Alien Swarm (PC) Review

Valve's new game is a top down shooter where guess what? You get to shoot a lot of aliens, surprising yes it truly is. But does this free game warrant a download or should it be left to the swarm it desperately contains?

First off a story practically does not exist in the game. All you really know is that a colony has been overrun with the Swarm and your team has been sent in too eradicate this little infestation. There isn't any back story about how the Swarm got to be on the colony unless you read PDAs dropped by dead colonists but then again you'll be to busy shooting things to actually care. You also don't play a game like this for a great story, you play it to shoot lots of things.

Play as any one of these loveable rogues

And that's one area this game is great at. You basically never are not shooting something. There isn't a single moment of peace. And to say you go through ammo like crazy isn't an understatement, you'll find yourself constantly on low ammo and dead from the start if someone doesn't carry any ammo satchels for the team. Luckily there is a melee attack to help you out but it becomes mostly useless from the hard difficulty onwards as getting close and personal leads to heavy damage. You can also choose from 4 different classes (officer, special weapons, medic, and tech) with two different characters per class each with different bonuses. You'll always end up with a medic and a tech in a squad though. That does raise one problem a tech is required for most of the levels making it if your tech dies the level goes into a forced restart. Getting to the end of a level just to fail is annoying and once on the insane difficulty the tech and well everyone else gets easily killed. One more thing is the level and unlock system for equipment. Taking the xp system and applying it once again seems like a stale choice but you gain levels rapidly and are never forced to taking the same loadout twice.

The game even has defence sections like Left 4 Dead's finales

Graphically speaking the game uses the Source engine quite nicely which is whats come to be expected from a game engine used as much as Source. One interesting aspect is what the film grain option does for the game. Not so much does it seem like a game but your watching the action from a monitor just watching a squad go through a mission. It gives it a more movie like feel and you can tell where the developers influences lie. Speaking of which you can even get infested by Swarm parasites which results in death unless your medic can heal you quick enough. The game shows just what was an influence and you'd be living under a rock if you couldn't pick up on it.

At the end of the day its a fun and frantic shooter that anyone can just pick up and play. It might be a more repetitive game with only one campaign but this game was meant for the modding community. Its a game you'd want to end up trying, even if only because its free.

-Ryan P.