[quote][b]Note: Dead PvP game[/b]
This game contains no meaningful single player content. There's no viably populated servers/active player population. This game cannot be played as intended.[/quote]
[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtransaction]Warning: In-Game Cash Shop[/url][/b]
This game is infested with a toxic mobile app style cash shop. You will be prompted to and expected to give money/credit card details to the developers through this cash shop to buy in-game goods so you can play the game.[/quote]
[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b]
"SWAT" is one of literally thousands of creatively bankrupt asset flips/kitbashes infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere.[/quote]
This is a laughably bad asset flip... while it's called "SWAT", the developers used a military soldier asset and of course the maps make no sense... medieval castle asset packs? But then you look at the weird price they tried to sell this for and the appalling embedded mobile app style cash shop, and it all makes sense. This is nothing but an attempt to get YOUR MONEY for someone else's game assets. This is not okay.
So, "SWAT" is partially or completely made up of stock assets, "borrowed" from asset stores and free asset websites. Little, if anything in this game is the creation of the "developer".
While there's no up front price for this asset flip, the other problem with asset flips is that when developers aren't capable of doing their job and creating high quality assets, it's also true they can't do any of the rest of the job of a game developer either. That's definitely true for "SWAT", and this kind of asset flipping never results in games that have quality or value for PC gamers.
This game is fairly dated at 5 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now.
On the important matter of pricing and value for gamers, there's a lot going on here with monetisation, so this really shouldn't be considered a truly free product because of that.
There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $12 USD for this.
Price barriers, especially on low quality products, can be a direct cause of failure. It seems like a nice gesture for the game to have no up-front cost anymore, but it also tells us that the game wasn't good enough to succeed as a paid product. This is also a bit of a slap in the face to anyone who showed enough questionable judgement to pay money for this... nobody got refunded.
It doesn't stop there, this game is also infested with mobile app store like microtransactions. This is a consumer hostile model that we don't need to see on PC. It's deceptively priced to gouge gamers, and that's a reason in itself to avoid this.
A peak of [b]7 concurrent players[/b] (according to SteamDB) for a "free" game is a disastrous public reception. Out of 130 million potential players here on Steam, almost nobody was interested. Even though this is "free". That level of rejection speaks a lot for the quality of the game.
All other issues aside (any of which would disqualify this from being worth your time), this is a game that relies on other players for it to be viable, and because there's not enough players, it's not viable. I can't recommend anyone downloads this, it's basically dead.
Remember what I often say... if you don't agree with what I've said about this game, by all means add it to your library and play it. My review is just here to inform your decision, and if you think I was wrong and you downloaded the game, then I've done what I really wanted to do... inform your decision.
