Daryl F. Gates' Police Quest: SWAT was originally the fifth game in the Police Quest

Police Quest

Police Quest is a series of computer games produced and published by Sierra On-Line between 1987 and 1993. The original series was composed of four adventure games, the first three of which were designed by former policeman Jim Walls, with the fourth title designed by former LAPD Chief Daryl F....

 series (but spawned the SWAT series). It is an interactive movie

Interactive movie

An interactive movie is a video game that features highly cinematic presentation and heavy use of scripting, often through the use of full-motion video of either animated or live-action footage.-Philosophy:...

 type game released in 1995 that suffered the same fate as most titles of the same genre released during the so-called Multimedia Explosion in the mid-nineties. With extensive use of FMV videos

Full motion video

Full motion video based games are video games that rely upon pre-recorded TV-quality movie or animation rather than sprites, vectors, or 3D models to display action in the game. In the early 1990s a diverse set of games utilized this format...

 for its basic gameplay, the game took up four CDs

CD-ROM

A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....

. As the game and its predecessor did not encounter commercial success, it would take three years until a new game in the Police Quest series would be released (Police Quest: SWAT 2

Police Quest: SWAT 2

Police Quest: SWAT 2 is the sixth game in the Police Quest series . It is an isometric view, squad-level RTT game in the mold of the classic X-Com or Jagged Alliance games. The game takes place in real-time, with the player issuing orders to individual SWAT team members from a three-quarter...

).

Gameplay

In keeping the rule strictness of the previous series, the majority of the game is spent in repetitive training exercises. In fact, there are only 3 actual missions in the game (a deranged grandmother, a barricaded fugitive, and a terrorist attack). Each of the missions can only be accessed after the successful completion of many training exercises. To increase replay value, the missions are randomized so that they unfold in a different way each time (a character may be an innocent in one play-through, and a gun-wielding maniac in another). The role the player takes during the mission also differs based on the career path they have selected during training; for example during the last mission the player may act as either the element leader or a high-ground sniper.

Reissue

SWAT was rereleased under the Police Quest Collection Series compilation (along with the first four games in the series), and later the Police Quest: SWAT Generation collection (with SWAT 2 and SWAT 3).

The game is listed as Police Quest 5 (PQ5) in the file names, folder, and the credits. The number does not appear on the title screen.

External links