Comments on: Alien Swarm: Free, fun, and full of violence

By: Squirrel

Squirrel — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 02:04:02 +0000

All game designers should take a lesson in reductionist design. I don’t care how many zombies, photo-realistic weapons, or nukes your game has, if it’s not fun to play then your game sucks.

By: Matt Gorman

Matt Gorman — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:18:35 +0000

I’m right there with you Squirrel re: L4D. Left 4 Dead left me bored and wishing for something more. I would find myself itching to play Serious Sam or Painkiller after playing a few rounds of L4D. The latter two games are examples of simple minded FPS done right.

By: Squirrel

Squirrel — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:26:53 +0000

Addendum: I hated Left 4 Dead and its sequel–which is insane, seeing as I’m a zombie nut with scores of pages written on potential zombie apocalypse plans. Alien Swarm is many times better than L4D because it actually plays its genre of top-down shooty game very well. L4D, taken as a first-person shooter instead of a whored-out theme cow, is one of the worst FPSs in existence.

By: Squirrel

Squirrel — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:23:18 +0000

Source has the worst loading screens in the business, and for no apparent reason seeing as TF2 and Alien Swarm should have fuck all to load in texture and model memory compared to more polished games. Now, if I were to forget the horrendous loading screens, then Alien Swarm is among the greatest games of the 21st Century, right below Braid. Who needs graphics, story, and cutscenes? The only, I repeat ONLY thing that matters is great gameplay. Everything else is just compensating for a deficiency in sound game design.