In particular, the system is strangely flaky, often managing to forget your first order by the time the second is in place. In reality of course, things can still go tits-up. Once everyone's in place, you give the go-command and your lads pile in with clockwork precision and arrest everyone (hopefully). So, if you've got a room with multiple entry points, you can set the red team at the front door poised to 'open, gas and clear', stick the blue team on the back door ready to 'breach and clear', while you either take another door, control one of the sniper views or just mill around shouting things. In single-player, the big news is 'held commands', where you can set delayed orders for your teams and then initiate them later. You can even vote for a new leader mid-level - especially handy if your man breaks down and reveals a history of alcohol abuse. Of course, there's also quite a bit of material that falls under the category of 'quite good things that should've been there in the first place', including proper voice comms (hoorah), night-vision goggles, an ammo pouch for carrying extra clips, a skin-chooser for multiplayer and, answering one of our biggest beefs with the original game, the option of selecting a team leader in co-op games - a crucial addition that brings a badly-needed dose of order to the online chaos. Yes, in the most part Stetchkov is just your basic, contractually-obligated mission disk with a brace of new levels and a handful of petty changes that could easily have turned up in a patch.Д«ut despite the initially lightweight impressions, there are two or three features here that are actually pretty great, and (assuming you've already enjoyed the main game), will bring new joy to your law enforcement adventures. In practice, however, it's a more promising story.

Along similar lines are new enemy pistols and machine guns (only Americans care for such things), a vague semblance of plot and some minor server browser improvements. Some particularly redundant additions include delights such as 'new armour type: no armour' - a negative option presumably offered for madmen who'd rather lighten their load than stop a bullet entering their chest cavity. The Stetchkov Syndicate - the first expansion pack for last year's crackingly good tactical shooter - my reactions went something like this: 'Who cares, so what, should've been in the first game, big deal, ooh that's quite good, who cares.' In other words, it's not all that impressive, on paper at least. Scanning Down The list of new features available in SWAT4:

Swat 4 voice commands