Heads up to the gamers out there, Valve is giving away their new 4-player co-op, top-down, action-based game Alien Swarm today over Steam; the game “unlocks” in a couple of hours for anyone wanting to install it.
Alien Swarm was developed by a couple of developers Valve hired directly out of the mod community and has the following features:
- Tactical, 4 player co-op action game with a top-down perspective
- Complete game code and mod tools
- Unlock persistent items by gaining levels
- Over 40 weapons and equipment with countless loadout configurations
- 4 unique classes and 8 unique characters
- Matchmaking, Steam Cloud, Steam Stats
- 64 achievements
- Tile-based map generation tool
- Powered by Source and Steam
Update #1: After 2 hours with the game I can safely give it a review of 7 out of 10.
It’s very reminiscent of Shadow Complex, with that “high-fidelity arcade game” feel to it and plays like Diablo 2 with the isometric, top-down view.
The co-op aspect of it is great, but it’s strickly enforced, in-that if you don’t have 3 other people to fill out your team, you are on your own. And from what I could tell, the game doesn’t scale difficulty at all.
Even on “Easy” a team of me and 3 other people online were barely passing most levels… it seems unnecessarily hard.
I don’t say overall that it’s that fun of an experience. If an iso/co-op game is all you’ve ever wanted, it’s probably a solid 8 or 9 out of 10, but if you are looking for a “great game” in general to play with friends, this will give you a few hours of fun, but you won’t be burying hours and hours into it like it was Left for Dead 2 or something.
For free though? Definitely a must-download.
Very Good