Alien Swarm is a recently released free PC game developed by Valve, maker of the hit survival horror game Left 4 Dead.

It is a 3D top-down shooter with a survival horror touch to it. The game has Steam Cloud support and features only one campaign which comprises of several missions, each lasting for about 10 minutes or so. It is a short game, but it is meant to be replayed over and over again. Alien Swarm really emphasize on team tactics with the different classes and different weapons at your disposal. There are a few alien types that you will encounter and they are not a walk in the park. You will really have to work together to have a higher chance of survival.

Familiar Game Ideas

There are four games that came to my mind as I was playing it: Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Gears of War and Modern Warfare 2. This is a survival horror game that features 4-player cooperative gameplay. As you play, you can gain level and unlock new weapons to help you survive in this alien infested planet. The game has been developed such that it is pretty much impossible to go through it yourself. You have to work together with your team mates and even then, you may get killed.

Before every mission, you can choose your character class and then your weapon loadout. There are tons of different combinations so find the one that suits you best. When your profile reaches the highest level possible in the game (level 27), you can choose to “prestige” it and earn special emblems which does not do anything other than giving you bragging rights. However in exchange, your weapons will be wiped clean and you have to re-unlock them again.

As aliens are swarming and you are firing away that futuristic-looking gun of yours, you may want to pay attention to a little bar at the bottom left of the screen. This bar represents active reload. Whenever you reload your gun (press R), an indicator will pass through this bar and when you hit R again at the marker, reloading will be done quickly and you can fire again.

Well, doesn’t all this sound familiar to you?

Easy Controls, Medium Learning Curves

Like pretty much any other Valve games, the controls are kept to the minimum so if you are new to their control scheme, it won’t take you long to familiarize yourself with it. However, it will take some time to get used to the gameplay. Even if you forget, there will be random helpful tutorial pop-ups as you can see from the screenshot.

As I have stated above, this is a top-down shooter. It may sound easy at first because you only need to worry about horizontal aiming, but you may need some time to get used to it. It may also take some time for you to realize all the weapons and equipments that you have at your disposal. Since the aliens are quick and they come in packs you will be busy firing away, dodging projectiles, constantly trying to keep close to your team mates and so on. It is easy to forgot that sometimes your guns have an alternate firing mode, or you have grenades that you can throw.

There are also little useful tactics that you can take note of. For example, the placement of your aiming reticle on screen will affect your field of view. If i move it all the way to the right, the camera will be shifted to the right as well and therefore you can only see a little bit of the left side. Moving it to the middle of the screen (on your character) will allow equal distribution to the field of view. This can be very advantageous when used correctly.

Don’t worry though, all these just require practice and they should be easy to comprehend after a while.

Offline Practice Helps

If you feel that it is still difficult to get the hang of things, you can try the Offline Practice. Over here you will be playing through the missions with computer AI as your team mates. You can order them to do specific tasks like reinforcing a door. Without public players, you can take your time and experiment with all the different classes and weapons. So far, I think I have used this mode to practice on the active reload and also get to know some of the hacking puzzles that the Tech class will encounter in the different missions. Especially for active reload, it is difficult to notice the bar representing it as it is quite small so you will need to direct your whole attention to spotting it, taking your eyes off all the action and leaving your character unprotected.

If you want, you can also create a friends-only game so only people from your friend list will be able to join in. However if most of your friends are jerks then you are better off with Offline Practice.

Finding That Sweet Weapons Combination

This is the type of game that has forums filled with threads debating on what is the best weapons combination. In my opinion, all weapons are deadly enough (even the basic assault rifle) as long as you are accurate and be mindful of the gun’s effective range. So just try them out and go for what you feel is nice.

For me, my favorite weapon is probably the flamethrower accompanied with the Tesla cannon. I chose it because it suits my friends’ play style. They like to rush through maps so speed is important. Both the flamethrower and Tesla cannon are able to slow down aliens, making it easier to dodge them and create a temporary path for my team. Even if I am playing with public players, I still find the weapons to be useful because I can use them to get myself and my team mates out of sticky situations.

Hey, Aliens Are Pretty Tough!

I am really shocked at just how difficult this game is. Even when it is set on Normal difficulty, there is still a decent chance that you may get killed by just the normal aliens. They may have little health, but they are fast and they come in hordes. As you progress through the game, you will encounter different alien types. So far,I think the most troublesome is a small yellow one. It moves quickly and if it gets to a certain distance to you, it will leap and stick onto you, sucking your life away. When this happens, your only chance of survival is to have a medic deploy a healing station and just stay near it for constant healing until it decides to bug off.

So far, I have not come across any boss fights in the missions that I have played. There may be some in later missions but the game is entertaining enough without them.

Careful On The Trigger

Ammunitions are quite easily spent in this game. If you are a trigger-happy person you will find yourself constantly running dry. This may sound like a “no brainer”, but when the game starts to get hectic you will be surprised. There may or may not be ammo piles in a mission to aid you. If you want to be careful it won’t hurt to equip the supply box although you will only be allowed to take one weapon with you.

Also, it is important to note that reloading your weapon will discard any ammunitions left in that magazine. If you just came out of playing Modern Warfare 2, then you may need some time to get used to this, wasting lots of ammo in the process.

Game Looks Really Decent

There are tons of free games out there with just “okay” graphics, but Alien Swarm looks really nice and well polished. Judging from the screenshots, it feels like a proper $10 game. It runs on Valve’s source engine which still seems to be holding up really well. The zoomed out view may help with the overall quality, but even when I accessed first-person view (its a code you can type in the console) the models and textures are still decent looking.

Connection Error & Noticeably Long Loading Time

This should only be a temporary issue, but for now I am getting some sort of connection error for every 5 out of 8 games that I try to join. Before the error message appears, you will be stuck at a loading screen for a couple of seconds which is really annoying. Even if you manage to connect to a game, the loading time will still be noticeably long. So for now, joining a game is like a dice roll and you will only know whether or not you have successfully connected to one after a couple of seconds

Community Is Not Very Nice…

This may not be true to some people but from what I have experienced in my several hours of gameplay, players do not hesitate to kick you if they see that you are level 1. As I have stated above, it is already quite difficult to get into a game. Now with players kicking newcomers, joining games is really becoming a dreaded thing for me. Not everybody will experience this but for those of you who did, just get a friend to play with. Although we should not encourage these kind of attitude, it does goes to show that the aliens really mean business.

The game does not have an option to turn off friendly fire, so you can just imagine the amount of frustration when playing with jerks.

Possible Future Mods/DLC

When I was looking at the available filters that the game has allowed me to tweak, I came across something called “add-on”. Looking at how this is a Valve game, there is a good chance that the modding community will be busy creating lots of crazy things for it. I believe that Valve will release official downloadable contents in the future, like maybe another full campaign. However, it will come to no surprise if they decide to charge them.

Final Thoughts

Alien Swarm is a decent game that is fun to play with a group of friends. You will still enjoy your time if you can get into a good lage-free public game, but friends are still the way to go. Even if this game does not sound or look like your cup of tea, it won’t hurt to download it and check it out since it is free. Who knows, you may come to like it a lot and make some nice online friends in the process!