By Pentadact

You might remember a mock movie script here on James a while back, which attempted to convey the hilarity of playing it co-op. A less profane version of that is actually going to appear in the mag next issue, as a side-column to an even less civilian-friendly story by Steve Williams, Officer Dibble in my script. Anyway, neither are really what keeps me playing SWAT 4 here, at home, in a darkened room, single-player. The same mission in fact, over and over, until today. It’s the nightclub one, and it’s nails.

Actually, it’s not hard to kill all the gunmen and rescue all the civilians. Sometimes you’ll get jumped and lose your brains, but often as not I’ve successfully brought ‘order to chaos’ (one of your standing mission objectives). But what’s difficult, and endlessly appealing to me, is that you have to do it right. You can’t just shoot someone in the face in case they were going to shoot you, you have to give them every chance to surrender. They’re human, and they don’t know if they’re going to get out of this alive, and they don’t know what they’re doing, and they don’t know you’re the police before it’s too late unless you actually shout first. They’re just scared kids with guns, and unpredictable in every way. You don’t know where they’re going to be or what they’re going to do when you point a gun at them. That makes them one of the toughest and most interesting game opponents I’ve ever faced.

I had one of my best runs ever today, textbook stuff. I was using a nonlethal weapon, and had arrested every suspect I encountered. I didn’t even use my squad, who can usually be trusted to be more reasonable than me, but not quite as accurate. There couldn’t be many suspects left, so I called my squad to me, causing them to flush out most of the building on the way. Almost immediately, I failed the mission. It wasn’t immediately apparent why, but I knew there was only one way it could happen – my team shot a civilian. They shot a fucking civilian! What the hell, guys? I don’t even shoot armed suspects! I gently subdue them, then carefully restrain them and confiscate their weapon. You shoot teenage girls in the face? God damn it!

So the kid gloves went on after that. No more Mr Nasty Guy. Everyone gets beanbag shotguns – the rubbish one of the two non-lethal weapons, because frankly I was hoping they’d get themselves killed. I take the gas pellet gun, which looks and probably works much like a paintball gun, but pretty much incapacitates the target because they’ve immediately got pepper gas in their eyes and lungs. It’s inaccurate – you can’t fire something that fragile and light with the same decisiveness as a metal bullet, I guess – but it’s fast firing and you only need to hit with one – at the very least, it buys you the time to hit with many more.

It was beautiful. The screams, the begs for mercy, civilians crying for help, people clutching their eyes, everyone shouting at once. And when the smoke cleared, no-one’s dead. Every single armed suspect had given up, even if I had to gas them, tazer them and pepper spray them in the face for a full minute. I have become a kind of bizarre benevolent monster, hurting everyone as much as possible and enjoying it because I know it ultimately ensures their safety.