Overall: Another era in extreme law enforcement has began with, SWAT: Global Strike Team. SWAT is brought in, when the situation becomes unmanageable by regular police units. This is where your mission begins. You are the leader of a 3 person elite SWAT team. A sniper, the electronics expert, and you...and you mean business. Does SWAT live up to its high expectations? I think it falls far short from what it should have been.
If you really want a good shooter in this style...go for Rainbow Six 3. Gameplay: You begin the campaign in SWAT: Global Strike Team at a bank. Your mission: Break up the raid. After your mission briefing, you are brought to the weapons screen. Here you can choose your weapons, grenades, and upgrade your weapons. The variety of weapons to choose from is not exactly spectacular. Shotgun, Assault Rifle, and Machine gun. Grenades choices are Concussion (regular grenade), Flashbang (temporarily blinds and deafens enemy), and a grenade that disrupts electrical currents. By pressing the X button you can upgrade any of these weapons. Upgrades vary from an increased magazine capacity, to more powerful ammunition, etc. You earn upgrade points for completing missions successfully. At the end of missions you get graded on your performance. The grade is based on enemy kills, enemy captures, civilian deaths, hostage rescues, accuracy, and so on. You will earn either an A, B, C, D, or F. Depending on your grade, you get a certain amount of upgrade points. Now to the actual gameplay. The learning curve in SWAT: GST is not very steep. Basic controls: Right trigger to fire, left trigger for grenades (except when using headset), A to reload, X for enemy compliance issues (SWAT, get your hands up!), B to melee attack the enemy with your weapon. The white button is used to throw grenades, when using the headset. One issue I have with this game, is the difficulty level. It is painfully easy. In little over and hour I completed the majority of the missions. The game gets very boring because of this repetitive, and easy gameplay. Another issue I have, is the aracade-like feel. When playing a SWAT game, I expect some realism. This game barely has any. Shoot, shoot, shoot, never die, shoot. I barely ever died in this game. Most of the time, you don't even need to shoot your weapon. With the terrible AI, you can run up to an enemy and beat the crapola out of him with your weapon, without being shot once. Also, you can sometimes shoot enemies dozens of times and they will not even die. They will simply fall to the ground and allow you to put them in the cuffs. AI, and realism are absolutely terrible in GST, and do not even make for an average game. Graphics: Graphics in SWAT: Global Strike team are terrible. Characters are blocky, and the character animation is glitchy and not very well done. For example: A few times during the game I got my sniper to pick locks on doors. She would walk nowhere near the door and start picking the lock. Also when using the electronics specialist to hack security systems, he would act as if typing on a keyboard. Yet he would be standing in the middle of nowhere typing on his...well...imaginary friend. Crazy SWAT guys! So bottomline: Graphics are full of glitches. Environments in GST are also horrible. They aren't even ps2-esque. In the first level of the game, you enter through the sewers. The sewage water looks like something you would find in Banjo Kazooie. Also, in almost every single level the environments look strikingly similar. Same untextured walls, untextured floors, and so on. Graphics have never been the most important thing to me in video games, but SWAT falls far short of Xbox visual capabilities. Sound: Probably the best thing about this game, but still not great. The gun fire sounds like it should, but for some reason still gives me the arcadey feel. When snakeing your way through levels, you often hear the sounds of police shouting orders to the suspects, or the sounds of helicopters. The shouts aren't very clear, but audible enough to be enjoyable. Criminals, and the SWAT team alike say entirely too little. Another downside to the sound, is that when pressing X for issue compliance, the only thing ever said is "SWAT: Put your hands up!" Suggestions: Totally redo your graphics to begin with. They are horrible. Then start making over the gameplay. A greater variety of weapons would be nice. 3 weapons is not nearly enough, and the weapon upgrading needs to be improved. The difficulty level needs to be steeply raised. This game is far too easy. Try not to go for the arcadey feel..it doesn't work in a game like this.
Overall: Pros: Four-player split-screen, commands by voice. Cons: uninspiring gameplay, no online play, and medicore graphics.
Online play might have made this game alot better, because four-player split-screen really doesn't do much these days. SWAT: GST isn't a bad game in most respects, it's just mediocre, and is available on two consoles that each has much better alternatives, such as Rainbow Six(xbox) or SOCOM(PS2). You should only think about this game if games such as the two I just listed turn you off. Gameplay: In SWAT: Global Strike Team, there is little or no need for use of strategy. With unlimited ammo, you can basically just run through the level, shoot any enemies you come across (and probably cuffing few on your way), try not to shoot the hostages (who always just like running into your line of fire), and defuse any huge flashing bombs you may come across.
But you just got to make sure you watch out for those waves of terrorists who somehow start rushing you as soon as you start defusing.
This game is like a dumbed down version of Rainbow Six. The missons are almost all in-doors, and involve having to disarm a bomb or rescue a hostage.
There is also the "Pre-mission Planning". Here you get breifed about your mission, pick which weapon you want, pick your grenades and move out. Graphics: (pros)Textures in this game are disappoiions are un-realistic and look robotic, the enemies have a limited animation sequence/routine, the cuffing animations should have been better, and sequences such as a dodge-roll arent too impressive.
(cons)This game has high quality shadows and light, and they're very well done. Also, your character moves his gun out of the way if you run into a wall or come too close to an object. Sound: The best thing I like about this game is how it lets you yell out commands to your team-mates using your Xbox Live headset. It's a really nice feature.
The weapon's sound effects are good, except that there aren't many.
The enemies and hostages don't say much, and your character only says the things you shout into your head-set, so your just going to be hearing the same thing over.
The music is well done and the voices are realistic/natural. Suggestions: Add better and more realistic animations, put in more sound effects, and update and add better textures.
But most importantly, they need to add On-line play.
Made in Canada