Games are increasingly expensive, but there are still plenty of great experiences to be had without paying a single penny for them, just like the ones you'll find below in our list of the best free PC games you can play right now. From newer releases to old-timey classics, our unordered list is packed with the best free PC games available.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Valve have a game even more forgotten than Ricochet. Despite being only five years old, I bet if I'd asked you to write down all their games you'd have missed off Alien Swarm [official site].
]]>3761 AD. Seattle. A line of tourists is snaking around a wrecked skyscraper. If we listen closely, we can hear their guide: "... this is the cupboard where they found the 'test heads', and this is where they arrested Robin "Mad Hatter" Walker, who admitted to 243402 counts of decapitation. That's the rebuilt Dota 2 annex. The war where the Dota 2 team attempted to secede from the union in 2103 caused a brief civil war, but it turned out their tactics when applied to a real world conflict just got them all killed. We don't know what this place was: a cupboard where we found the skeleton and a crowbar. Just a handyman, maybe? Moving on to one of the more remarkable finds: a PC that was found in the rubble, still running a copy of Alien Swarm. And beside it was this Steam Greenlight page for a mod that turned it into a first-person shooter. What was Greenli..."
]]>You might recollect that our recent verdict on Valve's mini co-op shooter Alien Swarm concluded that the game would have been improved somewhat if it utilised the same kind of AI director routines that make the Left 4 Dead games so interesting to play. Well, soon it will do so. Steam News reports: "...we've added "Onslaught" mode, which introduces an AI Director that dynamically generates swarms of aliens based on several factors, such as the squad's stress level. Onslaught works with any difficulty setting and ensures no mission plays the same way twice."
]]>There's clearly going to be a lot of messing around to be done with Alien Swarm and its SDK, but one thing that can be messed about with immediately is the perspective. PCG spotted that you can play the game in first-person by enabling the dev console in the options and then typing:
firstperson asw_hide_marine 1 asw_controls 0
Video of it in action below. There's no ceiling/sky, obviously.
]]>Alien Swarm is out! And free! A four-player co-op alien-shooting game. What better choice for a four-person blogging team to Verdict? Except that Kieron's on a plane, and Alec's locked in a cell deep underground. So it fell to Jim and John to dispense the only correct thoughts and opinions anyone should have. Thanks to Phill and John G. for making up our numbers. Read our thoughts on the game below.
]]>Servers are a bit busy, mind. Alien Swarm, of course, is a free game from the Black Cat team, who happened to have been eaten by the Valve monster. They've been making a nice home for themselves in its belly, and working on this, which is a shiny remake of the original. And free. We'll play it later, probably, and have some impressions up tomorrow, maybe. That's for certain.
]]>So, well, Valve just rather nonchalantly announced a game. Yeah, exactly.
Remember Alien Swarm? A total conversion mod for UT 2004, with four-player co-op top-down action. The team behind it, we've just learned, were hired by Valve two years ago, and have since been working on L4D and now Portal 2. Except at the same time they've been making Alien Swarm all over again in Source. And it's coming out on Monday. And it will be free. And it looks great.
]]>[Since Quinns' last piece on a mod he loved went so well, he's done another one. Hurrah for Quinns! Also, Alien Swarm for UT2004. This article includes profanity and mild-bullying of PCG deputy editors]
Deep Space The Sigma Campaign Mission #3 23:49
For the first time in hours our squad was experiencing a period of speechlessness. We were all looking back and forth between the smoking barrel of Schach's shotgun and the bloody smear where FiveEight used to be. The dismembered chunks of the alien that had been attacking FiveEight bounced away from us all into the shadows. Silence.
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