SWAT 3: Tactical Game of the Year Edition Reviews

6/10

Classic masterpiece! 10/10

i cant play it it glichs for me i am sad

It’s a pain in the ass to get working on modern-day hardware, and pretty much nothing is explained to the player, including many of the core mechanics which weren’t a part of any other game at the time and generally still aren’t today. That said, after about an hour of troubleshooting and familiarisation, you’ll be able to properly play what I’d consider to be one of the best tactical shooters on the market. It’s leagues above any entry to the Rainbow Six series, and as much as I like Ghost Recon, the urban CQC setting of this game does just enough to carry it to the top of my list. Where Rainbow Six was more about planning an approach, SWAT 3 is much more about improvisation and coming up with solutions on the fly. Instead of a pre-arranged route, you get a wide range of commands you can issue to your squad, who you’ll have to rely on at least a little in order to successfully accomplish your mission. The one thing these three franchises truly have in common is that they all need to be played in short bursts. The main campaign has sixteen missions. Most of them are pretty generic, but they get the job done. No clue what the devs were smoking when they designed that sewer level, though. On top of the main campaign is a secondary ten-man campaign added in the GOTY edition. It features two new maps, both of which have their own merits, but the rest of the campaign is just recycled maps with very simple objectives. Surprisingly enough, there are also nine bonus missions you can’t find in either campaign, and honestly, these are some of the most memorable ones in the entire game. Pretty strange design choice if you ask me. Aside from the technical issues I alluded to in my opening sentence, the only real problem I have with this game is that there’s always at least six people screaming over eachother at any given moment (You, your team, and TOC). That aside, it’s a good game. Now all we need is for Microsoft to tell Activision to tell Sierra to release SWAT 4 on Steam. God, what a mess.