Review: Alien Swarm

Alien Swarm
Released  date: July 19, 2010 | Price: Free| PC-Steam

Available free from Steam, Alien Swarm is an action packed 4-player coop game. The players have to fight their way through wave after wave of aliens with 3 other teammates in order to eradicate all the aliens on the icy off-world mining colony.

Story
Just like Left 4 Dead, there is not much of a story in this game. The game moves from objective to objective, with voice communications from the superior passed down to the players. Sometime it’s to start up the reactor, and other times he needs the team to go blow up a pipe. This is not a story-driven game, but the simple objectives do help the players feel the nervous tension surrounding each level.


Graphic
Alien Swarm is a very beautiful game. Each player views their marine from top-down – think of it as a Diablo-style shooter. Even from a top-down view, the depth and attention to detail is stunning. The game is also slightly scary, with explosions, fireballs, creepy flashes in the shadows and aliens that jump from overhead or crawl out from underneath the pipes. There are some clipping issues on occasion, where the marine rag doll will go through boxes or other objects, but overall the game looks really good.

Gameplay
The gameplay of Alien Swarm is what really stands out to me. There are 4 Classes in the game: Officer, Spec-Op, Medic, Tech. To be a productive team, each player must pick a different class. Once classes are picked, players need to pick their primary and secondary items. The items range from rifles, flame throwers and lightning guns to med packs, ammo packs and sentry guns (Many items need to be unlocked first by leveling up). The players also need to pick up action items like  a welder or a team damage boost. The whole game is purely based on team work, the team needs a tech to open doors and access terminals. The medic needs to keep an eye on the whole team dropping group healing med packs when needed. The officer boosts the attack power of all the teammates around him. The spec-op has some unique weapons that deal large amount of damage. If one of the team members decides to run ahead, the whole team will definitely fall apart.

Alien Swarm also takes elements from other games and implements them in different areas. Like the hand welder, which is very similar to Natural Selection’s welder. The game also uses Gears of War’s reload mechanism.

The whole game is very challenging and very fun when you have 3 other friends to team up with. Everyone should really try this game out, and you cannot really argue with the price.

Review Score:   9/10