Alien Swarm

It's an addicting game. I'm ashamed to say I initially downloaded it just for Hat Trick, but I eventually found how good it really was after playing with afew friends.

However, it seems to have some stability problems compared to other Valve games. That or almost everyone I meet so far has a bad connection.

edited 21st Jul '10 6:37:14 PM by Gigaspine7

I'm not particularly fond of playing a Tech either, but I surprised myself last time I played by getting a fast computer hack (and this was also the first time I played a tech in an actual game, not counting one go in offline practice). Still, I'd rather play an Officer or something.

In terms of my class preference, from highest to least, I think it'd go... Officer, Weapons Specialist, Medic, Technician. I don't really know why, but the thought of providing a damage and defense bonus to my team simply by existing appeals to me.

I rather like tech, actually. Mainly because they are necessary to survive pretty much anywhere, thanks to the hacking and scanner.

But my favorite is still officer. Vindicator = yes.

My favorite is the flamethrower.

I like officer. I haven't unlocked it yet, but I have picked up a chainsaw. I LOVE IT. I ran around a shieldbug and sliced that thing up.

I would however like to release my anger and say here that I HATE THE PARASITES. GOOD LORD.

EDIT: Looked it up - you might not be able to unlock the chainsaw. Oh, well, I only liked it for the "fun" value.

edited 21st Jul '10 10:21:58 PM by ColorPrinter

^ Yeah, that's pretty much what the forums say. Some want them made weaker or different, others think them providing most of the difficulty is necessary.

Just got this game. Pretty good, although I'm getting tired of playing with bots. Anyone here want to play together just holler.

I can confirm that you do eventually unlock a chainsaw. It's surprisingly ineffective against parasites.

Your best bet with those is obviously to have a medic, and the electic armor extra item helps a whole bunch. Just keep your finger on the extra item key.

Four more levels and I get my minigun back. I'm going to be content with this one star that I've got. I'm going to sit on level 27 and not ever hit promote ever again.

I'll be hosting a match around noon, EST, provided steam's servers decide to not crap themselves this time if you haven't already got me on your friend list and want to play, send a friend invite to [Troper] Shlapintogan.

edited 22nd Jul '10 4:21:18 AM by Shlapintogan

slow mo + lag = WTF

Seriously, that elevator ride went on forever. Valve, if you're going to release a FREE game, could you at least have the decency to make sure your server can handle that?

Or at least make sure the dedicated servers work - from what I heard, the program returns dll errors.

There seems to be a lot of complaints about the elevator level having serious lag issues. I'm sure they'll fix it soon.

DOOUBLE POST FOR BUMPAGE

Match being hosted now, got two slots open.

Got it yesterday, very fun to play through...

Hard is seriously hard to go through without competent teammates...I can't even think of how insane would be...

Let's hope for more maps / campaigns...

If you want an image of insane, imagine a parasite humping your face. Forever.

It took me awhile to realize that you have to activate the electric armor. I had thought it was just a passive thing that shocked the parasites when they jumped on you. It works much better now.

Let's just say this about insane: We tried it on the first mission and died within 34 seconds. I don't think we even killed anything. Then again, it was a 3 person team, but still.

And on a vaguely related note, next time I play I'm gonna record it so any hilarious and/or awesome moments can be uploaded to youtube or something similar.

edited 22nd Jul '10 12:16:55 PM by IthilionTheBrave

It was probably because on on all three other difficulties, there isn't anything there.

That certainly contributed to it. I only caught a glance of the blob of red dots on the minimap before we got swarmed. I look forward to trying to tackle it again with a full team.

I only managed one level tonight before the server crapped out on me. Meh.

GOOD FREAKIN' LORD

There is no reason my ping should be 900. NO REASON.

Servers are particularly stressed today. They should be back to normal by tomorrow.

I hope.

Huh, Alien Swarm was updated. They fixed crashing with some video cards. Well...they fixed the crash I was getting before, anyway. Now the game crashes as soon as the main menu loads. Fun.

Update!

-Matchmaking distinguishes between games in progress and games in the briefing

THANK GOD THOSE SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN LUMPED TOGETHER

-Updated Hammer’s simple compile options

Maybe now the compiling will work completely.

-Fixed fast reload sounds and incidental marine conversations

Huh, interesting.

Actually, I'm curious: How do you pull off a Fast Reload? I'm guessing you have to do something at a certain point in the reload, but what key do I have to press?

R. Hit it when the line is in that square in the reload bar.

I really wanted to play this, but no luck: I have an Athlon XP 2800+ processor, which should be able to run it, but the launcher quits with an errormessage about a DLL file.

After a bit of googling, it turns out that the game needs SSE 2 support, and this CPU is not able to provide that. But the system reqs don't say that SSE 2 is necessary, so many people with Athlon CP Us are excluded now :-(

I don't have the money to upgrade my comp anytime soon, and it's especially jarring that I know that if I could start the game somehow, I could play it

Also, I really wanted to have the parasite hat in TF 2