News Alien Swarm - Free Steam game

Today, Valve software will release a free game on Steam (also free) that has me a little excited to play for reasons that I can't completely explain!

Alien Swarm is a game and Source SDK release from a group of talented designers at Valve who were hired from the Mod community.

Available free of charge, the game thrusts players into an epic bug hunt featuring a unique blend of co-op play and squad-level tactics. With your friends, form a squad of four distinct IAF Marine classes. Plan your attack using an unlockable arsenal of weapons with countless loadout configurations against a wide variety of aliens. Blaze your way through an overrun, off-world colony, eradicating the alien infestation in environments ranging from the icy planet's surface, to a subterranean lava-flooded mining facility.

Along with the game get the complete code base for Alien Swarm that features updates to the Source engine as well as the SDK. Alien Swarm adds 3rd person camera, depth of field, improved dynamic shadows and a wide variety of gameplay additions to the Source engine.

• Tactical, 4 player co-op action game with a top-down perspective
• Complete game code and mod tools
• Unlock persistent items by gaining levels
• Over 40 weapons and equipment with countless loadout configurations
• 4 unique classes and 8 unique characters
• Matchmaking, Steam Cloud, Steam Stats
• 64 achievements
• Tile-based map generation tool
• Powered by Source and Steam

Certainly looks very entertaining and frantic and did I mention it was free? Although it uses the Half-life 2 engine which has seen many Mac incarnations released, it doesn't seem to be available on that platform at launch.

:view: Pre-purchase Alien Swarm on Steam

 

Downloading now - 2 gig

 

I remember when this first came out.. I always meant to try and play it but never got around to it..

 

That was the UT2004 version I am guessing?
Never tried it, though did play Alien Breed a few weeks back but never tried it multiplayer.

Coming down well slow, but could be my ISP - or the massive hit Valve's servers are taking

 

Yea I am playing Alien Breed Impact as I wait for Steam to let me download Alien Swarm, the servers are busy as all hell!

 

yup.. was the original UT2004 version.. and while I pulled it down, I never really played it much as I think I was a bit busy with other things in life at the time (not that I'm not now..)

 

I downloaded this the other day, I've yet to play online but I did play the offline practice mode. It's pretty fun, I could see this being a blast to play with some friends over ventrillo or something. The offline practice is only the first map from what I can tell and is pretty easy. Looking through the unlocks it seems like there might be quite a bit of team strategy involved later on. The graphics are nice, definitely a departure from the usual dated look that Source games suffer from.

Overall it's worth the download, it is free after all. Depending on the success I could easily see this game being micro-transaction oriented. .99 for a new map here, 1.99 for a new pack of avatars with full voice overs, style, etc.

 

Absolutely love the game

Finished it on Hard and now trying to do speed runs.

 

Is it possible to play more then the first map on practice mode?

 

Overall it's worth the download, it is free after all. Depending on the success I could easily see this game being micro-transaction oriented. .99 for a new map here, 1.99 for a new pack of avatars with full voice overs, style, etc.

Nah, they released the source, so anything they charged for could be easily replicated.

 

Is it possible to play more then the first map on practice mode?

From what I heard no. That is why I am playing Alien Breed Impact more often, because I ain't all that big with multiplayer these days.

 

Yeah I haven't really wanted to play online lately, It's hard to keep up with those damn kids these days.... haha.

 

Alien Swarm looks fun, I'll give it a try.