Whenever I try to start the game it says Cant set 2d mode and then stops working I assume windows 8 is to blame (it usually is whenever i try to play something that didn't come out yesterday) any advice?

Try starting the game in a window. Basically you have to add the "-window" option to the launcher.

1) Create a shortcut to the program, located at <path-to-game>\Swat.exe.
2) Right click on the shortcut and choose "Properties".
3) Add -window to the end of the Target.
4) Click OK.

Just wanted to say I get this if I use my tv as a monitor over HDMI because it doesn't support resolutions under 1024x768 and -window wouldn't work as it couldn't display 16bit colour depth either.

The only fix I found was to use the Last Resort Mod:

http://www.swat3lastresort.info/mod/index.php

so that I could set the menus to a higher resolution.

They've been really good in making the mod in that you can turn off all the new features bar the resolution settings with a big button on the top right corner of its' launching window, so you can still play stock (vanilla) Swat 3. There is one thing to be aware of which they make clear on the site, the second launch of their custom launcher window will crash on Windows 8 unless you set Windows 7 compatibility mode.

I haven't installed their re-encoded versions of the intro movies but I will say that whether I have standard movies turned on or off they don't play for me and the game takes a seriously long time to load now, but once in-game it's fine.

Should also note (don't know if this is required or not with this mod) that I'm using the libwine dll files as mentioned in another thread on the gog forum for fixing the slow performance bugs in Windows 8 and above.

I know this thread is getting on a bit now but it comes up as one of the top hits when googling for the 2d error so hopefully anyone else who gets here will find this as a reasonable solution.

Chief :)