Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A couple of weekends ago Alec and I got together with some journalist chums and dragged computers and a folding table into our friend’s lounge. It was the JournoLAN: a tea-and-biscuits PC hookup in an editor’s comfortable home. In there we mucked about installing patches and discussed the error messages being displayed by a desyncing instance of Supreme Commander. We also played SWAT4. It was incredible.

I’d previously enjoyed SWAT4 when I played it at review, but the attention paid to the multiplayer section was reduced to a couple of distracted lunchtimes in a noisy magazine office. To my disappointment, we never really got to grips with it. This time, however, we were determined to get stuck in, and the co-op takedowns were absolutely riveting.
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Here’s an interesting FPS oddity: a mod created for training Canadian Federal Law Enforcement folks, now freely available for the Federal Law Enforcement training needs of you and me at home.

The project was created using the truly excellent SWAT4 (that’s an Irrational game, development-history fans) and includes a number of custom weapons and playable civilians, that training types can use to make the best-laid plans of their trainees go awry. The agencies responsible have even included their contact details for training tips for other police-folk to make the most of the mod.

The training project was created with help from the 10-David SWAT gaming fan community. Good work, chaps.