Here we are with another community feature from Gamer9er with a review of Alien Swarm for PC.

Alien Swarm is a new action game released by Valve on July 19 2010.  The best part about the game is that it is Free!  Alien Swarm was first developed as a mod for UT4.  Valve eventually hired those guys and then went on to making the Left 4 Dead series.  On there spare time they decided to remake Alien Swarm, but instead run it on the Source Engine.

First off I have only played the game on Crossover Games which runs absolutely phenomenal, but not as good as a PC would.  So I won’t be talking about the performance of the game just the campaign and features.  The game is free.  Just saying that makes you want to download it and try it out.  Who doesn’t want to try out a free game made by Valve?  Anyways, there are four options at the main menu.  Play Online, Achievements, Options, and Offline Practice.  Pretty simple menus and easy to work your way around.

Landing Bay is the first mission.  Objectives are 1) Access the Inner perimeter. 2)  Download the flight data. 3)  Activate the cargo elevator and descend.  4)  Access the facility exterior.  Not much story to that.  I have no idea what going on and how these alien things came alive.  You just jump right in and start clicking away.  It does take some skill though for playing on harder difficulties.  You have to know where your teammates are,  when to deploy specials, and you doing what your class is supposed to like medics heal and techs hack.  The game is very team oriented.

As you move along in the so called campaign with no story, you level up and unlock new weapons/accessories.  Double barreled shotguns, plasma guns, miniguns, sentries, and the list goes on forever.  Alien Swarm is also one of the most user friendly games iv’e seen since Team Fortress 2.  When downloading, they give you a free SDK to build new campaigns and mods.  I haven’t spent much time messing around with the SDK, but Iv’e played some amazing mods in the past couple of days.

Overall, I’m going to give this game a 3/5.  Alien Swarm only includes one campaign and will last mind blowing 45 minutes.  The game is also free which makes up for it.  Also no storyline or support for Mac which is a huge let down.  The game can get a little corny as sometimes like slowmotion.  The missions are very short but also fun at the same time.  So if you get the chance to get Crossover or play on a PC, try it out you won’t be wasting your money on this game.