An actually pretty realistic game, and a blast to play online.

User Rating: 9.5 | SWAT 4 PC
I was very impressed with SWAT 4. In the single player campaign, you play a SWAT team, and you can switch between members of a 4 man group. Or you can maintain your character and give commands, whatever floats your boat. The game starts off slow. The first mission, if I remember correctly, has your team busting into a house to catch a violent sex predator. He's often the only suspect in the house, although at times there's a 2nd (the game mixes bad guys up so there's some variety if you replay levels). There's also a bystander (granny) in the house who is non-compliant, and you have to taze or spray her before she'll allow you to cuff her. As you progress through the missions, they get incresingly hard, until your team is taking on heavily armed, body armer wearing militia types. Multi player options include cooperative play of the single player maps, team playing (SWAT guys vs. bad guys), and dignitary escorting, which is a somewhat unique experience in which one of the players controls a lightly armed civilian who the SWAT guys must help escape the scenario while the bad guys must kill you.

If you're looking for a "shooter" this is not for you. You can't just shoot anything that moves, unless you want a really bad score. And like real life, there are no health pickups. If you get hit by one fatal round, you're done. If you get hit in the leg, you'll limp & move a lot slower. If you're not wearing a mask and your partner deploys gas, you'll be blinded for a while. If a suspect is shooting at you, fire away. But if he drops his gun and you kill him, you're out points. A variety of weapons are available, including less lethal weapons that are a blast to use on suspects, and even victims and other police. The environments are excellent. Your team will go through and old run down house, a tenement building, a high rise, a huge bank, and other places, all of which look great, even today.

I only really have two complaints for this game. The first is repetition. There are only 10 or so maps in the game, so once you've been through them the first time they're not as suspenseful, although they're still fun to replay. The 2nd is the point system. The only way to score max points is to apprehend the criminals, not kill them. That's okay in most of the easier levels where the criminals aren't wearing masks and armor, and you can just spray/taze them and they're good to go. But in later levels, they're heavily armed, wearing masks, and wearing armor. Just like in real life, less lethal will do nothing but get you killed. It's virtually impossible to get through the level without killing some people, or at least wounding them. So the only way to get max points is to be completely suicidal. That takes away some of the realism that the game offers.

Overall though, this game is an absolute blast to play. And last time I checked, in mid 2007, there were still a pretty good number of people playing online.