Quick Look: Alien Swarm

When Valve quietly announced that it would release a free cooperative multiplayer top-down alien shooter, I was sure that we were in for a treat. I just did not know it would be this good. Alien Swarm is a re-skinning of a popular Unreal Tournament 2004 total conversion mod in the Source Engine. It involves space marines that have to explore a colony contaminated by an extraterrestrial threat, in way akin to the Alien series of movies.

The people behind the UT 2004 mod were hired by Valve and they were part of the team that brought us the lovely Left 4 Dead games. Alien Swarm is one of their side-projects that is meant to accompany the release of the Source Software Development Kit for free. It is much more than a simple tech demo though, as the developers have really outdone themselves setting a new standard of quality to a free release.

There is only one campaign available for play at the moment that lasts for about two hours. It is really good if played with random companions, but even better with friends. Like any Valve title, Alien Swarm has some really neat touches added to the classical top down shooter gameplay like the ability to seal of doors against the enemy threat or hack computer terminals to open-up locations, just like in the films mentioned above.

The shooting feels really solid and intense, with a lot of weapon combinations to choose from. What is even more exciting is that building new levels and campaigns seems quite easy. This makes me very curious about the experiences the very talented modding community behind the Source engine will offer us in the near future. I stress again that this is a completely free release that all PC gamers should at least try out. Valve could have easily priced Alien Swarm and it still would have been a day-one purchase.