So, last night I did manage to get a little time to toy with the SWAT 4 demo. It is a pretty good looking game, with challenging AIs. In the SP missions, you lead a team of (at least) 4 other officers. You can view their head cams, and assign them in separate teams of two. This is great for some tactical situations where you need to take two routes at once to head off the bad guys. You can take the default loadout or select individual loadouts for each person on your team. I have read that in some levels, one of your team can be a sniper who waits outside the hot zone and watches for BG's. The sniper will alert you if he (or she? not sure if any of the models are female) sees anything interesting. You can then switch to his view and take the shots yourself. I haven't had an opportunity to try this yet, but it sounds pretty cool.

I have only played the first mission. I expect the demo comes with more, and they are played in sequence. I liked what I saw, although at least once I "finished" the mission, except that I had "misplaced" 3 of the BG's weapons, which you must retrieve before the mission completes. I gave up and restarted, and got my a55 kicked every time after that. So, I've only been able to see the one mission in the demo.

One refreshing feature is that the mission is different each time due to the differing spawn points and disposition of the BG's and hostages. For example, you might get a map spawned with mostly "compliant" BG's and "hostile" hostages! So, you may not need to kill any of the BG's and may need to cuff one or more of the hostages! Or, you may get a mix of compliant and defiant BG's and relatively "calm" hostages who just cower in the corner. Also, the loadout of the BG's is different, too. One time they all had pistols (varying kinds) and another time at least one of them had an automatic of some kind. I don't know what kind because I told one of my men to retrieve it while I proceeded to get my head blown off in the next room.

One of the other nice features is that your AI cohorts have attitudes, giving them a bit of depth. For example, if you order them to do something and you are standing in their way, they will tell you so with varying degrees of annoyance. Also, when they pick up the perps' weapons they may make comments about them if they are ... inferior. "You call that a gun? What is that?" or "Pea-shooter secured."

All in all, I'm pretty impressed. I'm very annoyed that you have to secure the weapons because the perps may drop them and run. Or they may run, drop them, and run some more. So there's really no telling where the guns will end up and you have get them all to finish the mission. Worse still, the first level is very dark with most of the light source coming from SWATlights glaring through windows, and your M4A1 muzzle-mounted flash light is little help. To the developer's credit, the light sources are very believable in this way, and the game really does look great.

I haven't yet tried shooting windows or cars, but I shot a couple of the video games in the break room. They make the right noise but don't change visibily. That doesn't really bother me but it will bother some people.

Does anyone have the full version of this game and have you played the online COOP missions? I'm not yet convinced on this one, especially because of the "find the weapons" b/s but it does seem like it would be fun in COOP mode. Also, some people really tend to like games that tell a story, even as a shooter, and a few reviewers have noted that as a weak point: the missions are not inter-related beyond being SWAT missions set in the same town.

Looking forward to hearing from others on this one, and playing a bit more before passing judgement, but it does look promising.

well if SWAT4 is anything like SWAT3 then i should be able to do a 1 man slaughter no prob(got SWAT3 the day it came out and have played it almost an 1 hour a week since then). Ill fill ya in if i grab it.