Thread: Alien Swarm for Free on Steam.

But theres almost no feeling greater than beating a level with everyone alive.

No. That's a worse feeling.

Tenrou is the man. When i said that he should run all meds and no guns, he did it without question. And he did it for two maps. And we breezed through those two maps. Now that's what i call a teamplayer.

Insane mode definitely requires a level of coordination that, while taxing, is ultimately very fun because it involves a lot of improvisation, troubleshooting, and having a little boldness. Though you'll die a lot, the guys you're playing with know the feeling too, and your death only fuels their determination to survive.

But aside from my somewhat analytical view of Insane... Insane mode is ludicrous! The AlienSwarm Director likes to throw everything it has at you no matter what level you're on. You can get Parasites as early as the landing bay, or 2 shieldbugs when you really don't want them. Sometimes you get a godlike swarm bug that takes a flamethrower, tesla gun, and half a minigun mag to take down!

I'm always up for a game as any class, add me as Allane, hit me up, and I'll probably join your game.

In the SDK they have a queen alien that I have yet to hear of anyone running into in the game, maybe it is either hidden or they didn't put it in...

Originally Posted by Tenrou

Option, allane, lint, and me tried insane got to second to last mission and just kept getting ripped apart. We died A LOT and had to try all sort sof things like a pure heal only medic to get by some missions.

I beat Insane with three random pubs earlier today. Didn't get the achievement because I joined on the third map.

We just ran two medics, tech, and officer. I ran with medigun and either tesla cannon or railgun, the other medic ran with a flamer and the heal beacons. I usually carried adrenaline because I was Bastille (who has better adrenaline than Faith), while he was usually packing freeze grenades. Tech was usually rocking tesla cannon and the autoaim assault rifle, and the officer seemed to be favoring vindicator and basic sentry gun. I don't remember what aux they were using, but I know I saw hornets from time to time.

It was honestly a cakewalk. The flamer medic and I just ran around combining tesla and flamer to pretty much make non "boss" bugs like Shield Bugs trivial and having two healers meant it wasn't hard to keep people alive as long as they weren't being idiots. Flamer does tons of damage in a wide arc, tesla stuns them while they burn. The other two played mop-up. I started using the railgun in place of my tesla cannon on the last map, when we kept running into tons of "boss" bugs and we needed the extra kick. We just had the tech or officer pack a tesla cannon instead. We had virtually no organization - we just stayed near each other and did our jobs and pretty much won by default. I died to a bullshit attack just before we set off the bomb (somehow a regular drone managed to kill me from full despite me having a mining laser in his face the entire time), and we lost our officer just before the ship, but it wasn't particularly difficult. With a team of TPGers communicating, I doubt anyone would have died. Adrenaline is a huge deal for insane, having those extra 10-15 seconds of bullet time really makes a difference, particularly in helping people avoid parasites in the middle of huge swarms. Shield Bugs are a huge pain in the ass to kill on Insane, but they aren't very dangerous since they move so damn slow. Flamers and tesla guns also apparently ignore their shields so you don't have to bother with circling around them. Luring them into putting their back to a sentry gun works as well as it does on easier difficulties.

Playing insane just reinforced my opinion that the tesla cannon (and now the flamer) are entirely too strong, especially when you're fighting large numbers of opponents. I don't see a use for the autogun or minigun (the HWG specific weapons) when the flamer and/or tesla cannon chew through masses of enemies just as quickly and also disable them at the same time.

I'm looking forward to see what the community can do with this game. I'd love to see maps with optional objectives or really hard panic events. I like the short campaign length, but I think it's too easy right now.