Alien Swarm Can Be Played As a Terrifying FPS 157
AndrewGOO9 writes "With a few simple commands from the developer console, Alien Swarm can go from being played as an isometric top-down shooter to a first-person perspective. Surprisingly easy, it does make the game, which was released for free via Steam earlier this week, a lot more terrifying. But, anyone who is at home playing games like Modern Warfare or Halo should have no problem slaughtering their way through wave after wave of creatures. In fact, it poses the potential to make the game easier for people who would've otherwise struggled with the overhead view."
Front page news? (Score:5, Informative)
In other headline news, Starcraft 2 can be played as anything, thanks to a gnarly editor.
Re:Uh, big deal. (Score:3, Informative)
(uncommonly referred to as isometric view)
Never try to sound smarter than you are, because someone who actually knows what they're talking about will show you up. Isometric view points in a game specifically refer to when the plane is tilted to a certain perspective, usually 45 degrees. It is possible to have 2D perspective that is not at all isometric, since to be isometric, it needs to be fixed that all along each axis, the scale is the same, meaning that there's no foreshortening or vanishing points.
Further, when it's actually applicable, isometric is commonly used. The only reason it would be uncommon is if it's not applicable.
Re:Terrifying?? Try System Shock 2, Doom 3, Undyin (Score:5, Informative)
This story has shown me a terrifying game.
But not the one it indicated.
http://thumb-culture.com/2010/07/22/xbla-review-limbo/
What the hell?
Why not script it? (Score:5, Informative)
Why not script it? I guess you just have to do everything yourself.
Just bind p for a handy point-of-view toggle.
Re:not for the mac (yet?) (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Or.. (Score:1, Informative)
As long as laser precision at infinite range is the norm for FPSs, why wouldn't everything else suck?
Yeah, this is probably true -- although it might make it a bit too easy, some might say -- but I hadn't played a game with this feature. I understand Alien Swarm has it. The camera pullback for 3rd would make aiming at targets a little tougher, but not too difficult to overcome. An eyeball might be hard to aim at, but not a person's head.
*sigh* that's whats wrong with games these days. 270 degree .1 second headshot. How is that immersive? Shot to the head is "realistic" but foot, hand, arm, leg, abdomen etc, those are glancing blows.
I agree. But it bears mentioning that a gaping head wound is usually instantly fatal. A shot to the heart will stun and disable a person, but not instantly kill them. So a headshot might still be preferable. Especially against zombies. Or if the target is wearing body armor. But a headshot is generally much too easy to accomplish as opposed to real life, yes.
Wouldn't you all like games with real life tactics better? Not the aim for the head!, or finish the guy off with a pistol at 300 yds kind...
Well, I pretty much stopped playing all cookie-cutter FPSes back in 2003. That was when I discovered Operation Flashpoint. And it had realistic wounding and ballistics systems, and depended on team orchestrated tactics to survive, and where surviving rather than killing as many enemies as possible, Rambo-style, was the ultimate goal.
Once you play a game like that, you just can't go back. It's much more fun to out-smart an opponent than to out-react him. Choosing a camouflaged location and waiting there while the enemy moves into view, and waiting until he enters a situation he cannot retreat from if you miss -- waiting for that one perfect shot -- that's fun. Outsmarting a dozen human opponents is fun. Blowing them all up with one grenade is not as fun.
Re:Or.. (Score:2, Informative)
There was a recent school shooting (in Germany I think it was) where there were 9 people killed, with nine shots fired, and 9 headshots.
No there wasn't...
This would make life harder (Score:3, Informative)
FPS games tend to spawn most things in front of you.
Top-down games spawn all around you, because you can see behind you just as well as you can see in front of you.
Looking in only one direction at a time would be crippling.
Re:opensource (Score:4, Informative)
Valve never said that the game was "open source", just that the source code for the "game logic" is available, similar to how it is with HL2. At some point, people (and press?) got confused and keep calling it open source, despite that it's not really different from the other moddable Source engine games that you can use as base. The intent being opening up avenues of modding, but the game still depends on large binary blobs to compile and is releases under a restricted license.
Valve probably didn't intend to mislead people, unlike the whole "Shared source" crap by Microsoft.
Re:Front page news? (Score:2, Informative)
An inordinate amount of attention for simple game. In other headline news, Starcraft 2 can be played as anything, thanks to a gnarly editor.
One big reason for all the attention is that Valve has released the full source and SDK alongside it. Mods haven't started rolling in yet, but there are sure to be quite a few.
I'm sure SC2's editor is great, though.