Sellers Street Auditorium

1801 Sellers Street: This week the boys from Rampart Division are called in to put down a violent radical Christian uprising that just so happens to manifest itself in a local music club that appears to cater to hardcore death metal music fans that are particularly inhospitable to the police trying to rescue them.

As mentioned in previous reviews you cannot overtly kill a suspect and win a mission on Elite Mode, so I brought along the core package of pepperball guns, etc. and for the first time in this series I decided to take an alternative entrance, this mission being the Rear Loading Dock, Side 3, Level 1.

There are two entrances into this loading dock, and in order not to be swept from behind early on I placed a wedge on one of the doors, and moved the team through the large double doors. In attacking the stage area, it is almost always better to go at it from the interior side instead of coming at it from one of the customer entrances out on the floor.

This is definitely a mission where you do not want to sit back as Element Lead and order your bots around to do all of the dirty work - there are too many cross-fire opportunities for the AI to employ against other AI (and unsuspecting humans). It is essential that when a suspect is identified through an Optiwand sweep, you personally do your own view and evaluate the probable success of a breach, bang and clear order.

While Level One is a challenge, the real meat and potatoes of this mission lie on Level Two. The restaurant area in particular can be extremely difficult with multiple entrances, angles, alcoves and very poor lighting in spots. A flash bang or two into the center dining area may not have any effect on a suspect hanging out back in the kitchen behind the center island.

All told it took me five tries at this to win the mission, and I scored 95 and not 100 because one of my officers was dinged in a firefight. None of us had any lethal weapons to have put down a suspect, and although I had calls for multiple shots from Sierra One and Two, I did not take any as this would result in a mission loss on Elite Mode.

Other thoughts: In one of the plays prior to winning, I had planted a C2
charge and blew a door which disabled a suspect (could not restrain), but the game did not deduct any points for this in the debriefing.

Without a doubt, The Stetchkov Syndicate expansion pack is definitely harder on Elite Mode than the original SWAT 4.