First-person shooters generally come in two flavors. The first is the straightforward, “shoot ’em all and let God sort’em out” kind of game that relies on nonstop action to entertain while the second is the slower-paced, tactical games that rely on careful planning or squad-based gameplay. SWAT: Global Strike Team falls somewhere in-between. While the game does incorporate some tactical elements, the solid and exciting shooting sequences are what make the game as much fun as it is.
SWAT takes place in the near future and puts you in control of a three-man squad of highly trained special agents that carry out secretive missions all over the world. These missions have multiple objectives that range from rescuing high-profile hostages to disarming bombs. Each member of your squad has special skills that will be essential to success. Kincaid is the team’s leader, who you’ll directly control most of the time. Jackson is the squad’s hacker and bomb specialist who is essential for opening computerized locks and disarming explosives. The team’s sharpshooter, Lee, is a valuable asset thanks to her lock-picking ability and skill with a sniper rifle. Each mission begins with a briefing followed by the weapons select screen. SWAT’s selection of weaponry is relatively small and consists of only three primary weapons, one non-lethal weapon, and a few different types of grenades. The upside is that the primary weapons can be upgraded with larger magazine clips, recoil dampeners, and other modifications to increase their effectiveness.
When each mission begins, your team is placed down near your objective and you take over. Your entire squad won’t be included in every mission. Sometimes you’ll only be accompanied by Lee or Jackson and, on rare occasions, Kincaid will go solo. Assigning orders to your squad is done with the directional pad. If both of your teammates are with you, the first press specifies to whom the order is given and the second selects the command itself. The available commands change depending on the situation. In most cases, you can tell one or both of your comrades to either secure an area, proceed ahead, or follow you. If there is a door in front of your squad, you may be given the option to blow up the door, kick it in, or open it normally. You can’t do anything very complex, like having the members of your squad approach a room from different directions, but they follow the available commands pretty well.
Combat in SWAT is a little different from what you’re probably used to; because your team is basically law enforcement, certain guidelines must be abided by. For instance, you aren’t allowed to shoot an enemy that hasn’t threatened you without warning. Doing so too many times during any mission will result in failure. However, you can yell at enemies to drop their weapons and if they fail to do so, using force is acceptable. It is also necessary to restrain any enemies that survive or surrender so that they don’t get back up and shoot you when your back is turned. Aside from these differences, SWAT plays much like other first-person shooters. One aspect of the game that stands out is how authentic the weapons feel. Most current games do a pretty decent job of replicating weapons realistically, but SWAT goes above and beyond. When firing the assault rifle, for example, holding down the trigger will not only make the gun difficult to aim onscreen, but also cause the controller to vibrate. Holding it down for more than a second or two causes such violent vibrations that it actually becomes difficult to keep a tight grip. Combined with the realistic muzzle flash and excellent sound effects, it comes about as close to firing a real assault rifle as most of us will ever experience.
For a multi-console game, SWAT looks pretty good. The game’s environments are pretty stagnant for the most part and don’t include much in the way of interaction, but they look authentic nevertheless. Similarly, the character models don’t feature an enormous amount of detail, but the animation is well done. The game also has some great lighting features and reflective surfaces, all while keeping a constant, silky smooth framerate. The only real problem is the rather long loading time between missions. It sometimes takes a full minute to load a given mission. Mercifully, once the level is loaded, loading times are nearly non-existent, even in the event of having to restart the mission. SWAT’s background music is fairly passive, but suits the game well. The real highlight is the sound effects. The roar of machinegun fire is deafeningly accurate and nearly drowns out all other sound. Being too close to an exploding grenade causes temporary hearing impairment and a slight ringing in the ears for a few seconds. Gunfire realistically echoes through larger rooms and warehouses. The effort spent on such details is uncommon and adds immensely to the experience.
SWAT isn’t a perfect game, obviously. One problem is the game’s difficulty, or lack thereof. Anyone who is at all familiar with first-person shooters shouldn’t even consider playing the game on the easiest of the three settings. Even the default difficulty is a pushover for most of the game, only offering any kind of challenge about halfway through. Therefore, most players will find the hardest difficulty the most appropriate, which leads us to our second problem. The AI of your computer-controlled partners isn’t very impressive. They follow directions to a “T” and are pretty accurate with their weapons, but they make no attempt whatsoever to use cover of any kind. If your team is ambushed, for instance, your squad will stand right out in the open and exchange fire with the enemy, while the enemy will duck behind crates and around corners. Jackson is even less intelligent and will attempt to take out enemies that are well out of range of his shotgun. Obviously, this leads to both of them getting chewed up very quickly and if either one of them dies, the mission fails. On easier settings, this is usually nothing more than an annoyance as your enemies’ accuracy and reaction time is rather low. But on the “hard” setting, they will take out your team very quickly. Having to restart missions due to the sketchy AI of your comrades gets old fast. My other complaint is really more of a design choice than a problem. In an attempt to make SWAT as accessible as possible, many of the features one would expect from a squad-based tactical shooter are absent or stripped down. The most prevalent example of this is the lack of control you have over your squad. Aside from utilizing their special skills to bypass locked doors and disarm explosives, you computer-controlled companions don’t really serve as anything but extra guns. The ability to give more specific and complex orders would have made the learning curve a bit steeper, but it also would have given the game a lot more depth.
SWAT’s story mode has over twenty missions, but none of them are very long and the game can easily be completed in less than ten hours. Missions can be replayed in an attempt to earn medals for feats such as not using any continues and taking every enemy alive, but the various medals don’t seem to unlock any new features or levels. For a more arcade-like experience you can play through Time Attack mode. This mode gives the player a very tight time limit to complete each mission and extra time is awarded for each enemy that is killed or captured. It’s an interesting distraction, but most players aren’t likely to find it entertaining enough to justify playing through the entire game a second time. The lack of Xbox Live! support is disappointing as SWAT could potentially be a lot of fun with other players. The game does feature a number of offline multiplayer modes for up to four people, but in this age of online gaming, crowding around one television and splitting the screen with three other players doesn’t quite have the appeal it used to. The cooperative mode, however, doesn’t disappoint. Working through the game with another person is a nice change of pace after dealing with the sketchy AI in the single-player game. Surprisingly, though each mission in this mode resembles the original missions, they have all been retooled and optimized for two players. Cooperative mode is extremely rewarding and is arguably SWAT’s best feature.
SWAT: Global Strike Force will probably disappoint those of you looking for the next Rainbow Six, but it’s a solid and entertaining game in its own right. The relatively short single-player game and lack of Xbox Live! support, however, make it hard to recommend the game as anything more than an extended rental. Still, if you’re looking for something a little different, SWAT might be right up your alley. As they say, “You’re either SWAT, or you’re not.”
