What is almost as fun as surviving a zombie apocalypse with friends is surviving an alien swarm. While I haven’t watched a lot of zombie movies, I’ve seen a few space marines versus aliens. And fighting off an alien menace was best realized in the movie Aliens, specifically from the perspective of the character Hudson.
So when the Unreal Tournament 2004 modification Alien Swarm was released, I enjoyed reliving the funnier parts of the Aliens movie with my own experiences—surviving swarms of aliens bent on my destruction or infestation. The original Alien Swarm for UT2004 was a great mod; taking a 3D first-person shooter and going to a 2D-style, top-down gauntlet-like game. The modders made great use of the existing media assets from Unreal Tournament to deliver a scary and fun cooperative experience before “coop” became the trend it is today.
I played through all the campaigns in Alien Swarm for UT2004 on my own, which wasn’t as much fun as with friends, but I wanted to see what the modders came up with scenarios on my own time. The missions were quite tough and more so when I had to control all 4 marines by myself. Luckily, the bots controlling the other 3 marines with me had inhuman aim and I didn’t have to worry about friendly-fire.
In one evening in Oysterville with Jack and Clark, I remember a fun session when I finally got to play Alien Swarm with friends. It was intense as we were all scrambling from one place to another while aliens just kept coming after us. We would heal each other, weld doors shut to buy us time, and have climatic battles to the exit room. It would be a precursor to the survival stories we later had fighting zombies.
I remember reading on gaming web sites that the modders were stopping development on Alien Swarm for UT2004 and moving to the Source game engine, and it would be a commercial product. Quite a bit of time has passed and I discovered last week that Valve, the company that created the Source engine and the Left 4 Dead series, hired the modding team for Alien Swarm a while back. And then, they released Alien Swarm for Source for free yesterday.
Clark and I took a spin through it and I found myself not only nostalgic from the original, but also admiring all the subtle details they made to make the game more accessible and provide more tactical information without cluttering the user interface.
For example, the aiming reticule has a small stroke line around its circle that wanes as the ammo in the gun used is being fired. Most of the time, I am looking at where I’m shooting, so it’s a great place to visually indicate how much ammo is left without requiring me to look away from the action.
I also liked that they color-coded each marine’s visor, so that it’s easy to spot who’s who in the battlefield. In the original Alien Swarm, all the soldiers looked similar except for their weapons. The extra touch of color makes it even easier to differentiate the marines when there are aliens swarming all over.
Other areas of polish that impressed me were:
- Loading the game area before the lobby so that when the party is ready to start, the game is ready to go. No loading screen necessary when everyone is ready to go.
- The game world map allows players to draw on it, so players can plan out their paths through the alien-infested world.
- Hacking doors is a mini-game, kind of frantic but better than looking for keys on a level.
- Being a part of the Steam service is a huge plus. Having voice communications is a necessity in something this intense and tactical with other players.
The fact that the game is free makes it a great LAN party game. Too bad the player limit is 4 players, just like Left 4 Dead…speaking of which, since the free version comes with all the tools to create more content, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone did a zombie conversion for Alien Swarm. That would be fun.