Review: Alien Swarm

Based on the Unreal Tournament 2004 mod of the same name and developed by the same group of guys, who were lucky enough to get picked up by Valve, Alien Swarm is a brand new Steam game in which you and three other players team up and fight through hordes of aliens as you try to complete objectives. That's cool and all, but the coolest thing about Alien Swarm is that it's 100% free.

Future downloadable content will likely cost you money, but as of right now you get one campaign, four classes, and a persistent leveling system that allows you to unlock new weapons and gear for your character. The rewards system, as well as over 60 Steam achievements, give you incentive to play, and the fun, teamwork-oriented gameplay will keep you hooked.

The four classes mentioned earlier include a medic, a technician, an officer and a special weapons guy. The medic has a health pack that he can throw out, creating a health-giving field that teammates can stand in to regain their health. The medic is crucial to the survival of your team. Without one, you won't make it halfway through the level. The technician has the ability to build turrets that automatically attack enemies, and he can activate panels that open doors or otherwise move you forward. The officer is a basic soldier class and the special weapons guy is a heavy gunner of sorts.

Alien Swarm is certainly a good looking game. The lighting is great and the art style is strangely charming. Unfortunately, the amount of action happening on-screen means that lesser computers, like mine, have problems running the game, and at times the frame-rate dips so low that the game is literally unplayable. If your computer is capable of running Left 4 Dead, then it will have no problem with Alien Swarm, but if your computer wasn't built with gaming in mind then the game will definitely chug.

In conclusion, Alien Swarm is a welcome surprise from Valve. In a world where companies like Activision are king, it's nice to see developers like Valve, who give their fans great stuff like this for free. And if you're into modding, then you'll be happy to know that Valve has also released a software development kit, which includes buildable source code. This is definitely one to download. Even if you don't like it, you won't lose anything but a few minutes of your time by giving it a try.