When comparing Alien Swarm vs Broforce, the Slant community recommends Broforce for most people. In the question“What are the best 4-player local multiplayer games on Steam?” Broforce is ranked 5th while Alien Swarm is ranked 26th. The most important reason people chose Broforce is:
Destructible environments, large explosions, dirt and blood flying everywhere, scaling a wall with just your knife, shooting rockets larger than the body of a man, and many more over-the-top gameplay elements. Broforce is just a blast to play.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Easy to pick up and play, even for beginners
The game consists of tried-and-true top-down shooter mechanics that will be familiar to most players; it is reminiscent of older arcade and console shooters.
Pro Anyone can download and play the game as it is free-to-play and open-source
The game is completely free and has no microtransactions or ads.
The source code is also free and accessible, so the game can be easily modded.
Pro Easily play with up to 4-players in online co-op
Alien Swarm allows for up to 4-player online co-op, which makes for an easy way to play with a small group of friends or strangers.
Pro Convenient offline LAN support
Alien Swarm offers offline LAN (local area network) support, meaning that the game can be easily played locally with each machine connected together in the same place.
Pro Extremely fun gameplay
Destructible environments, large explosions, dirt and blood flying everywhere, scaling a wall with just your knife, shooting rockets larger than the body of a man, and many more over-the-top gameplay elements. Broforce is just a blast to play.
Pro Excellent at co-op
Four players can join a single game both locally and online. It just feels really awesome spreading mayhem and destruction with three of your friends as blood, guts, and explosions surround you from all sides.
Pro Varied characters keep the gameplay fresh
There are more than 20 different unlockable characters to try out. This keeps otherwise really simple gameplay from going stale as fast by allowing you to enjoy a variety of playstyles.
Pro Great references to the 80s action movies
Much like an 80s action movie, the violence, destruction, and plot are all overly exaggerated. The playable characters are the members of an underfunded, under equipped military organization that somehow outguns everyone else. Their bullets seem to have the magical property to explode everything they come in contact with. There's also an insane amount of explosions and blood everywhere. Even their names are references such as Brobocop (Robocop), Bro Lee (Bruce Lee), or Brominator (Terminator).
Cons
Con Can get a bit repetitive
The gameplay doesn't change much from mission to mission; you’re generally just shooting aliens over and over again.
Con Gameplay is too short
The main story only takes about three or four hours to complete, which means you could beat the game in one sitting pretty easily.
Con Can be pretty difficult
You can be killed by just one bullet, which creates a trial and error type of gameplay where you have to perfectly memorize all enemy locations and/or movement patterns. This gets multiplied by a hundred during boss battles, so after dying a lot of times you might start feeling frustrated.
Con Dying in co-op can feel a lot more punishing than it should be
If you run out of lives in co-op, you'll be forced wait until your teammates revive you by freeing a prisoner or until the level ends. If you're not very good at the game, this might happen a lot more often, which just turns into you watching others play the game and not playing yourself.
Con Poor character balancing
Some characters are obviously better than the others, or are highly situational. For example, the shotgun wielding character has really low range, so sometimes it's really hard to take out the enemies before they rip you to shreds from afar.