14 DAY TRIAL // Vivendi Universal Games announced the Gold version of SWAT 4, developed by Irrational Games; the announcement coincided with the web-site revival, www.swat4.com .
The game release will be on April 5, first in the USA and one week later worldwide.
Irrational Games, the company trusted with this project, had the difficult task of satisfying the fans, as well as bringing new gamers into the SWAT universe. This is why Irrational bet on higher realism, and even collaborated with a SWAT team.
The weapons and situations met when playing are as close to real as possible and the gamer playing the SWAT leader has to coordinate the actions of others; this feature is optional. Under no circumstances is civilian shooting permitted, not even by mistake; shooting civilians equals mission failure.
The SWAT mates can be divided into two teams, blues and reds, so that a certain mission objective may be attacked from two different directions, while the gamer views the real time situation thanks to the cameras worn by teammates.
The game is based on four different difficulty levels, each of them requiring different scores before proceeding with the next missions.
Perhaps some of the gamers will be dissatisfied by the lack of a narrative background; the game is a sum of missions with different objectives and locations. The missions may start with 911 calls; generally, the mission briefings are detailed enough for the player to design the optimal strategy, the scoring considers the tactics, too.
The success of the action / strategy mixture suggested by SWAT 4 remains to be seen after April 12.