A very nice expansion pack, minus the lack of missions.
The controls on SWAT 4 are somewhat simple, and at the same time, lacking. First off, the movement is very slow. If you're stuck out in a hallway and launch into a firefight and have to reload, you're not getting back through that doorway beside you. And, the more damage you take, the slower you move, making it absolutely painful on missions say where you have a bomb timer ticking down on you. The weapon changes are awfully slow, and selecting a weapon almost feels like punishment. Weapons are assigned to the number keys, although it doesn't tell you which backup items are on which keys, and there's no way to assign the weapon switch to the mouse scroll button or anything like that.
Aside from impressive graphics running at even medium res, the realism SWAT 4 brings to the table is refreshing. Sure, the movement is rediculously slow, but there are a lot more things about this game to make you really feel like a specially trained SWAT officer. First, when you start each mission, you'll get a briefing and can sometimes even hear the 911 call. Then, you'll be able to review the maps (some of which are drawn on napkins!) and choose your point of entry. Then, you'll select your entire equipment arsenal and that of your team. The equipment in SWAT 4 consists of quite a few different automatic rifles, a "less-than-lethal" shotgun, a semi-auto shotgun, a pump action shotgun, a paintball gun that shoots OC gas (yes, it's as cool as it sounds!), a taser, a couple pistols, the typical compliance grenades, an electronic mirror for doors and corners, a door stop, and a couple goodies for opening locks! The equipment that the Stetchkov Syndicate expansion adds is a very nice touch, which items from really powerful guns to an enhanced taser, night vision goggles, and more.
While in the game, you'll run across even more civilians than suspects, some of which will cower when you shout at them to get down, some will resist, in which case you can punch them, taser them, gas them, and much more to get them to comply! Aside from them, the suspects, most of which will shoot at you, might also get overwhelmed and give in and lie down, some will cower, then pull their gun back up, tricking you, and all kinds of other cool stuff that adds to the realism.
Controlling your team can be great, and garbage at the same time. You can issue commands to half or all of your team for going to certain places, breeching and clearing rooms, with or without grenades deploying, and just deploying grenades, tasering people, and tying people up. Unfortunately, often times they like to not stick with you very well. Many times the entire team will stay guns pointed at a harmless civilian who won't get down, while you're unknowingly moving ahead into an ambush, and they're not there to get your back. Also, the command system suffers from a lack of complexity. Say, for instance, one objective in every mission is tying everyone up. So, you might miss a couple people on your initial runthrough the area, you should be able to tell your team to search for unsecured civilians and suspects and restraing them. A big one is also when you have to disarm bombs, they should be able to do some roaming on their own to search for bombs, but they can't, due to lack of complexity in the system.
The music can get annoying at times. Sure, it gets you pumped up whenever a bullet gets fired or a grenade thrown or a suspect spotted, but two problems with that: 1, even when there's no danger, if you just fire a flashbang to get compliance from a beligerant civilian, you have to listen to this music for a minute, and 2, the music can make it really hard to hear what's going on in the firefight. I know I can turn it down, but that's such a hastle.
I haven't played the multiplayer, since I'm really not much of a multiplayer style gamer, I prefer to go it alone, but it looks pretty basic, and I don't think an ass load of people play on it, so it probably kinda sucks.
The life of this game, honestly, can well under a day. You must already have the full game of SWAT 4 to play this expansion, and the original 14 missions can be beaten in about 6 hours, and the paultry 7 missions added here for the same price as the full game will last you around 3 hours. The missions just don't take that long, there aren't enough of them, and it's not that much fun to play through them again. So, 21 missions, at about 25 minutes per mission on average, you'll probably get a life of about 9 hours out of SWAT 4 plus Stetchkov Syndicate expansion without multiplayer. This expansion is really only worth it if you get the Gold edition, which right now runs $30 and gets you SWAT 4 plus this expansion. Any more questions, feel free to message me.