alien swarm review

[DXmagma]

I'm not really a big fan of top down shooters, I just never felt like I was buying something big, something worth a lot. I felt like I was buying a miniature game, and for the most part I was. But alien swarm has changed all that. Not because it has shown me that top down shooters can be more then miniature games, because it's free and I don't need to buy another one.

Seriously, there's no point in reading this review, alien swarm is free, you should just play it because of that. What are you waiting for? Go do it! Alright if your still reading this review I assume you already played it and want to see my opinion, or are waiting for it to download.

So first off alien swarm is indeed free, and it's not total crap, I suppose that's all you need to know when deciding whether or not to get it, since you don't have to justify a purpose of any kind. So, it's not crap, but plenty of games that aren't good aren't crap, so is it good?

Yeah mostly. The gameplay is what you expect, you walk around and shoot the swarm of aliens around you, Hench the name. However, alien swarm is a bit more complicated then that. First off playing the game alone isn't recommended, much like left 4 dead playing offline is nearly impossible. Except where the bots MIGHT come in handy every once in awhile, your forced to go it alone in alien swarm, making the whole thing an overly difficult mess. Even on easy.

Also, this game is hard. I played a few campaigns on easy and still died a lot. And I wasn't really that bad either, i'd have to say I was better then most of my team, except maybe one guy. So expect a few deaths and maybe some frustration depending on who is on your team.

Also, when you or a member of your team dies the game slows down to show you their death. It helps to let you know who dies and when they die, but it breaks the flow of combat and if your mouse moves during this sequence it can really mess you up if in the middle of a swarm.

That being said, unlike other similar games I?ve played, Alien swarm let's you pick your equipment at the beginning of each level. You earn experience for killing enemies and should unlock something new every few levels. Now I don't play a lot of these games, so this might be standard for the genre, but from the few I?ve played this is the only one I?ve seen with it.

You get three equipment slots. The first is your main weapon which can b used for just about anything, and can serve you well in almost any situation. Then you have your secondary weapon. Now if your playing support you can use things like turrets to help your squad, though I mainly used a second weapon to help. Any weapon can be put into the secondary slot, though my personal favorite was the shotgun, for when I got overwhelmed.

Finally there was your assist. It's exactly what it sounds like, a support weapon to help for when things get a bit overwhelming. I mostly used the med kit, but I did find the homing hornets extremely useful.

Next up is the classes, which are your standard affair. Special weapons is heavy fire, captain can boost team stats and medic heals your party. The different class is tech, who can hack computers and manually control ceiling turrets through hacking. Really it's effectiveness depends on what level your in. however, certain levels require you to have a tech on hand and even when you pass the hacking segment if they die the level restarts, turning the whole thing into an escort mission.



Overall I had a good time with alien swarm. It's fun, free, got a lot of content, free, and will give you a ton of content for the price tag, which is free. Did I mention it's free? Cause it is.