SWAT 4's plotless carnage-romp through the underbelly of Boston is swept aside in this fine expansion pꦰack of eight missions, tracking down the Eastern European crime family known only as The Stetchkov Syndicate.

There's still a four-man team to lead into battle in a t😼actical FPS, but this time the management sys💯tem has been enhanced with stackable orders.

Put simply, you can order your men to do something straight away, or hold on until you give the go signal. It's a simple𝓡 tweak that opens a range of new tactics, and you don't feel like a mother duck leading her gaggle of excitable younglings around.

You can lay down orders, plan and execute manoeuvres, all from SWAT's excellent righ🐠t-click menu. Hold down Ctrl and the orders are delayed until you're ready to go. It's exactly what SWAT needs.

More tangible additions are the Night-vision mode that helpsꦑ steer you through one of the darkest games we've ever played. A new tazer sits on your hip and is beefed up to launch a pair of darts, especially when tackling stubborn granni🅺es, erm... we mean criminals.

The already brilliant multipla♋yer also gets a boost with voice commun🍨ications and a doubling of your potential co-op chums to 10.

The Stetchkovs exist to give meaning to the locations you visit. The original game didn't do plot between missions; just people in ♏peril. Here, each mission is a level in its own right, and takes you one step closer to busting Boston's most notorious drugs 🍬cartel.

Wh♊at's more, Irrational's open-ended jumble of buildings, corridors and rooms ensures nothing remains the same from play to play.

We always enjoyed the choice of locations in the parent game, such as the cultists with a horrendous secret hidden in t♓heir basement. It was a step away from the traditional tactical shooter warehouses.

The Stetchkov Syndicate takes that sense of style up a notc𝓀h as you flit through a church rammed with recovering junkies in one level, then sweep into a rock club with a massive devil statue the next. Excellent.