I was a big fan of SWAT 3, which I felt was always unfairly overlooked in favor of Rainbow 6. In my opinion SWAT 3 had better AI, level design, and realism. The interface for controlling your team did not allow you to plan in detail like in Rainbow 6, but was quick and easy enough that it’s very simple to keep tight control over your team and use them effectively.
Well, the SWAT 4 demo seems to be just as good as SWAT 3, but with much better graphics. The neat thing about the demo is that though it’s a single level, the location and morale of the suspects and civilians are different every time you play. It freaked me out the third time I played and a bad guy bumped one of my teammates with the door at the entry point - nobody was near the door the first two times, and it totally changed the flow of the mission. There is also an editor in the demo that lets you customize that one mission - you can make the bad guys insanely fearless or ready to drop their guns at the first show of force, decide how many, etc. Lots of replay value.
It’s a thinking-mans FPS. You can finish a mission never firing a shot yourself, just leading your team through the building and reporting back when they found hostages or enemies, or you can do it Rambo style. To get the best score you have to finish the mission without harming anyone, including the enemies. You get some points if you injure them but take them alive, but no points for enemies neutralized. You also have to be methodical and pick up weapons dropped by enemies…this hasn’t happened yet in SWAT 4, but I remember a couple of times in SWAT 3 a suspect who was supposedly compliant but not cuffed yet ran off and grabbed an unsecured weapon. My best score so far (on medium difficulty) was 62. I got docked 10 points on one for firing my weapon in the ceiling when I couldn’t get a civilian to put his hands up to be restrained, hoping he’d take me more seriously if I did it A-Team style. It didn’t help, either, the guy ran off.