SWAT 3: Tactical Game of the Year Edition
Skip · Shooter · 2017
Steam Deck UnsupportedThe verdict
SKIP IT.
It scores 18, under the fair line, at $9.99.
- Length
- 10.9h 28.9h to 100%
- Value
- $0.92/hr
- Reviews
- 66% of 368 positive
Watch this gameOne alert at a price you pick.
Buy now or wait
Discounted in each of its last 8 seasonal sales. Last cut ended 11 days ago.
- Next sale
- Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
What drives the score
How to read this
Grades run S to D, read from the buyer's side. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
About the game
Uncompromised duty, honor and valor.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 256 MB of memory, DirectX 7 Compatible 3D Card, 1 GB of storage. Windows only.
The value story
56 discounts in the 10 years on record, a median of 35 percent off across all of them, roughly 6 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended 11 days ago.
It is less well reviewed than 79 percent of its genre. Among the games that feel like it, Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 ($4.99, scores 64) beats it on value, while it beats Onward ($24.99, scores 15).
More about SWAT 3: Tactical Game of the Year Edition
This site sampled 211 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 6 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written April 2020 to August 2026. That is more refunded reviewers than 9 in 10 paid games this site has sampled to the same depth, and among the 1,422 games in its genre sampled this deeply, 80 have a larger share. The typical game sits near 5 in 1,000, so the score docks it. Inside the two-hour refund window, 47 percent of the 171 reviews written there were positive, against 66 percent overall, and those are 49 percent of everything written about it.
The main story runs 10.9 hours. Doing everything runs 29, 2.7 times as long.
What players say
Ignore negative reviews, you can play the game by only installing last resort mod and dgVoodoo2. AI in this game aged like fine wine. Devs really don't have an excuse when a game from 1999 can have an AI this good. The game only has 2 flaws. Firstly, you can only give clear command on edges of the entrances, this causes some issues for very long tunnels that only have one direction. Secondly, officers can't open...
2 more reviews, 1 not recommended
SWAT 3: Tactical Game of the Year Edition, developed by Sierra and published by Activision, remains one of the most defining examples of grounded tactical first-person design-a game that deliberately distances itself from the explosive, run-and-gun shooters that dominated its era. Set in a near-future Los Angeles on the eve of an international summit, the game frames its missions around realistic crisis scenarios...
Even with unofficial patches for SWAT 3: Tactical Game of the Year Edition fails to be anything more than a relic of a bygone era. As with all video games from the 90s, even when supposedly updated years later, the controls are maddening, enemies blend in easily with their low-resolution environments, and no optimization has been provided for modern devices, as demonstrated by the intense frame drops that occur when...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic), achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
SWAT 3: Tactical Game of the Year Edition scores 18/100 on the BANG Score (a skip) as of Oct 19, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/560370/swat-3-tactical-game-of-the-year-editionReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 29, price as of Oct 18. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.