SWAT: Urban Justice Preview

It's unfortunate that SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle was released when it was. The game was arguably the best squad-based shooter of its kind--and almost all of its few flaws were addressed in subsequent patches from Sierra--but it was ultimately lost in the sea of other, much more prominent first-person action games like Quake III: Arena, Unreal Tournament, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear, all of which were released a few weeks apart. But if you never had the chance to play SWAT 3, there's no need to worry. Sierra has been working on a sequel for almost two years now, and you'll soon have the chance to experience all of SWAT 3's finer points in the next game in the series, SWAT: Urban Justice.

Don't call this game SWAT 4--it's more than just a sequel. Sierra is fiddling around with some of the gameplay formulas of the earlier SWAT games and introducing brand-new concepts to the series in an effort to separate Urban Justice from its predecessors. The biggest departure from the previous SWAT games is the lack of the LAPD license. Yes, the game is still set in Los Angeles, and yes, you will still assume the role of the leader of a SWAT squad (or element), but Sierra isn't branding you as a member of the Los Angeles Police Department anymore. Rod Fung, senior producer on the game, explains: "Using the LAPD license would have really limited what we could do within the game. We wanted to make the players feel like a team of young guns, not quite so much spit and polish like LA's real SWAT team." Make no mistake, though, SWAT: Urban Justice will still be as authentic as any of the games in the series has been. The development team at Sierra has enlisted the help of Ken Thatcher, a 27-year veteran of the LAPD and an element leader himself, to ensure that the game remains grounded in reality. But instead of being an LAPD SWAT member, though, you'll be part of a police force called the "LA SWAT Team," and you'll be using equipment and performing maneuvers that, even though you might have seen them in the movies, aren't part of the LAPD's arsenal and standard operating procedures. The LAPD SWAT team, for example, doesn't use riot shields, and that's one particular piece of equipment that the designers at Sierra wanted to include in Urban Justice. The LAPD SWAT team also don't use grapple maneuvers to subdue suspects, and they don't have any women among their ranks, but both of those elements will be featured in the game. Not using the LAPD license gives the Sierra designers a little bit of wiggle room to tweak the realism of Urban Justice to make it a lot more fun than it would have otherwise been.

Expect the overall feel of Urban Justice to be faster paced than comparable games. One of the new features that'll make this possible is an option to give your element football-style plays after receiving your mission briefing. Called "jump start," this option gives you the ability to assign your element standing orders without having to give them individual commands every time you come to a closed door or a blind corner. Tell your element to "breach to contact," and your team members will breach through every door in the level until they make contact with and neutralize a target. "Probe to breach point" is a more cautionary approach, and after receiving this command, your element will move slowly throughout the level until they reach a door or a flight of stairs. Additionally, breaching will be a lot faster in Urban Justice than it was in SWAT 3. Each team member will swarm a room one after the other, and within that room, each member will have a strict area of responsibility. You can even set a countdown for two different elements to breach the same area at the same time. Other changes to SWAT 3's basic formula include the ability for you to go prone, to drop or pick up any gun or piece of combat gear (this applies to the bad guys too), and to subdue your target by slamming the butt of your gun into his (or her) stomach, though too much of this maneuver will get you slapped with a police brutality fine.

As for the setting, Urban Justice will take place in 2006, one year after the events of SWAT 3. The city of Los Angeles is preparing for a massive celebration to commemorate its 225th anniversary, and gangs are taking this opportunity to establish themselves as the preeminent force to be reckoned with in the streets. Three gangs in particular--the Loco Riders, Krazy Boyz, and Compton 187--have started a gang war between themselves, and the amount of everyday violence has become intolerable. As an element leader for the LA SWAT Team, you'll be tasked with putting down any gang-related incidents and dealing with everyday crime like bank robberies, hijackings, and so on. Your long arm of the law will have to extend across 16 missions in the single-player campaign, but unlike in SWAT 3, the mission structure in Urban Justice will be strictly linear in that you won't be able to pick any level you want from the outset. Missions include scenarios like enforcing a high-risk arrest warrant at a car dump, putting down a gang retribution shooting at a glitzy night club, and answering a robbery-in-progress call at a jewelry store. Expect to play in and around many Los Angeles landmarks as well, like Olvera Street, the mayor's manor, and a copy of the Griffith Observatory.

Tools of the Trade

Every profession has its own array of unique tools. Doctors use stethoscopes and needles, carpenters use hammers and nails, mechanics use socket wrenches and oil pans...as a SWAT member, your tools include high-power assault rifles and concussion grenades. One of the best aspects of SWAT 3 was undoubtedly the sheer amount of guns, ammo, and equipment that you could outfit your team members with. With Urban Justice, Sierra is expanding on that level of customizability even further. The game's weapons system will now allow for modularity. To be specific, most of the guns in Urban Justice will have a number of hardpoints that you can attach six different types of upgrades to, including stocks, grips, magazines, optics, and suppressors, and within these categories, you'll find a myriad of options for a near-infinite amount of customization options. The final number of weapons hasn't been decided on, but the grand total will be staggering. Fung wants to include every recognizable assault rifle in the game, and then some. You'll be able to choose from an MP5, MP5SD, MP5K, MP5 PDW, UMP45, M4 RIS, H&K G3, H&K G36C, P90, Steyr Aug, M4A2, AK-47, AK-74U, AN94, Super 90, and countless others. You'll also be able to equip your team members with two different side arms apiece. Making that possible is a virtual arsenal of pistols that includes the Glock 21, Glock 19, FN57, Colt 1911, M9, Beretta 93R, and USP 40, and they too will be customizable with laser sights, bigger clips, and silencers. If that doesn't keep your inner counter-terrorist happy, nothing will.

This modularity also extends to your element, as you can outfit your officers with a variety of helmets, elbow pads, Kevlar vests, camouflage, goggles, gas masks, and even sunglasses. You can also choose what kind of ammo to load your primary and secondary weapons with--from buckshot to hollow point to less-than-lethal rubber bullets--and you can even choose what kind of handcuffs your element will carry into battle. But all this diversity will come at a certain cost. Urban Justice will take into account the weight of all of your ammo and reduce your movement speed accordingly. And while that has been done in other games before, Urban Justice will be one of the first games that actually reduces your weight as your character uses up ammo, drops clips, and throws away grenades. What's more, you'll be able to choose from six different physiques--two female and four male--and each will have a distinct walking speed, strength, and tolerance for pain.

All this will be brought to life with the game's new Takedown 3D engine, which, according to Fung, will feature an impressive particle system and boast technical niceties like per-pixel lighting, dynamic shadows, and 5,000-polygon character models that use facial animation and lip-synching technologies. All the characters in Urban Justice will also have 29 unique hit "zones," and Sierra is currently busy motion-capturing all those different animations. The game will also include a multiplayer component out of the box, a lesson Sierra learned with the original SWAT 3, and while the different gameplay modes are still in flux, the final number will probably be close to eight and will include options for deathmatch, team deathmatch, VIP protection, and cooperative play for up to 24 players. Urban Justice will also come with the Worldcraft editor to make your own levels, as well as a separate editor that will let players enhance the game's original maps by changing the lighting, moving objects around, and even fiddling with the scripting and reactions of enemies.

Shooter fans and armchair warriors alike have plenty of reasons to be excited about this game. While Urban Justice will undoubtedly adhere to the basic gameplay mechanics that earned SWAT 3 its critical acclaim, Sierra is making the game a bit more lively with a quicker pace and a wide array of customizations. Urban Justice is scheduled for release later this year. Sierra plans to show it at this year's Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California, and we'll update you with impressions of the game from the show floor then.