We Need A New SWAT Game

Last seen with a launch in 2005, we’ve not seen a new Police Quest title since 1998 with Police Quest: SWAT 2 and its SWAT subseries since 2005. I’ve been playing a lot of SWAT 4 recently, the 2005 (2006 with the Gold Edition) take on a first-person real-time tactics shooter that is now commonly multiplayer. Off the bat, yes I know about the PSP and mobile titles, but let’s be honest, unless it is the active-pause gameplay of Door Kickers, I don’t see a point in those isometric real-time tactics releases that look and feel stiff.

Of course, a game co-produced by Ken Levine ahead of Bioshock is going to feel a little old, I can’t argue against that. However, I think we’ve lost a good portion of what SWAT 4 and its active modding community have maintained via Elite Force to the plague that is always online multiplayer, larger levels, constant “replayability,” and the ever-present crime against gaming: live service models.

There are glimpses of similar gameplay with vague single-player elements though. What comes to mind first is the opposite side of the crime spectrum, Payday. Though as a complete package, the whole thing could be greatly updated mechanically, visually, and even with the weapons and tools.

I shouldn’t have to explain the SWAT series. For those somehow missing the point of the name, you play as a tactical breach unit (SWAT) responding to armed and dangerous situations. I haven’t played SWAT 3, 2, or 1 for that matter, so I can’t comment on their stories or what makes up for their stories. I have nonetheless played a lot of SWAT 4 and played not only the main and expansion missions but also crappy modded ones too. Since you play as a SWAT unit, there are some wonderfully dark and horrifying ways that the story goes.

Co-producer and writer Sara Verrilli actually doesn’t shy away from the taboo and horrible nature of the situations in SWAT 4‘s levels and writing. One early mission is of a grown man who lives with his mother and kidnaps young women whom he keeps in the basement. Later missions touch on militant extremist domestic terrorism for religious beliefs or anti-science nonsense. The latter of which sounds like a FOX News dog whistle until you notice everyone is White. Drugs, conspiracy, and kidnapping sound like a true crime night on Netflix.

The modern counterparts to this are often your Rainbow Six Siege-like models or smaller independent takes that use default Unity assets that work in a rocky Afghan-looking area. If I say much more about the region close to Fallujah, I’m sure I’ll get assassinated. While there are several first-person tactics titles released into the wild, no matter their quality, they often focus on a simple multiplayer set of ideas with very little story. You have your small team, your map, and your loadout. I hope you like replaying those same maps to level up and get new cosmetics.

Where the SWAT series shines is the simple mundanity of locations, the detailed briefing, the prep work, as well as analyzing and executing a plan well. SWAT 4 itself isn’t difficult. The great level design that mimics real-world architecture which isn’t built for those purposes makes situations difficult. A concert venue isn’t made for responding to bomb threats or religious nuts demonizing “demonic” music, a cryogenics lab on a college campus isn’t a place to set off flashbangs, and climbing up an elevator shaft to rescue hostages in a hotel under renovation isn’t conducive to getting good angles.

It is the story of each level, it is the ability to masterfully get into a room and get all guns down and hostages secure. You can have your discussions on police overreach in everyday warrant execution, to understate it I think there is a bit too much (80%) of that. Though the situations depicted and suggested in SWAT 4 are about imminent threats to individuals or large groups, which isn’t a bad thing. Why every tactical shooter is set in the Middle East or luxury locations is beyond me. It Hollywoodifies and glorifies something that is often horrible.

That is one of the things I think we’ve lost in the last 10-15 years since Crysis and others pushed for open worlds, expansive levels, and glitz. We’ve lost the levels that show the real world, the simplicity, or simply the larger Western world that is supposedly always under threat from people living in caves while hiding away from MQ-9 Reapers. It isn’t Fast and Furious, we don’t need Charlize Theron busting a military submarine through the surface of a frozen lake so she can control nukes and make millions. If that sounds criminally insane, that’s because it is and that’s what developers and publishers think they need to compete with.

SWAT 4 is one of the best (if not the best) tactical shooters ever to release. We’re talking about a game that’s turning 20 in the next year and a bit. Mechanically, some portions have aged poorly, I won’t deny that, and modding is the only thing keeping it from being frustrating at times. Nevertheless, its modern counterparts are multiplayer-focused. Ground Branch which is multiplayer, Insurgency: Sandstorm which is multiplayer and desert-based, Zero Hour isn’t great for single-player by all accounts, and almost everything else is early access with a small team, multiplayer-focused, or old (for a game).

The closest I’ve found is VOID Interactive’s Ready or Not. I’m not too far into it, so it is hard to entirely comment but it is similar minus the detailed briefing. Nonetheless, there is a clear “bias” towards multiplayer, and that goes beyond tactical shooters too. My point is that while there are attempts to recapture these Rogue Spear, Vegas, SOCOM, and other titles of our youth, those of us who don’t want to join lobbies of heavy mouth-breathing ineptitude are told to suck eggs or join them.

It is unlikely we’ll see another big studio like Sierra create a game with even a hint of the risks SWAT took. It may seem mundane now as porn games and Unity asset flips depicting fully nude beheadings infest Steam daily, but kidnapping and murder of young women, domestic terrorism, drugs and gun running, and similar topics aren’t without their taboos. In the risk-free, cosmetic-focused live-service loaded industry that thinks first about multiplayer, those risks and taboos do nothing but invite larger media scrutiny, decrying the usual Helen Lovejoy, “think of the children” and “glorifying crime/violence” nonsense.

Sadly as a result we lose out on level-based, story-focused action titles that put you on the right side of the law, unlike its wealthier Payday counterparts. These games also don’t have you shouting at brown people presumably shouting “Allahu Akbar” back at you for no reason. I’d like to think we’d get a new SWAT game sometime down the road, something to update and refresh a long-running series from the 80s. Though if I tried holding my breath, I’d sooner turn purple before that happened anytime soon. Maybe we can introduce Black‘s understanding of how a gun works, instead of modern pea shooters? Yeah, I don’t hold out hope.