SWAT: Target Liberty review

Who could believe that after such an expensive launch, dubious battery life and unergonomic design that the PSP would prove itself to be such a good home to some excellent handheld titles. From the technologically impressive Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops to the old-fashioned brilliant design of Final Fantasy Tactics, the latest generation of games on the system regularly take advantage of the unique quirks of the machine, perfectly suited to portable play. Truly, the console finally has the software to catch up with the hype. Sadly, SWAT: Target Liberty isn't one of those games, and fails as a modern handheld game on almost every level.You could almost forgive the uninspiring visuals as deliberately subdued and realistic this is a game set in that concrete jungle of New York after all were it not for the fact the Technicolor spaz-attack of plot, characters, and dubious tactics the game throws at you with giddy abandon would make an episode of Ugly Betty seem tame. It's a whole game in itself trying to work out how one of The Shield's writers managed to contrive a plot that a third-rate techno-thriller hack would find unrealistic. Sure, Korean gang warfare is almost a good backdrop for events, but why throw in an Iranian terrorist plot and a North Korean nuclear weapon? It isn't even possible to enjoy it as some unintentionally hilarious B-game, the FMV cut-scenes being so horrible to watch and the quality of the audio so ear-rupturingly awful that every line of dialogue simply moves the player's thumb ever closer to the Skip button, a desire to bypass whatever is on-screen that continues during play.There's a sense when tottering through the lengthy missions on offer that this is was a game waiting for a platform to find itself on rather than being designed from the ground up for a portable console. Leaving for now the horrifyingly large levels players must trudge across it would be a rare gamer who didn't emit an audible moan the first time they checked the map screen the pacing is woeful. For a supposed action game, the two speeds of the controllable SWAT team are limited to gentle stroll and aggressive mince, the only distinguishing features of either seemingly in the way they're animated. Merely bothersome for much of the game, when faced with a time-limited mission or the rapid arrival of the end of a lunch break it becomes downright infuriating. Even trying to co-ordinate a squad's movements, when either they or their adversaries will be dead by the time they get three feet, neuters any chance of tactical planning and renders much of the game's selling-point pointless.Not that tactical planning is entirely possible either. The close-in, top-down viewpoint, while working well in turn-based releases such as Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War, is far too limiting, locked as it is on the main character and preventing any way of directing team-members on screen. It's unlikely that the real NYPD SWAT team would only be able to see ten yards in any direction, and the experience of dragging your useless AI companions across dull, grey environment after dull, grey environment with no knowledge of what is ahead and no way of coordinating ahead of time how to respond to it is demoralising. The only time players are given the possibility to interact with the game, rather than merely wandering through it triggering off events, is when it comes to breeching doorways - and even then the choices on offer don't fundamentally make any difference.Target Liberty is a game so clunky, dated and downright unlovable that between its miserable graphics, woeful presentation and tedious gameplay it feels more like a late-90s budget PC release than a premium PSP game with a price-tag to match, and playing it is as pointless and unrewarding an enterprise as you're likely to get for 30. While the team behind it should be congratulated for providing enough missions, modes and FMV to make it feel like a complete title, anyone who gets this for Christmas will be wondering why they bothered making it at all.