Tag Archives: irrational games

Thoughts: SWAT 4.

surrender

“POLICE! HANDS IN THE AIR!”

You get to hear that phrase a lot in SWAT 4. You and your squadmates will scream it several dozen times per mission. For once this isn’t because of a very limited number of stock responses a la the Elder Scrolls, and neither is it an amusing audio bug; instead, you want to be announcing your presence as loudly as possible when you enter a room. You want hostages to stay down, you want armed criminals to surrender, and most of all what you don’t want is to shoot a gunman without warning them first, because the SWAT series are the only games I’m aware of that have actual honest-to-god rules of engagement.

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Thoughts: Bioshock Infinite.

city

SPOILER WARNING: Bioshock Infinite is a game that is best played when you have absolutely no idea what is going to happen when you do.  Unfortunately a critical appraisal of Bioshock Infinite is impossible without at least mentioning some of the general plot themes and elements, so while there’s not going to be any major plot spoilers of the OMG ELIZABETH IS YOUR FATHER variety I can’t review the game while avoiding talking about what’s actually in it. If you want to remain completely unspoiled, a potted summary of my opinion about Bioshock Infinite would be pretty similar to what I thought of Spec Ops — not the best of games, but absolutely worth playing through at least once.

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