SWAT 3: Tactical Game of the Year Edition

SWAT 3 is an authentic tactical simulation. Its realistic gameplay has a reality that places an emphasis on saving lives and rewards for nonviolent resolutions. You can choose to be a SWAT team leader or be a member of the team taking commands. There are many different types of tools that are with you all the time to help you through each mission. For example your character will have a mirror on a telescoping rod to peek around corners to make sure an area is clear before you enter. If it isn’t then you can yell for the enemy to comply with your orders or they will be dealt with in a professional manner. You will also have the use of a tool that looks like a leatherman for picking locks. There are many types of guns to choose from. There is an M4 which is a light weight carbine weighing only 5.65lbs., the Benelli M1 Super 90 a semi-automatic 12gauge shotgun, a UMP45, and several versions of the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. Those are some sweet guns!

Commanding a team takes much responsibility. You must be careful of what you tell your team to do. If you tell them the wrong thing it could be costly because they will do exactly what you tell them without challenging your orders. On video games you lack the gift of peripheral vision, therefore it is very easy to wander into the enemies sights. And it doesn’t take much for them to penetrate your protective gear. Even when I manipulated the difficult settings to support my impatience it was still fairly challenging. SWAT 3 has a career mode that I was not very impressed with. The career mode takes you through about a half dozen or less missions while keeping track of statistics like civilians rescued, suspects neutralized, suspects captured, and officers injured or killed. Seems cool at first but when you finish the missions the screen will say," congratulations you’ve had a successful career". The only difference between career mode and regular play mode is the statistics. But there are many more missions on the regular play mode.

The sound is good when it comes to character movement or environment situations but music is not a big part of this game. Besides if you had loud fast paced music, which I would consider cool in most action games, would really only be a handicap to your game play. Sometimes you will want to listen to hear enemy movement.

Although there are a few versions of SWAT 3, the tactical game of the year edition seems to be most worth the money. The tactical game of the year edition adds six new missions to the original twenty-one. It also includes an advanced tactics CD to help educate gamers in real tactics and strategies, including instructional training videos provided by actual SWAT officers. This game supports multi-player action and is rated mature because of blood and violence.   

Install - Medium
Nothing fancy just a little more time

Gameplay - 8 
Realistic and challenging

Graphics -  8
Realistic environments with some actual Los Angeles locations.

Sound - 8 
Hear the things in your surrounding environment

Difficulty - 9
Challenging even on the easy setting

Concept - 6
It's not exactly the first Swat game

Overall - 8 
Very real, puts you in control