Alien Swarm First Impressions

As you all know Valve has just released Alien Swarm on Steam recently and believe it or not, it’s completely free. Alien Swarm started as a UT2004 co-op mod in which soldiers had to fight their way through the swarm of aliens. It was one of the best mods for UT2004 and now Valve did an amazing remake so let’s see what does Alien Swarm has to offer to us.

Just like the original Alien Swarm mod for UT2004 this one is top-down co-op shooter. You need to assemble team of four people and complete the certain objectives in order to advance further in campaign. As for your people you have a choice of eight different characters and four classes which means that each class has two different characters. Each character has unique stats and if you want to make it through the Alien Swarm, you have to assemble your team carefully. Four available classes are Officer, Special Weapons, Medic and Tech with their unique set of weapons and features. Interesting thing is that certain weapons are locked for certain classes while there are weapons that each class can use. So you won’t see any Medic or Tech running with minigun although all of them can carry ammo and heath kits. Speaking of health and ammo supply one character will always have to carry ammo supply for other players. Ammo supply will take one of your weapon slots but it’s really useful if you run out of ammo out there on the field. Same goes for medkits, you won’t find many of them out there on the field so it’s up to your team to rationalize its supplies. Besides that, you gain levels by completing missions and that way you’ll unlock all sorts of new and improved weapons. There are additional items available such as flares and shields that you unlock as well. Interesting item is Hand Wielder that will allow you to seal and unseal doors and keep that way aliens out. Especially on higher difficulty levels this game will make you feel like you’re in Aliens movie and you’ll really have to plan each your move if you want to survive. There are certain objectives that you have to fulfill on each map before you can advance to the next one and usually those objectives will require a certain class in your team such as Tech to hack certain doors or computers. You can even choose several different routes through each level and you can easily exchange weapons with other team members if they run out of ammo. Interesting thing is that you can write down your own route on the minimap in order to show other players where they need to move. Like I said, it’s all about planning, co-op and survival in this game and you’ll certainly die if you don’t work together since you’ve been outnumbered. As for the enemies there are several types and some of them will require different approach and tactic if you want to defeat them. Overall, Alien Swarm is a great game even though it’s completely free to play. I didn’t have much time to spend with this game but from what I saw this game looks promising enough and it can keep you occupied for few days if you’re into co-op top-down shooters.

Only problem that I had with this game is the annoying lobby system that has been inherited from Left 4 Dead. That thing works awful and it took more than 15 minutes to find a proper map to play. There’s no information about how many players are playing certain map or how big your ping is so in most of cases you’ll be assigned to a random server with random number of players. Only thing that you can choose it’s the difficulty level and type of maps that you’ll play (official or custom made). After that you’ll see all the maps that are being played and you can choose one of them. If you’re lucky enough you’ll get into lobby and choose your equipment and if not you’ll just join as spectator. I’m hoping that Valve will change the annoying lobby system and that we’ll get to see list of all servers before we join. Overall, Alien Swarm is an interesting game and if you’re into co-op make sure that you check it out since it’s free of charge.

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