SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle für Windows

I'm not sure about you, but I hated the other SWAT games because they were too slow and too reliant on proper procedures to play, all you did was watch your little men run around asking people politly to put their weapons down. This isn't the case as much with SWAT 3.

SWAT 3 sees you as the leader of a SWAT team in first person shooter view (like Half Life or Doom) at the time of a major International Conference. The game starts with a guy telling you how terroists are going to want to bomb things and kidnap people more, and that you should remember that you kinda have to stop them. The reason I bought this game was the fact I wanted to re-enact the movies where you could blow the door open to someones house, chuck in a gas bomb or two, and run in telling everyone to 'Drop your guns, do it, do it now!' and watch them tremble as 3 other men in big black body armor pointing big guns at them run in screaming the same. I wasn't dissapointed because that's the aim of the game.

The realism is actually quite accurate with terroists acting very intelligently, running away if their are more of you than him, or if you have a bigger gun, or if your not hurt and bleeding all over the carpet like he is (they leave trails of blood if you shoot them and they run away). Your adventures take you to very obscure places that are well designed, like randomly raiding a night club to capture some guns, and storming a church.

At the beginning of each mission you get to read over intelligence including floor plans, victim and terroist photos and details and a record of incidences as they've so far occured. You also get to choose your insertion point and what equipment you use (like your gun, and how many grenades or gas canisters you take with you). A down point is that you can't choose your side-arm and body armor level or color. You choose your squad at the beginning, and how old you are has a direct effect on how many medals and respect you start off with (because the older you are the longer you've been in SWAT).

The main point of the game that seperates it from Rainbow Six is the ballistics. Your guns can fire through walls depending on which bullets you use and which gun. You can also fire through multiple opponents. However you have to shout and warn them to put their guns down before you fire, otherwise your team will loose respect for you and not follow your orders as much (I did this, and at one point told one of my men to stay where he was, he didn't and died!?) Anyway, there is a small selection of guns, an MP5, an MP5 silenced, another machine gun thats less powerful, and a shotgun - no knifes. You also have to cuff people and tell you mates outside over the radio sysem to get them out of the area (they just vanish after a while so you can't shoot the guys that come into get the terroist). Another feat of intelligence is that if you don't handcuff your prisoner, he'll run off the second you turn your back and try and get a gun...

Overall a good game, I hear that there are a lot of mods out for it, including more accurate - and gory - gun shot models and new guns... those are the only ones I've downloaded, you can also get new gun sounds (why I'm not entirly sure) so you can be sure that the playability will last a long time (also the terroists are randomly placed, meaning no maps really the same. The terroists also hide in cupboards or under beds if you scare them enough) The graphics are excellent and the sound is equally as good - may slow down on lower spec computers though