Unlike most first-person shooters, the object behind most of SWAT 4's missions isn't to shoot everyone in sight, but to bring order to tense situations and apprehend suspects with as little combat as possible. As the leader of a five-man squad, your SWAT team goes from room to room, relying on (of course) special weapons and tactics to neutralize threats, protect civilians and keep your team safe. Issuing commands to your team is as simple as right-clicking and choosing an option for a context-sensitive menu, which changes depending on where you aim the mouse: hover over a door and you'll get breach options; hover over a suspect and you might get options to restrain them or perhaps use pepper spray or taser them.
The mission we spent the most time on was one of the game's final, set in a house that played residence to a cult. Our job was to find one particular character in the house, occupied by several armed members. Like many of the later missions we've played, going from room to room was a tense affair, as enemies are less likely to give up without a fight the further you go in the game. Because enemies spawn in different locations every time you load, even the Vivendi reps on hand didn't know for sure what might be behind the next door, and we eventually failed the mission after running across a group of enemies bunched in a large area: some enemies will simply give up when you enter a room and yell for them to surrender, but things can quickly get chaotic when you encounter multiple hostiles in a single area. While the squad AI does a pretty good job on room entry, and you can often just issue orders and let your team do the work, we've found that the player usually needs to get in there when enemies refuse to surrender, as that often leads to wounded officers or dead hostages, which can bring a quick end to a mission.
Even when you mirror under doors, you can never be sure who's waiting on the other side.
As mentioned in our last preview, your squadmates generally work well together, although there are still occasions where they'll get in each other's way or you have to give the same order more than once. And, sadly, the game won't have support AI teammates in the co-op mode, so while you'll be able to play with one or two buddies, it'll be a lot harder than with a full squad. On the positive side, it seems there's already preliminary discussions about adding content post-launch, although it'll probably be some time before there's any official word on that front. For now, we're just looking forward to seeing the final game hit shelves around April 5th -- it doesn't necessarily boast the most cutting-edge graphics or even a full storyline, but we've found the core gameplay pretty satisfying so far, and we're betting SWAT fans will find the same when the game hits in just a few weeks.
