Honestly? I think there's probably promise. But it needs a lot of work to get to where it probably should be.

I've just come out of a high-risk warrant solo (with AI) run, purely to test in the High Life level, and come away with three unauthorised uses of force. Two of which were deadly.

1. The suspect feigned surrender, then continued to shoot. When he raised his weapon, I shot him and that was apparently unauthorised.
2. A similar thing happened except the suspect animated to his knees, then proceeded to get up, and took one to the shoulder. Apparently, his death was unauthorised.
3. Outright refusal to surrender to the point that he'd taken that many bullets, he died. Unauthorised.

The only one that sort of makes sense to me there is the third one. But I don't think that's intentional.

Here are some issues that I experienced specifically in this playthrough, while fresh in the mind:

- Civilians do not want to surrender. Or hide. Or be responsive. 80-90% of the time. I'm spamming F in front of you, this isn't gameplay, it's irritation. Get on the floor before I just shoot you and sacrifice the score.
- Suspects, maybe more understandably so, also do not want to surrender. But if you've taken two flash grenades then neglected to flee and, instead, animate then consider to shoot, full-auto, you're going to get shot. And that, apparently, is also an unauthorised use of (deadly) force.
- The weapon light is next to useless unless you're in a hallway and, even then, if it's a long one, it's not going to be particularly helpful.
- The officer AI, even with non-lethal shotguns, are incredibly lethal.

Most of those do fall into every other game though and, gameplay aside, here are some other issues that are frequent sticking points:

- The doors don't make a whole lot of sense. Especially the single-opposing animations. I'm sure everyone has been plagued by standing in a doorway, attempting to call for compliance, and had the door shut in their face.
- The officer AI is, fundamentally, reckless. They shoot without restraint as much as the suspects do which makes a perfect run very hard.
- I don't know if I've missed a tooltip or an explanation somewhere; scoring seems very convoluted. I've somehow got a perfect score on one level without scoring a thousand. If the scores are actually run through a threshold then why not fall back to just using grades?
- Like I mentioned, the flashlight feels incredibly weak at distance. They also feel incredibly bright up close. It's like the range is being consumed by the environmental fog, which is fine, but point lights could definitely be handled a lot cleaner. If anything, the flash grenades also seem to exacerbate the environment fog being very strong by the way it consumes a whole area.
- I've played since the voice recordings have changed for the player's officer, but sound overall could be somewhat more refined. There's not a huge amount of variance in things like doors, foot steps, shots.
- The UI as well feels like it could use some more thought. It's very prototype-era - which is fine. And I don't know if this is on the roadmap but it could definitely use some attention.

I've never played the previous SWAT games (although, I do want to) and I'm trying to avoid any comparisons to Ready or Not because that feels like the wrong ode-to, entirely. But I do think there's still some work to do before I can sit down and play this with friends without getting bored after less than an hour.

That being said, it's evident that a lot of work has gone into it and the developers are listening and making changes. I'll keep checking back after updates either way because I think this could end up in a very good place as long as development ticks along.

To make one reference to Ready or Not though: with the way things have been going with Void in the past six months, I don't think it'd be too hard for SWAT Commander to pull ahead in its own sect of tactical shooters.

Absolutely terrible. Broke (hard-locked) on the tutorial, not even going to tell you why, should have figured that out in a alpha, beta or anything before the release, this is just silly to be honest with you. Unplayable. Also read the reviews, this is a mess.
I had patience for ready or not to become better and changed my review when they did but this... This is not one of those things.

I get it. You guys thought, we can do that, that's cool, we can do even better.
Nah, it's not that easy and this is just not what gamers are looking for.
AI, mechanics, all of it, it's just really poorly written by people who are very inexperienced.
The only thing that is half decent is the graphics but nowadays that isn't impressive at all.

If there where very clear indicators on that you're turning this whole thing around, fixing everything, expanding, I'd be intrigued but I can see new voices? Really? That's what is happening here? Come on. Go grab someone else's money, don't be silly with me.

This whole game needs bug fixing, giant overhaul, ux optimization, you need to get someone that is actually good at ai coding/staging, this is not fun. Read the genuine reviews, the criticism, would you play this yourself? Ask yourself that. I love games, played them too much, make them from scratch at low level and I personally wouldn't but I'm glad if you enjoyed the process and these minutes of fame but that's still my money in your pocket for something that isn't even functional or enjoyable.

You might say opinions differ. I wouldn't agree with that on this matter.

Take care.

its like ready or not but closer to swat 4 with janky simulator controls and design which i don't think its bad its very enjoyable with a decent amount of content plus it features a custom game mode allowing you to make your own missions within the maps the gunplay and controls need a lot of work its very easy to hit the wrong button like reloading or trying to yell for suspects to comply

the game wants to be taken very seriously very edgy very gritty but ends up being so over the top that its a meme and just dowright funny because of how the game currently plays the first mission has body parts all over the place and funny looking models of the sketchy looking dudes plus the game is mostly just shooting suspects atm due to the janky controls