for rescuing) over the hostage and having your officers respond.
Another
example of the AI being a bit flaky at times is the way a suspect can literally
run past your officers without them doing anything. Making a beeline for
the exit and running out in the street, which in turn could lead to their
use of an escape car. But instead the suspect seems to dawdle around and
sit there just waiting for you to come arrest him or her, sometimes they
may draw a weapon but usually not.
This is where I lose a bit of that adrenaline
rush of “doing the job” in the game, where it becomes more a chore to run
after and track these guys down. If a suspect is going to evade to that length, then they should have made him smart enough to evade all the way and get into a car and leave. I've even seen situations where a suspect will open fire on your officers and they continue to attempt to disarm and arrest the suspect. In this situation you take unneeded casualties and they should be returning fire rather than being peaceble about it.
These are my biggest beefs with the AI in this game. The problems are not major ones, but they need to be fixed in a patch if possible. Other than that the AI lives up to its billing as each time I’ve played different scenarios I noticed a different action and reaction from the hostages and terrorists. Very nicely done, Sierra! Add to all this a map editor that is excellent as well as the ability to wreak havoc as terrorists and there is a nice, complete package here that will strongly appeal to any law enforcement fans out there. (As well as those of us who just watch COPS on Saturday night as our outlet).
The terrorist side of things runs differently but uses the same interface so it’s not a problem learning the game mechanics for the “other side”. The major difference here is you are not hampered by the same laws and rules that effect the SWAT team as your only rule is to win at all costs. You can wreak as much havoc and mayhem as possible, feel free to kill anyone you wish or to demand anything you want.
You’ll always want to try to get any weapons you can, since terrorists don't enjoy the same comfy budget that SWAT enjoys. The terrorists break down into their own 3 person “cells” similar to the SWAT elements but without the benefits of the extensive training the SWAT personnel get. Nonetheless you can still do quite a bit of damage with what appears to be some overzealous characters for the terrorist side. In contrast to the SWAT officers the terrorists seem like an unassuming and comical array bunch, probably intentionally modeled by Sierra so as to not glorify the idea of terrorism.
Another of the downsides of SWAT2 is the slowness with which the screen scrolls at times, and even how your teams react. I found this on several different machines all the way up to a PII 300, which I find quite alarming. I think this can be attributed to Sierra making this a “windowed” game and not running solely on its own. I hope this too can be fixed in a patch as this can be quite annoying during gameplay.
Multiplayer is a mixed bag, with success at times and others not at all connecting through the WON.NET network. When it works it works quite well, but quite like Mplayer (which lately has descended to the point of almost being unplayable on for some people) it has its faults and can be frustrating to start a game.
For example while I sit here writing this article I have SWAT 2 open in another window awaiting my connection to a server through WON, and it’s been almost 10 minutes to no avail. It can get annoying and it’s another thing that needs to be addressed.
Overall, even with its faults, I found SWAT 2 to be a very refreshing game. I’ve always loved the idea of being a law enforcement officer and being able to play out the elite of police units on my PC is just great. One of the factors I enjoy the most is that you don’t have to kill everything that walks; your job is a peaceful resolution to the problem, not to ignite it to an even higher level of violence. It gives you a greater appreciation of what the men and women in law enforcement go through every day in service to the public.
That is also where I think SWAT 2 will have some problems with some players. In a day when a game isn’t really a game unless you are fighting the alien masses and saving the galaxy, trying to solve a problem with no shots fired will not have the greatest appeal to all. If you want action and carnage, this is not the one for you. If you want action and a good tactical thinking game, this is one you should take a look at. Although there are the flaws in the game its solid over all. A patch from Sierra could truly make this one a winner, let’s hope they get it out soon.
COMBATSIM.COM RATING : 83
Core Rating : 75
Gameplay : 75
Graphics : 85
Sound : 80
Intelligence/AI : 95
User Interface/Mission Planner : 95
Fun Factor : 80 (with a patch this could increase)
