Shadowcat on 17/5/2013 at 15:14

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I've been playing this again the past few days, and it's still superb.

Although I just mostly nailed a mission which was crawling with bad guys. We arrested 12, killed 13, and rescued all 6 hostages and a further 3 civilians. One SWAT member down (very early on, so we did most of the mission with four), plus some wounds, but no other serious casualties. I'm pretty sure I collected all weapons, reported everything, and avoided shooting anyone I shouldn't have.

My rating for all that awesomeness? Apparently 62/100. Like hell, I say!

I did shoot one bad guy in the head at close range, but the idiot wouldn't cooperate, and his legs and body armour were proving stubbornly resistant to my pistol (I could have sworn that I loaded FMJ rounds to handle the armour), so I felt that drastic action was justified. I may also have gone full-auto on a bad guy, just to be certain (he had surprised us), which contributed to my needing to switch to the pistol later on. I'm not sure whether overkill or head-shots count against you.

Anyway, those numbers do not add up to 62 in my books. Surely being out-numbered by a crazy 5:1 and still kicking ass should count for something :)

Muzman on 17/5/2013 at 17:27

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3 was way meaner than 4 as well. From memory it even had a morale system and things of that sort. Issue the wrong command or forget to call things in and the troops'll be shaking their heads wondering who this clown is.

Shadowcat on 19/5/2013 at 00:54

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The non-lethal weapons in SWAT 4 (and especially the expansion) were definitely one of my favourite additions. I tried to mix it up a bit, but the grenade launcher with baton ammo ended up being my go-to for just about any mission. The slow reloading caused some tense times (especially if I ended up on my own), but I really loved using that one. I usually went fully non-lethal, because the stun-gun was also awesome (completely unlike the taser from the base game, which IIRC provided a grand total of two shots!).

Heh :)

I don't remember my typical scores in SWAT 4, but I can regularly get ~80 in SWAT 3 if I execute a mission well, so I felt slightly insulted by the 62 :) I'm sure there was a good reason.

It has occurred to me that I never call "contact" when I spot people. I don't know if I can boost points there (particularly if I'm mirroring and spot a suspect).

You do seem to get some leadership points no matter how atrociously you behave. I attempted to get a zero on a simple mission by killing my entire squad, ignoring the bad guy, shooting the civilian, and not collecting or reporting anything. They still gave me 8 points. And if I end the mission before doing anything at all, I get 57 points :) (which is presumably zero points gained for the mission, but just not a drastic amount lost from whatever the starting value is).

I haven't tried multiplayer since the original servers went down, but I think the GOG forums might have some current details on that; I should look into it.

Shadowcat on 19/5/2013 at 05:32

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Oh, and here's something else I never knew before!

1. open the console: type ~ (i.e. with the shift key down)
2. Type handsup and then hit enter
3. escape key exits console

Shadowcat on 20/5/2013 at 10:13

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It seems to make the full character model visible, so you can see yourself doing all the same things you can see your team members doing, including the animations for all equipment usage. It's a bit awkward so I'm sure I'm not going to use it all the time, but it's pretty cool nevertheless. If you've got the game installed, make sure you check this out.