Valve out of the kindness of their heart (or much more likely a way of getting more people using Steam) have released a free game called Alien Swarm based on the original Unreal 2k4 mod.

The only downside is there is only one seven level mission but due to the games nature it’s very re-playable. It demands team play in anything higher than the Normal difficulty level and even on Normal if you get one lone wolf it can screw your chances of progressing. I think that’s the reason I love it so much, no game is the same because everyone has their own ideas of how to play. Much like Left 4 Dead.

Other notable features of the game are the experience system, array of characters / classes, ton of weapons and the potential for amazing mods thanks to the fully released SDK. Valve have excelled their selves with this but I’m sure the gesture will go in their favour.

I think it’s a phenomenal game and I’m really looking forward to some extra content being released. So give it a try, it’s free and all you need to do is download the Steam client here

This is a little program I created in C# to monitor your network activity and either Sleep or Shut Down your computer based on criteria you set. I built this to solve a simple problem, putting my computer to sleep after a particularly long download, for example a 8GB Steam game download over night or a sizeable browser download both of which have no built in function to do this.

It essentially saves you money by not requiring you to have your computer on throughout the night.

It has been tested in Windows XP 32bit and Windows 7 64bit without issue. If you have any questions or update suggestions or praise please leave a comment below. Thanks.

coming soon, fixing a bug