Eff Seven

This was a piece from over a year ago, written after an Endurance run on SWAT IV, the team-based tactical shooter. Four of us collected on Teamspeak and played through the entire game in one long, arduous night of swearing and ‘accidental’ friendly fire. Great fun. The exams are now over, which means it’s almost time for exciting projects to get underway. Stay tuned.

The first time I played the Auto Parts garage on SWAT 4, in single-player, the plan went as follows - move in swiftly through the roof, split the element into two, two-man groups. One goes along the top floor to the main garage, above the walkway. The other goes with me, down the stairs, cleans out the car-park and wedges the doors. They wait outside the main garage for the final assault.
In that respect, the Endurance run of SWAT 4 went identically, albeit with me in a lower-ranking position, and everyone having far stranger accents than the butch Americans that accompanied the AI’s chirps of, “Get down or I put you down!”

The difference really came when it was time for me and my partner to break through the door to the office and take out the perp standing directly across the room from us. It was simple - blow the door, shout at the disoriented criminal, and then tazer him. It was simple. No AI pathfinding problems. No misunderstood commands. Just five humans and Voice-Over-IP communications. Simple.

My partner blows the C2 charge on the door, and it flies open, showing that the target has moved since we used our camera-sticks to check under the door. He turns around calmly and has a quite real pistol with quite real bullets in it. My tazer - which looks like a sellotape dispenser - fires off prematurely (always embarassing when you’re in a situation like that) and thuds into the wooden doorframe, buzzing loudly as it defies everything I learnt in Year 9 physics.

Fortunately, the door-breaching Starsky to my Hutch has got his primary weapon out - a pepper ball gun, still a peashooter compared to the Colt Python being waved at us - and has let off several rounds into the perp’s face. He’s screaming. It’s a good sign.

Starsky bumbles over to handcuff the wailing, eye-rubbing chump, and I move slowly into the office room, looking out of the window that looks down into the garage. The other half of our team is waiting on that side.

There’s a shout to the left, and I turn to see another perp on the elevated walkway, behind the glass. My primary weapon is out, another pepperball gun. No chances this time. Pff! Pff! Pff!

The pepperballs explode on the glass like hailstones on a barbeque, leaving a cloud of green smog in the office, and doing very little to the paper-thin sheet of glass. The magnum rounds the perp is firing, it turns out, are far better at penetrating glass. As well as fibreglass. And skull.

So began the seven-hour jog through the most recent outing of the tactical criminal-punching simulator SWAT 4. It was expected to be the shorted Endurance run to date, since each mission only took around fifteen minutes to complete, and the two teams of five were expected to get extremely high end-of-mission ratings straight off the mark. After the 51% report for the Auto Parts mission, things began to change.

It was the diamond merchant’s hostage rescue where things really began to go downhill. After three attempts at the mission, all ending in either the execution of a hostage or - more amusingly - the complete gutting of the team by a single shotgun-wielding attacker, our team’s leader began to change his tactics. We all started with our usual loadout - CS Gas, heavy armour, non-lethal weapons. But someone had an AK-47.
Whoops.

After a few restarts, mostly involving either tazering the rogue SWAT member into submission, or everyone getting slaughtered, terrorist stereotype-style, we managed to group together and progress past the mission - not without half of the team getting shot first, but it was completed either way.

It turned out that missions were not destined to be five-minute jaunts after all, and an estimated two-hour finish time rapidly increased as plans gave way to shooting which gave way to gas grenade fights. By the time we’d started playing the missions properly again, we’d had to merge the two teams together due to dropouts, and found ourselves hopelessly stuck just a few missions from the end.

Single-player runs such as Deus Ex, or more recently, Hitman: Blood Money, were just a matter of plodding through a long enough story at your own pace. Hitman picked up a competitive element once the players got talking to each other, but SWAT 4 was a different challenge. All you needed to do to complete the game was to keep the players focused, and keep concentrating on plans. But with the team at varying levels of inebriation, and problems with the way the server was set up, it was easier said than done.

The final, beautiful moment came in the last mission when, after half an hour of frustrating cock-ups and self-imposed civilian executions, the team decided to shirk their softly-softly approach, ditch the beanbag-firing shotguns, and take some real weapons. A SWAT 4 element, all with Magnums, storming a controversial research laboratory, with self-given orders to shoot first and take no prisoners later.

Like a crazy black ops team from some awful faux-action TV series, the Englishman, the Irishman, the Scotsman and the Northerner stumbled through the eerie spotlights and explosive gas canisters, headshotting and door-kicking like it was Counterstrike on steroids.

After an evening of cock-ups and subtlety, it was a beautiful end. Single-player might have depth, but it doesn’t have heavily-armed Yorkshiremen.

Sidebar - “Radio Chatter”

EDDIE - Pick it.
ANDREW - Someone else pick it, I’ve got the gas out.
MIKE - I’ll pick it.
(Mike begins to pick the lock.)
ANDREW - Is there a way to put a grenade away after you’ve got ready to throw it?
EDDIE - Right-
MIKE - …you mean after you’ve taken the pin out?
ANDREW - Yeah.
MIKE - …
EDDIE - Alright, look, I’ll secure the right hand of the room. Mike and James I want you to secure the left. Uh… Mike I want you to secure the stairs, but don’t go up ‘em.
MIKE - Alright.
EDDIE - Okay guys.
MIKE - Wait, did you mean… no, don’t worry.
EDDIE - Okay, go.

There is the sound of gunshots, and shouting of “Police! Drop your weapons!”

EDDIE - Fucking hell, Mike!
MIKE - What?
EDDIE - You block every door we go through!
MIKE - You said to go first!
EDDIE - Alright, whatever, look I want gas in the middle of that room. Can’t see fuck all in it. Andrew and Mike, go around and go through the other door.
(They go)
JAMES - Already got gas ready.
ANDREW - I’ll breach it.
EDDIE - Okay, go.
MIKE - On your command.
EDDIE - I SAID GO.
MIKE - …
EDDIE - GO.

The sound of a breaching charge being set off, and someone swearing over TeamSpeak.

EDDIE - Mike, for fuck’s sake! I SAID GO.
MIKE - It’s locked, I’m picking it.
ANDREW - It’s not locked.
MIKE - …ah. See I unlocked it, but then it said it was still locked, so…
EDDIE - What the hell do you call that?!
MIKE - Look, I…
ANDREW - The next room looks clear.
EDDIE - Alright, one room left.
ANDREW - This is the last room, I think.
EDDIE - Yeah, I just said, it’s…
MIKE - You want flash?
EDDIE - Look, everyone just shut up, and I can give you the order. Alright? Alright. Now we’ve got a door open at the end of that corridor… Go wedge the door.
MIKE - Alright, I’ve got a wedge.
EDDIE - No, it’s alright. I want someone to cover me as we go in.
ANDREW - Alright.
EDDIE - Okay, look - perp! Hang on, we’ve got a perp. Fall back. Go open the door, I’ll take him.
MIKE - Unlocking now.
EDDIE - Go quickly. Go. Wedge on this door.
ANDREW - Shouldn’t we go in the other way?
EDDIE - I said WEDGE ON THAT DOOR.
ANDREW - Ah, I haven’t got one.
MIKE - Me neither.
ANDREW - I thought you said you did?
MIKE - Yeah, I thought I had, but… I don’t.
EDDIE - Oh for fuck’s sake…