Pros
- Slick
- Free
- Fun
Cons
- A few rough edges remain
The designers at Valve aren’t particularly prolific when it comes to games, but what they lack in volume they more than make up for in passion and polish. While big titles like Portal and Team Fortress soak up most of the fame, small projects like Alien Swarm are an even better showcase for the qualities that set this studio apart from the competition.
Alien Swarm’s level layout is beautifully rendered and cleverly accomplished. Lighting is especially well-handled, with long evocative shadows that convincingly invoke a suspenseful, foreboding mood. Sound effects and game mechanics are satisfying and solid, with crisp control reaction and the ability to use a gamepad if the traditional WASD and mouse controls leave you flatfooted.
As good a game as it is, there are some minor problems with Alien Swarm. Avoiding friendly fire is an important aspect of the game, but it remains frustratingly easy to gun down your own team whether you’re playing with a group cooperatively or practicing alone with bots. This is a design decision issue and not easily fixable. Also, the grainy, simplistic rendering used for the title screen could use some of the visual fireworks that are lavished elsewhere, as the low-budget impression it leaves is misleading. Last of all, this game requires Steam to both download and play. Steam may be the best DRM system around, but it’s still a DRM system.
It’s astonishing that a game of this pedigree and polish is free. Alien Swarm offers more features and fun than similar titles which make you pay for the privilege of playing them. Do yourself a favor, head over to Steam and add this slick mini-classic to your library before the folks at Valve come to their senses and start charging real money for it.
Note: The Download button takes you to Steam, where you must register for a Steam account to download this software.
–Jim Norris