Re: Multiplayer Gaming
Probably because everyone in places that aren't Australia are overwhelming the steam servers. But it was midmorning when I got it, so it was delicious low traffic time for games.
Because the game doesn't really have a manual, I present
Stuff Incubus has worked out from Alien Swarm by playing the offline lern2play mode
There are 4 classes, Officer, Special Weapons, Medic and Tech.
The officer may initially seem irrelevant, what can he do that makes him worth taking rather than, say, two heavy weapons characters? He projects an aura of leadership, which increases the damage output and resistance of nearby allies. He also gets to carry the Vindicator shotgun, which is like, fuck-off OP.
Your special weapons/heavy weapons has access to, well, you can kinda guess.
Medic can heal. Hurr durr. Also cure alien infections, apparently. In the offline training mode, they don't see a lot of mileage, because there's only one type of enemy and most of the damage you take is probably friendly fire.
By the way, there's friendly fire.
Tech sees the most mileage in the offline mission, as he can hack through access panels, weld and unweld doors, and drop a limited number of ammo crates to keep the team fighting. There appears to be some ammo crates on the map in addition, but in the offline practice, there was only one, so it seems likely that the tech is the main source of ammo. They also carry the motion scanner, so you can get hostile beeps on the minimap.
Now, each class can customise their loadout pre-mission, so it's entirely possible that say, a heavy weapons specialist may be able to pick up dropable ammo crates, but I haven't checked this. Some things are restricted to certain classes.
When you reload, any ammo left in your clip is wasted, so keep this in mind if you've only fired off a few shots. You can also do a gears or war style perfect reload and finish loading faster, or jam the thing and take longer if you mistime it.
Oh, and remember to use secondary weapon. Mouse 3 will fire them, if you've got a capable weapon equipped. For the standard assault rifle, this is grenades. You don't have many, but they can be useful.
