YMMV / Police Quest: SWAT 2

• Awesome Music: The credits music for SWAT 2, Just Another Day in LA, captures the essence of the game perfectly.
• Breather Level: After a tough training level in SWAT 2 and several call outs including one based on the North Hollywood shoot out your element is called out to a airport sniper. Hands down the easiest level in the game, the most difficult part is trying to apprehend the woman who is with the sniper, or whether or not to authorize paying a ransom. Arresting the sniper and clearing the level without a shot fired and top marks is Easier Than Easy. Might be why the opening level to its FPS sequel is more or less an exact rehash of this one.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Selling off the sidearms of unused team members (you have quite a large roster) will mean you'll never run out of money.
  • The tear gas launcher for SWAT solves all issues with use of force, as using it will never result in suspension for your officers (due to it's damage generally being negligible), the gas stuns most enemies for a long duration, and abuse will only net a minor score penalty. Unlike flashbangs, it has unlimited uses, and it's effects can be prevented by wearing a gas mask (which imposes no penalties to your cops). Best of all, it can be carried together with an SMG or a shotgun, and while eventually all terrorists will wear Gas Masks, making it useless, it still makes over half the campaign much easier if you abuse it.
  • For terrorists, the lack of restrictions on using force makes snipers overpowered on any map that has sniping spot. First, you can make the entire cell shoot by selecting it and having everybody's rifles equipped. Second, sniper rifles kill enemies in one shot, and they will shoot as fast as you can click. Combined, this allows you to defeat entire squads of SWAT in only a few seconds, with the AI often failing to even try shooting the snipers.
• Good Bad Bugs: Normally a dead character's inventory is for all intents and purposes gone, and while it's impossible to get enemy items (which is especially bad for SWAT where some suspects carry evidence needed for the good ending.), you can still order dying/outright dead characters to drop their stuff on the ground so other characters can pick them up.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The above bug about selling off sidearms to make a profit became a different sort of humorous when the Los Angeles SWAT team got caught doing exactly that around 2010, albeit doing so for personal gain rather than to get additional funding for the team.
  • There's not a whole lot of games these days that would outright allow you to play as terrorists as SWAT 2 did.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Alternatively, depending on your sense of humor, the aforementioned case of LAPD SWAT selling off their pistols may make the game's exploit funnier.
• Nightmare Fuel: In one pre-mission cutscene, a baddie tries to plant a bomb and accidentally blows himself up in gory fashion. His severed foot ends up flying at the camera.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Hand-to-hand combat. With both sides having this skill, SWAT being able to increase it above 100% with a dog, and terrorists being able to both initiate it and use a knife, one would expect it to be useful in forcing suspects to surrender or defeating cops without them being in the right to shoot you. In practice, however, the AI (even SWAT) will simply react by pulling out a gun in the middle of a fistfight and shooting your character in the face.
• That One Level:
  • SWAT 2's final two missions of the SWAT campaign are one long Marathon Level. The penultimate mission takes place in a huge open space, making it very hard to spot terrorists (many of them snipers) incoming, since the levels have several random presets. You will lose men along the way. The final mission takes place at the debriefing for the second last mission, meaning that you must carry over everyone you had left from the previous mission and are unable to bring any more backup, except for The Chief, who just happened to be present at the debriefing, but is also poorly armed and gives you the bad ending if he dies.
  • Meanwhile, the final two levels of the terrorist campaign might be even worse. The penultimate mission starts off with you being immediately beset upon by SWAT, with your goal being to get as many terrorists (as well as Dante) to the escape vehicles as you can. The SWAT won't hesitate to shoot you, and it's entirely possible to get a game over due to Dante being unlucky enough to be targeted. The next mission, meanwhile, has the same issue of being unable to bring more terrorists, and it also starts you off with Dante being right next to Basho, with several loyalists of Basho to the left and front of him, and a SWAT squad right behind him. If you don't act quickly, be prepared to lose the game due to Dante dying or Basho being the first to get on the escape plane.