Target Liberty is certainly not a quick game. Your squad's move speed is fairly low (even with supposedly "running" while holding down the Circle Button), but the idea is to take things slowly, both out in the open and in close quarters. To help with entry into a room, a branching menu can be opened by holding the Triangle Button or Circle Buttons while pointing at a door. From here, you can throw a mirror under the door and learn the position of any occupants, pick a lock, check for a door bomb, or breach the room with your squad, lobbing in gas or flashbangs as needed.

Eventually, though, it's going to come down to opening fire, and the game isn't shy about providing shootouts. Though you can crouch behind cover by pressing down on the d-pad (up toggles a weapon's firing mode from single to semi-auto to full-auto, and left and right switch weapons), the real key is picking out targets with the L Button. By holding the shoulder button down, all targets in the room are given a face button, which you can then hit to lock all your normal X Button firing to that target. It's a fairly simple system, and when the firefights get a little crazy, it works quite well -- especially in conjunction with cover.

Though the game is still early and sports a handful of AI quirks and a buggy ragdoll system that sees enemies standing still and sucking up bullets or randomly spazzing out and flipping through the air after they've died, Target Liberty is a fairly impressive looking game. The isometric viewpoint allows the game to spit out plenty of small-scale detail, from semis to railroad cars to just a smattering of crates or office cubicles. Being isometric, walls could be a problem, but the game leaves a gridded outline around you, your squad, and identified enemies to make things as clear as possible.

It's still a little too early to call the audio, though. We heard plenty of the same lines said over and over again -- even by people on different levels -- and there were instances where a female target was called "him," but for the most part the voice acting is solid. Right now, there's only one effect for the weapons fire (at least we hope there'll be more than one), but the audio that is burped out of the PSP's little speakers is surprisingly clear.

SWAT: Target Liberty, above all else, feels like something that belongs on the PSP, which is definitely a good thing. The pacing can feel a little sluggish at times and the camera presents a rather blind viewpoint in some situations, but overall it seems like 3G Studios is doing a fine job of combining the two disparate halves of the SWAT franchise into one game, and with a storyline written by The Shield writer Scott Rosenbaum it'll hopefully have a strong narrative too. We'll have more on the game soon.