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Introduction: Welcome to my LP series in which my guest LPer DJB and I will be taking a look back at Police Simulator SWAT 4, which sadly is a breed of game that doesn’t exist anymore thanks to streamlined cover based shooting (Rainbow 6 reference). This LP will cover the campaign mode of SWAT 4 and the expansion pack Stetchkov Syndicate, and will cover the may mechanics involved within the game. History: The Swat series itself is actually based off of Sierra’s adventure games known as Police Quest. (If you struggle to know what that’s like imagine monkey island only less pirate, Guybrush is no longer a 4th wall breaking comedian and he has joined the LAPD.) However the gameplay drastically changed into a 3D tactical shooter when the series designer Jim Walls left and was replaced by the creator of the real life SWAT unit, Daryl F. Gates. The series continued with SWAT 3: Close quarters (1999, Windows), SWAT: Global Strike Team (2003, PlayStation 2) and finally SWAT 4 and its expansion pack Stetchkov Syndicate (2005-2006, Windows and Mac OS). It is unclear what exactly happened to the SWAT franchise after this game, because SWAT 4 was one of the last releases in this franchise aside from two mobile phone games and one Play Station Portable game. So far there are no plans on developing another SWAT game. SWAT: Special Weapons and Tactics 4: SWAT 4 is a first person shooter that focuses on the strict procedures of a Police SWAT unit, allowing a tense and methodical game for the player. Released in 2005 and developed by Irrational Games, the game itself is set in the crime ridden dystopian future of the year 2009 and follows the adventures of a five-man unit known as “Element”, in which you are their leader. The campaign lacks a story or strict narrative and really focuses on a variety missions over the United States, all based off of true events. Because of this lack of focus, the game plays less like a Rainbow Six tactical shooter and more like a simulator, with a heavy focus on the tactics and procedures used by real SWAT units. This means that instead of going in guns blazing, you tend to scout out rooms by looking under doors with fibre-wires, aiming snipers through windows and splitting up your squad to apprehend perpetrators as safely as possible. Murder is a last resort for this SWAT unit, so before each mission you have a wide range of weapons and equipment to choose from. Such items include door wedges, breaching charges, paintball guns and bean bag rifles used to take out criminals without riddling their bodies full of lead. Non-lethal takedowns will grant you more points at the end of the mission, which is important because the game uses a point system to determine whether you’ve performed we’ll enough to progress. The scores are out of 100 for each mission, and depending on the difficulty, require a certain level of performance to grant you progression. Factors that affect the scores include time, weapons secured, arrests made and whether or not you get any teammates killed. The game also features a multiplayer option that featured co-op campaign, a mission-maker, and a range of full multiplayer missions such as VIP escort. However in 2012 the online servers for SWAT 4 were shut down, closing off the multiplayer option to anyone who doesn’t know how to make their own server. Despite this, the “Gold Edition” (which includes SWAT 4 and it’s expansion pack) comes with a full 21 missions. And with AI that randomises behaviour and location every time you play, every level has infinite replay value. I like it. It's pretty great. Let's begin. Videos: Mission 1: Tasers Blazing Mission 2: Mac 10 With a Side of Duck Mission 3: “I Think Something Happened Somewhere” Mission 4: A West Side Shoot Out Mission 5: Redneck Roading Mission 6: Teenage Squad Mission 7: You can do it if you... paint Mission 8: Diamonds are for murder Mission 9: The cult of Tom Cruise Mission 10: No Mercy... for Crime Mission 11: Warehouse Woes Mission 12: Gammy Hotel Mission 13: (Enter pun about PETA and animal gene testing labs) The Stetchkov Syndicate: A year after the release of SWAT 4, the expansion pack titled "The Stetchkov Syndicate" was released. This managed to do what many modern expansion packs fail to do and actually completely changed how you will play the campaign and possibly the multiplayer. The pack itself added seven new single player mission each fully developed and well designed much like those in the original release and new weapons and tools had been added allowing you to perform much more effectively and to change the way in how you could take down criminals and command your squad. Along with this two new multiplayer modes were added including the ability to have two teams of five facing off against each other. However this expansion pack didn't just add a load of bells and whistles along with a couple of new maps to play with. Along with a patch to the original game that fixed most of the bugs for your original disk, it also massively improved the collective AI within the game. With extra time and feedback for the development team to work with, whilst using the same assets for the original game, the squads AI could be improved to show more initiative and the enemy AI would now act more deceptively. Now if you left suspects on their knees without attending to them, they might just get up behind you and run off, ready to shoot at you again. Also added; was the ability to hold commands for your team allowing you to spend more time evaluating a situation and also to synchronise a room breach with a full tactical advantage. You can now also use a punch function in order to apprehend criminals running into you or civilians that just won't comply. This changes the way you play the game making the player more active in situations instead of just holding back waiting a few seconds to pepper spray someone who was running towards you, pistol drawn. Also added was a verity of new equipment to help you take down criminals and to evaluate situations in different ways. The single player side of the expansion pack, had a slight narrative to it. It follows the growing influence of a crime syndicate known as the Stetchkov family and how they've been growing by dealing in arms distribution to smaller criminal organisations. Of course the narrative is not completely strict and follows the same structure as the original SWAT 4 game but the influences of the syndicate becomes more and more noticeable as you play through the missions in the order that you unlock them. A narrative structure is also formed in similar ways to an RPG in the way that as you progress you unlock new equipment to use. Videos: Mission 14: Fun House (of Pain) Mission 15: Let's go to the old folks home Mission 16: Christians Against Music Mission 17: Who are the real vegetables here? Mission 18: The breaking bad of SWAT 4 Mission 19: The Subway Kerfuffle RealTimski fucked around with this message at May 18, 2013 around 17:29 |
| # ? Mar 2, 2013 18:21 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 14:04 |
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So is this a Youtube dump, or... Serious advice: Try taking this to the Sandcastle.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 18:24 |
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Nope. This first appeared in my bootleg thread, and Tim didn't have the money at the time to actually get an SA account (so I kept sneakily linking to it there). There's already been good feedback for this LP in these forums though. That said, more feedback for our next videos would be appreciated.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 18:32 |
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Gotcha! Didn't know about that other stuff. I watched it and it seemed alright, so I was confused as to why it'd be a Youtube dump.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 18:34 |
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That first episode. With the mannequins and the fake head on the workbench and the lady tied up on the mattress with half her face bandaged. What the gently caress did we walk in on there?  No, seriously, do we ever get any resolution as to what the hell was going on there? Like in the debriefing or something. Holy poo poo. Edit: In all seriousness poo poo like that is why I never followed my dad into law enforcement. I have no idea what the hell was going down there, but I've got the feeling that if I was playing that level, and I'd already arrested the suspects, upon coming across that I'd probably go back and put a bullet in the back of their heads. RickVoid fucked around with this message at Mar 2, 2013 around 19:10 |
| # ? Mar 2, 2013 19:07 |
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Oh geez I loved the ever living poo poo out of this game when it came out. It was so much fun with a full team of other people, especially at LAN parties. I wish I had finished it. I'll be following this.
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 19:28 |
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This is probably my favorite FPS. This and SWAT 3. Good job so far, but you should be using more grenades, they are sort of essential, IMHO.RickVoid posted:That first episode. With the mannequins and the fake head on the workbench and the lady tied up on the mattress with half her face bandaged. You are going to like some of the later missions. 
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| # ? Mar 2, 2013 23:30 |
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SWAT 4 is one of my favorite games, it can still be played in multiplayer with an direct IP connection and it's extremely fun.
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| # ? Mar 3, 2013 00:44 |
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Fredrik1 posted:SWAT 4 is one of my favorite games, it can still be played in multiplayer with an direct IP connection and it's extremely fun. I'll try and figure out the logistics of that or even if someone could for me, then I'd like to do a video on the multiplayer with anyone else who wants to get involved.
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| # ? Mar 3, 2013 01:48 |
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It's great to see this LP make it to forums. This game is really more like a SWAT simulator then any other kind of "SWAT" game and it is also one of the most difficult and frustrating games on the later levels I have ever played.
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| # ? Mar 3, 2013 03:27 |
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I've gotten 100 points on every mission so far using just the Pepperball Gun and the Tazer.  Seriously, though, that combo is just stupid powerful. I've got a question: does changing the difficulty change AI behavior at all? Or does it just change the number of points you need?
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| # ? Mar 3, 2013 04:50 |
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It should be noted that the SWAT games have sorta kinda changed formats with each iteration. Three and four are the same, but the original is interactive FMV's basically. SWAT 2 was more like a Tycoon game, except with shooting people as the "rides".
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| # ? Mar 3, 2013 05:28 |
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RickVoid posted:That first episode. With the mannequins and the fake head on the workbench and the lady tied up on the mattress with half her face bandaged. I don't think that was a bandage on her face. I think it was half of a mask. The room was filled with them. That still doesn't really explain what the hell was going on though.
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| # ? Mar 3, 2013 06:53 |
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I still think SWAT4 was the best in the series. We had great fun multiplayer (although theres always that guy who shoots everyone in the legs at the start). I'm pretty sure its possible to go non-lethal (in multiplayer) and actually get quite far, even past these missions, without killing anyone with judicious use of gas and taser and pepperspray. Problem is, if you're playing solo, the bots are great but aren't smart enough to take that on. The NPCs wander around, change their routes, open doors, circle around behind you if you don't leave people covering your back, etc. There's stuff that happens that's rare in games even 10 years later.
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| # ? Mar 3, 2013 17:53 |
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New Episode. Mission 6: Teenage Squad A bank robbery turned messy leading to a group of criminals to hold themselves up within a software library, taking multiple hostages. SWAT are called in to rescue the civilians and take out the bank robbers. A stand off with police had granted a few of the robbers demands to become equipped with a few gas masks and armoured vests in exchange for a handful of civilians. Demands have now gotten too high and communications have broken down so there's only one way to solve this. A team of angry SWAT a thirst for bullying criminals.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 12:46 |
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What engine does this use? It's looking pretty snappy for its time with fancy lighting and poo poo. I wanna say it's something boring like a modified Quake 3 engine but I'm hoping it's some sort of awesome propriety engine. edit: Yes a modified doom 2 engine. Dumb typo. LordPants fucked around with this message at Mar 4, 2013 around 13:44 |
| # ? Mar 4, 2013 13:38 |
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This game has a lot of people who want to suicide by cop doesn't it? I liked the guy who just sorta fell over as he turned the corner, presumably by heart attack of seeing 5 swat dudes in his face. Also nice to see reflections paying off.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 15:32 |
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LordPants posted:What engine does this use? It's looking pretty snappy for its time with fancy lighting and poo poo. I wanna say it's something boring like a modified Quake 3 engine but I'm hoping it's some sort of awesome propriety engine. It is kind of proprietary. It was made for Tribes: Vengeance.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 15:52 |
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The multiplayer of this game is just the best thing ever. Especially VIP game mode.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 15:54 |
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Interesting, the taser should have worked on the first try. It's supposed to be a guaranteed disarm against any enemy in the game. I think they didn't give up either because you didn't yell at them, or because you were hiding behind the corner.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 16:01 |
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LordPants posted:What engine does this use? It's looking pretty snappy for its time with fancy lighting and poo poo. I wanna say it's something boring like a modified Quake 3 engine but I'm hoping it's some sort of awesome propriety engine. It is a modified Unreal 2 engine that was made for Tribes Vengeance, hence its name: the Vengeance Engine.
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| # ? Mar 4, 2013 19:37 |
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I've watched a few more videos and I got some comments. You're are using way fewer grenades than I would. Also the SWAT team is completely immune to gas unlike flashbangs and stingers so you can use them for going through every door until enemies with gas masks show up. The gas also go around corners and affect enemies that would be shielded from stingers or flashbangs. Also the beanbags and the other non-lethal options are useful in the way that you can use them without yelling and giving the enemies a "fair" chance to give up. As your teammates don't get penalized for killing people you can just keep them busy with beanbags until your squad feels it's OK to shoot them. edit fun fact: In the coding the weapon stats for the UMP had a typo in it misplacing a period making the bullet size/weapon damage/whatever 10 times larger than it should have been. That is why you can shoot people anywhere, in the foot or arm, and they collapse instantly dead. In multiplayer is makes the weapon a cheap choice and in singleplayer it removes your option of wounding enemies to incapacitate them or to make them surrender. I believe this was patched out of the game at some point. Wooper fucked around with this message at Mar 4, 2013 around 20:05 |
| # ? Mar 4, 2013 19:49 |
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Wooper posted:Also the beanbags and the other non-lethal options are useful in the way that you can use them without yelling and giving the enemies a "fair" chance to give up. As your teammates don't get penalized for killing people you can just keep them busy with beanbags until your squad feels it's OK to shoot them. Indeed, it's arguable that non-lethal weapons actually make the game easier, and are the only way to get through it on the highest difficulty. Unless you select a paintball gun for a level FULL of gas mask wearing mobsters as I did in Stetchkov Syndicate
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| # ? Mar 5, 2013 20:43 |
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Just posting this to anyone interested: Takedown peeps sent their pledge rewards to people recently (got my gaudy patch) and have been updating on the game development pretty regularly. There just might be another one of these games yet. The Kickstarter page if you want to read what the fuzz is/was about Dev diary Sormus fucked around with this message at Mar 5, 2013 around 22:24 |
| # ? Mar 5, 2013 22:22 |
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New video: Mission 7: You can do it if you... paint An undercover cop get's busted by a gang of criminals running a literal underground gambling ring. SWAT are immediately sent in to hopefully save the undercover cop and take down the crime gang. I cover ways in which you won't die and also rise up to the challenge and start using a none lethal load out. I have been reading your posts and what not and judging by what a lot of you say I'm a murdering scum bag of a SWAT officer. So I have decided to rise the the challenge and play through missions using none lethal take downs and maybe even using grenades a little more in missions. As I also understand this is also getting to the point in the game where most people called it quits because of the difficulty curve getting to a point where it's near enough vertical. As the assumed purpose of this let's play I will guide the way through these difficult areas with my amazing shining face.
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| # ? Mar 9, 2013 01:21 |
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Sormus posted:Just posting this to anyone interested: Takedown peeps sent their pledge rewards to people recently (got my gaudy patch) and have been updating on the game development pretty regularly. There just might be another one of these games yet. Oh man, that is what Christan Allen has been doing! I didn't click the link until I heard in that last video (good job with the paint-balls by the way) that the lead "worked on GRAW and Halo Reach". I met him a couple times and he is a really cool guy. If I remember is story correctly, he was in the millitary and made a couple mods in his off-time; then after he was done in the military he got into Red Storm or whomever was making the Tom Clancy games at the time where he wanted to work on Rainbow Six, but got put onto the GRAW project instead (the Rainbow Six game that was in development was Vegas 1, so I think he got the better deal there). From there I guess he stayed there to work on subsequent GRAW titles until Microsoft pulled him over to get him to work some magic on the early development of Halo Reach. I don't think he was on the team for the full length of development though, and I don't know what he had been doing between then and now. What I said here may not be 100% accurate, it was just what was off the top of my head, so that is enough  about people I have met.
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| # ? Mar 11, 2013 17:18 |
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Lucky you there for meeting him. From what work I've seen of his, mainly being GRAW2 and Halo Reach, is that those games had very over the top all against you action in them and the actual narratives flowed fairly smoothly in the context of the game itself. Those games though were essentially shooters not really "tactical" so it would be interesting to see how Takedown turns out and what elements from SWAT Christan Allen decides to use, including the idea that the game needs to be led by a narrative. I've also noticed that both GRAW2 and Halo: Reach had a large sense of self impending doom.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2013 13:39 |
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If you don't mind, I have a few suggestions: shotguns, running and team-breaching. Shotguns in this game are very unreliable, sometimes taking multiple hits to down someone unarmored, and they aren't all that accurate in the first place: generally speaking you'll want SMGs or ARs for the entire team. The less-than-lethal Nova is kind of an exception, but usually you are better off with the paintball gun, which I found out to my delight is also effective against gas-masks for some weird reason. As for running, your default speed is a light jog which will throw your aim all over the place: while slower, walking will keep your aim a lot more steady, so you might want to try it out, especially if/when you'll start using ARs, given that their aim is really finicky. Finally, you tend to rush in whenever you order the team to open/breach and clear: you should let the entire team in first since you getting in the way messes up their AI somewhat and is more likely to end up with you getting shot in the face.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2013 21:46 |
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It's interesting you complained about the AI being so strict about its procedures and not proceeding if everything isn't lined-up properly. In SWAT 3, your AI partners were much more proactive, and the AI seemed more capable of thinking on its feet. What it produced, however, was that you as the player ultimately had less control over the team, and situations would more often devolve into a clusterfuck. On the other hand, SWAT 3 was absolutely fine with you killing pretty much any armed suspect.
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| # ? Mar 12, 2013 21:55 |
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New video: Mission 8: Diamonds are for murder A group of heavily armed thief's have crashed their way into a diamond outlet and are in the process of stealing themselves some jewels, however did they count on 5 SWAT members being sent in with an arrest warrant? Possibly, but either way it's a mission. David and I recorded a small bunch of videos yesterday so video content will be a little more frequent. I've also decided to rise to the challenge so I will be using none lethal force in all of the missions from now on. Aren't you impressed with me? No. I'm so sorry
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| # ? Mar 21, 2013 15:31 |
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RealTimski posted:New video: Additionally it's nice to see you use the tactical wedges, since they are incredibly valuable. And speaking of, if you wedge a door, you can tell the AI to breach it so that they will use their C2 charges, which will cause stun on the other side and if an enemy is very close, will usually knock them unconscious (and on rare occasions kill them, but it doesn't count as an excess of lethal force). C2 charges are just great in this game. 
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| # ? Mar 22, 2013 01:50 |
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Yup, C2 charges are pretty much the only fool proof way of dealing with suspects in extremely close quarters (closets, bathrooms...)
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| # ? Mar 22, 2013 02:04 |
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I love messing with Door-AI. that was a great segment.
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| # ? Mar 22, 2013 03:11 |
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radintorov posted:C2 charges, which will cause stun on the other side and if an enemy is very close, will usually knock them unconscious (and on rare occasions kill them, but it doesn't count as an excess of lethal force). Let me tell you a SWAT 4 story. There is this multiplayer gamemode called VIP Rescue. There is two teams, SWAT and suspects, and one of the SWAT members get to be the VIP, a normal dude with just a pistol and two magazines. The objective is for SWAT to escort the VIP to the extraction point. The objective for the suspect is to 'arrest' the VIP, hold him for 2 minutes, and then execute him. If any team kills the VIP at any other moment they loses. So I and some friends was playing the SWAT team and my buddy got to be the VIP. On this specific map it was beat to ride out the initial suspect storm at the start area. We wedged the doors and took out optiwands to peek under them. Soon enough the suspect came to one of the doors and I saw them plant a C2 charge on it. I immediately told my VIP buddy to go rub up against the door and when the door blew open he died, winning the game for the SWAT team.
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| # ? Mar 22, 2013 03:34 |
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The idea of a goon runner is as amazing at it is stupid. 
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| # ? Mar 22, 2013 09:09 |
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New episode video thing. Mission 9: The cult of Tom Cruise A strange Scientology like cult following the teachings of a mad man, have brought themselves an abandoned apartment block and are planning on blowing themselves and half the block up into a flaming crater. In this surprisingly dark episode SWAT are sent in to take down the cultist leader and those who follow him. So this mission is the most disturbing in the game and the tone shifts to very dark even for me. So take that as your first warning if you don't like broken old buildings infested with cultists. Insistently I am looking into sorting out a multiplayer game where whoever wants to can join, I never actually experienced the multiplayer side of SWAT 4 and by the sounds of it it's well worth it. RealTimski fucked around with this message at Mar 23, 2013 around 19:27 |
| # ? Mar 23, 2013 19:25 |
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RealTimski posted:New episode video thing. The atmosphere for this is simply fantastic just by how unsettling the whole thing is.
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| # ? Mar 23, 2013 21:03 |
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Yeah, this is probably the best mission, atmosphere wise, and even a pretty well designed map. A great thing is that in the expansion, there's a mission which sorta expands on the Tyrone cult, and even though it isn't as obviously vicious, I found its subtle hints to be even more disturbing.
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| # ? Mar 23, 2013 21:07 |
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steinrokkan posted:I found its subtle hints to be even more disturbing. Well that's definitely worrying. In lighter news, Happy Birthday Tim. 
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| # ? Mar 23, 2013 21:17 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 14:04 |
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Well I'm looking forward to playing the DLC and I'm all for subtle hints. It's just signs of strong writing that even though there is no narrative it's possible to link things together create a realistic game world.
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| # ? Mar 23, 2013 21:17 |
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