When I was doing the F.E.A.R review, I automatically remembered another FPS that is also one of my favorites, it had been quite a few years since I last played it, so I downloaded it again and started remembering old techniques that I used to time to play, given that it is a tactical FPS and in many cases you must have patience before certain situations to be able to complete the objectives of each mission.
The game I'm talking about and the new retro review of today is about: SWAT 4
At the time of playing SWAT 4 we can see that it is an old game, if I remember correctly it is from 2005, and despite having more than 10 years, I have to admit that it does not look bad at all even buying them with current games, of course, There is a big difference between the graphics that the current games have with SWAT 4, but what I want to say, is that even today is a game that is graphically enjoyable. SWAT 4 was able to recreate excellently objects, scenarios, weapons and even people we can see in real life, with quite good models where we can see the great work at the time of development of this game, using a graphic engine that allowed to recreate effects , lights and movements in the characters, which make them look totally natural.
Each scenario where we have to go in each mission is full of details, even in a simple trash can you can see details, which in the year that I had the pleasure of playing SWAT 4 for the first time was something that impressed me, something as simple as that. The characters have a very good modeling design, in the game we can see a number of characters where each one has something to distinguish and for each mission that we play never repeats the modeling pattern of the characters. In the same way, the lighting that we can see in this game, as well as the shadows are very well elaborated. One of the first times I played SWAT 4, I did it with the graphics to the minimum and at that moment I could not fully appreciate the graphic capacity of this game, but then when I got a computer with better features and I was able to play SWAT 4 with its graphics to the fullest, I had a totally different game experience as far as visually is concerned. Even so, graphics do not determine the quality of a game, but its way of telling a story or in the case of SWAT 4, its strong point in its gameplay.
The sound in SWAT 4 plays a very important role, one of the first aspects of this game is that we have a lot of environmental sounds, as well as the typical sounds of shooting, explosions or even the sound of reloading a weapon, each of These effects are very well elaborated and closely resemble reality. Similarly, the voices of the characters is very helpful when playing, because in many cases as we have to save hostages, these will give us clues to the possible position in which our enemy is and in the same way our enemy's own voice will give us an idea of where he is, in such a way that we can attack or take the enemy by surprise and thus force a more easy surrender. Despite having a soundtrack, in many cases they go unnoticed due to the sound of the shots or explosions, but even so when there is a moment of pure action, if we pay attention we have the possibility of listening to it, they are soundtracks that complement the action that gives us this great game.
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The best of this game is its gameplay, it is a tactical FPS where we can control 5 characters in total, we are a SWAT group. The SWAT are an elite security team, they are responsible for the most difficult and high-risk missions, where in this type of missions there will usually be hostages that we must rescue, fight against people who are armed to the teeth and terrorists.
In SWAT 4 we are the leader of a unit of 5 agents (your included), the red team consists of two agents in the same way the blue team, before each mission we have the possibility to customize the weaponry and the objects of our agents and ourselves, in such a way that this will help us to neutralize certain enemies, in this aspect the game becomes more tactical, since depending on our team it will help us to neutralize the enemies in a better way, we can also order our team to perform certain actions such as: open a door and throw gas, this will help us that the enemy that is in a room because of the effect of gas can not attack us and so surrender more easily . But there are cases where the enemy may be wearing a gas mask, therefore we must use another type of strategy to take him by surprise and neutralize him.
In all the missions we always have the objective of rescuing hostages, therefore we must always go to each hostage that we meet and save it, but when one of them dies, our mission is over and we must start again, in some cases when the hostages refuse to cooperate we must use tactics that force the hostage to do so, using pepper spray or with a dart from an electric pistol we force the hostage to cooperate in order to handcuff him. In the case of enemies, many of them surrender to the command voice ("hands up") easily, but also many others flee or shoot us at the moment, when the enemy flees we should not shoot him because this will take away points and when the enemy surrenders we should not do it, we can only use lethal force against the enemy, when he is targeting a hostage or when he or they attack us.
Depending on the difficulty in which we choose to play, we have a certain amount of points to be able to complete the mission and whenever we have a fault they will subtract points from us. In addition to all the above, in SWAT 4 we have a large amount of weapons for our missions, where we have the possibility to choose various weapons depending on how we want to play, we have non-lethal weapons, as well as paintball guns or shotguns that fire bags of sand, all this to neutralize the enemy without applying lethal force, if we choose to play a more "pacific" juice mode we also have blinding grenades and tear gas bombs, in addition to pepper spray, which is quite effective.
Patience is also of great importance when playing, in many cases we must go little by little between each room, spying on each corner or watching under each door to see if an enemy is on the other side of the room, playing tactically is of great importance to meet each of the objectives of each mission of this game, we must also use correctly the actions of our team, because while we send the red team to clear a room the blue team can enter another room and throw a tear gas bomb, we must learn to use everything that this game offers us in the tactical aspect, so that in a certain sense you feel part of the mission.
SWAT 4 is an excellent shooting game and an excellent tactical game, where each mission we complete will help us improve to meet the objectives of the next, a game with very good graphics, even by current standards and a game that It will give us great hours of fun and action.
