A solid tactical shooter, with a unique police twist. It's not a perfect game, but it's a nice escape from Rainbow Six.
+Game-play+
The theme of this game is that of being a SWAT officer and at first glance, it looks like your usual tactical shooter fare. But there's twists. For one, you have to act like a real SWAT officer and you can't shoot anyone you see that has a gun. You have to warn them first, and if they still don't comply then you can use something non-lethal (like a flash bang) to calm them down and get them to comply and then if they STILL don't comply, you are allowed to use lethal force.
If you attack a suspect without warning them or before they start to fire, you are deducted points from your end-of-mission statistics report for "Unauthorized Lethal Force", among other things you can be deducted for.
You also have to follow procedure, for example you have to restrain everyone at the crime scene even if they haven't done anything. You also have to collect evidence, like the firearms the suspects drop.
The suspects aren't idiots either, the AI is pretty good. I've even seen some suspects come behind my team from a door and wipe out 2 of my guys. But the AI has it's flaws. I've seen some of my team members throw a flashbang at a wall when they were supposed to go for the door.
Before missions, there's a briefing (which is worth paying attention to) and maps and a load out screen. There's a wide selection of stuff to kill with, and they're all unlocked from the start. But you have to equip for the situation, for example it wouldn't be very smart to bring an M4A1 to deal with a minor situation at a Chinese restaurant.
There's also cool equipment, like the Optiwand which lets you see under doors and around corners (very similar to a snake cam) and the door wedge, which blocks doors from being opened (useful for preventing ambushes from suspects).
The game is very tense and exciting. Definitely keeps you on your toes throughout the missions. Very fun overall. I probably haven't covered all the game-play points yet, but this section has dragged on too long.
+Graphics and Audio+
The graphics are pretty nice. The lighting is very good. Models are fantastic except for the suspect and civilian models which are a little lacking. The first person weapon view-models were disappointing, with boring reload animations.
The levels are also very detailed, though they kind of have this "bland" feel that I can't describe. Not that the levels aren't diverse or colorful (they are varied and have appealing color schemes).
The audio was nice. Most of what you'll hear is yelling, from your team and the suspects. The weapon sounds are pretty satisfying. The music tracks also get you pumped up.
+Storyline+
From what I could tell, it revolves around your usual gang shootouts and regular stuff that SWAT go through. The story isn't really there, but this doesn't detract from the fun.
+Overall+
This review will probably get a lot of TL;DR's, but eh.
I was kind of switching back and fort from 8.5 and 9.0 because a 9.0 would imply that the game is near perfect and revolutionizes in some way. It's not perfect, and it doesn't exactly revolutionize because SWAT 3 kind of started before this.