Video Games
As far as video games go, there aren’t really any police or SWAT games worth mentioning, except for the SWAT series. Well, SWAT 3 is the most “simulation” sort, as the first in the series was made like an interactive movie, the second was a sort of top-down strategy game and the fourth was more like SWAT 3 but it had a more player-friendly, arcade-feel to it. So, I’ll concentrate on SWAT 3. I simply cannot risk not mentioning it.
An entry at Wikipedia says:
“The SWAT series are the follow up of Sierra’s classic adventure game series Police Quest. The adventure game decreased in popularity by the mid-nineties and Jim Walls, the former series designer, left Sierra and was replaced by real-life SWAT founder Daryl F. Gates. After Gates released Open Season, Sierra searched out new genres for the popular police simulation series.”
SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle released in 1999 by Sierra, is a very realistic first-person tactical shooter game where you play a SWAT element leader, commanding two teams of two under you. Missions range from simply entering a house and arresting one fairly gun-shy man to storming airports with multiple heavily armed and armored adversaries. All the traditional weapons and equipment are featured, but no direct energy weapons unfortunately. You can make use of real-life tactics and have a good selection of easily accessible commands to issue to your fellow officers. You can get them to breach doors, throw in stun grenades, make arrests, etc. They can do it as an element (the whole team) or as sub-teams (two in each). Issuing commands as an element is useful if you only have one entrance to storm, but you can use one team of two on one door and the other team of two on the other door if there are two entrances for instance.
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The AI are quite good, and depending on what skill setting you have on, can be easy or hard to detain. Also, some people in the game have sort of different personalities, so some will give up easier than others. Missions include arrest warrants, hostage rescue, bomb location and defusion, recovery of weapons, etc. Some missions may have one or two hostages, and others have dozens — all of which have to be detained and extracted. This game is probably the most realistic simulation of a SWAT team that you can get — and the only one you can get that I know of.
