Alien Swarm – releases today on Steam for free

Alien Swarm looks quite similar to a game that also has a very similar sounding name; Alien Breed. The latter is, of course, a remake of an old Amiga game, so has the classic value. But to be quite honest, Alien Swarm really shows how the top-down xenomorph shoot-em-up genre should be done. Not to mention the fact that Alien Swarm is absolutely free.

Developed by Valve themselves, Alien Swarm sticks to the whole moddable attitude employed in many of their games. Built using the Source engine (obviously), it features reasonably impressive graphics and up to date physics. Anyway, this isn’t a review, because it costs nothing so you may as well try the thing for yourself.

To whet your appetite a little bit, here’s the official feature list:

• 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

Alien Swarm releases at 7pm BST tonight, 19th July 2010 and is absolutely free.