A few threads around the subject of NS2, but none really seemed to fit the bill for this...
Been asked by a couple of people, now, what I think of Natural Selection 2. Figured I could write a few words here and see if I can help a few more.
I played some NS1 back in the day but, on balance, I don't think I enjoyed it very much. Chiefly, I felt that the commander was absolutely vital to success and that, as a result, there was no way to learn how to command without repeatedly screwing your team (which they never appreciated).
Conversely, I've been enjoying NS2, despite it presenting largely the same concept and mechanics.
A quick overview for the less familiar:
NS2 is a first person shooter comprised of two opposing teams: humans versus aliens. The sides are not directly comparable: humans can vary the weapons and equipment they carry, where the aliens choose what type of alien to be and what attributes that alien should have. This leads to very different mechanics for each side and means that you have (at least) double the quantity to learn than in a normal shooter.
There is also the real time strategy element that is available to one player on each team, the commander. Whilst, strictly speaking, neither team requires a commander, playing without one will usually guarantee your team loses. This is because, at its heart, NS2 is a resource race. Spread around the map are resource nodes that each team needs to build on, and having done so they get resource points every five seconds. Resource points both go to individual players and to the team as a whole. The commander spends the team's points, where players spend their own.
Team resource points are spent to build structures and defences, and research upgrades for the FPS players.
Individual resource points are spent to purchase weapons and equipment, if you're a marine, or more advanced alien types, if you're an alien.
Particularly at the start of the game, resource points are acquired slowly. The 20 points required for a shotgun, for example, could take a good 2-4 minutes to build up (though you start with 20). Later, as your team controls more resource nodes you acquire points faster but building up large amount of points required to build the largest alien (the Onos) or acquire the heaviest power suit (the marine's Exo) still takes reasonable patience.
Barring major screw ups, the game is won or lost by the control and denial of adequate quantities of resources, and thus the resource nodes.
Acquiring these resource nodes is different for each team, however.
The marine commander must build a power terminal on an empty power point in a room, and they must build a resource collector on the resource node. However, all the commander gets to do is spend points to start the construction, which must be completed by the marines themselves. Thus, no marines on the ground near the construction, no building.
The alien commander must build a chain of cysts that spread infestation from their hive to the resource node. If the chain is broken, the cysts that are now no longer connected to the hive slowly start to die and their infestation withdraws. The aliens don't care about power, but to build a resource collector on a resource node it must be covered with infestation that is connected to the hive. However, the resource collector builds itself (though it can be accelerated by a the Gorge alien, which is a builder/healer type).
See? Quite different approaches to the same basic task. This extends throughout the game.
While the marines are researching better weapons and improvements to their armour, the aliens are spreading across the map, harrassing or ambushing lone marines (or attacking en masse marines in groups) and developing new alien traits such as a carapace that allows an alien to take more damage, or the ability to move without making any sound.
This asymmetric play means that the game can wash back and forth as each side adapts to the other's strategy, but both sides tend to be pushing to a fairly known end-game. For marines, acquiring the powerful Exo armours with mounted chainguns tends to signal the late game has arrived. For aliens, fielding the bull-like Onos is the same signal. Both units are strong and deadly and often they can end up head-to-head in a fairly matched game. Losing one of either unit is a big cost in resource points and this sort of resource attrition tends to mean that one side comes out on top.
However, the developments of the mid-game tend to be the most interesting. The aliens specialise down three different paths: speed, stealth and survival. Initially they can only choose one. Marines must choose to develop different weapons and equipment, or just make their existing armour and weapons better. All while expanding and fighting over the expansions.
The maps are varied but each has five critical points where a new hive or marine command station can be built. Each side starts in one, at roughly opposite sides of the map, leaving three up for grabs. The overall objective is to wipe out the opposing command structures (hive or command station), but as there can be more than one the game can shift around. Still, even if your team has more than one command structure, losing one is bad news, especially for the aliens who can then lose traits that were developed around that hive.
Everything has a suitably Aliens movie sense to it, though clearly developed separately from that mythos. Some wide open spaces, some narrow corridors, aliens hiding in vents or crevaces, marines clustering together in dimly lit corridors waving around their gunlights. Helpfully, parts of the maps are given names to aid in coordination, though for a new player this can still be troublesome (where am I? where's that place you said? how do I get there? ARGGGG, ALIEN EATING MY FACE!)... learning the maps is crucial, ideally from both sides as only the aliens (or marines with jetpacks) really get to use the map to their fullest extent.
It's really hard to say whether the game is balanced as the game hinges on the ability to get the upper hand in resources and then push the other team away. I've won and lost as both sides fairly regularly with no particular pattern. Sure, Exos or grenade launchers devastate alien hives, but then (temporarily) invisible Onos with hardened carapace and silent footsteps are equally horrific when they're eating your spawn points...
Certainly, I've never yet felt that I was playing better than the other team but they were able to steal victory away by using some tedious do-this-and-win tactic. I have also seen a losing team come back before they were pushed too far down with some good ground play and team coordination and a change of tactics from the commander.
Is it balanced? No idea and, being asymmetrical, perhaps not even relevant, but it's not obviously tilted one way or the other. I will say that the aliens are harder to play but, once they're really moving, probably harder to stop. For example, I've killed an Exo with the lowest ranked alien (the Skulk) with some speedy leaping, biting and circle strafing (on the floor, walls and ceiling, often in the same movement), but I've never dropped a full weight Onos as a marine with the basic assault rifle except when my team mates were also shooting at it. That said, maybe it was a crap Exo and a great Onos...? Hard to tell.
I paused before buying because of intermittent reports of poor framerates, bad lag, need to run on minimal settings, etc, etc. To date, I've had one outright crash, caused by a server having a fit, a couple of instances of jerkiness, again because the server was unhealthy, and a couple of games with high ping players that didn't feel as a silky smooth as I expected. However, for the most part, on middling settings, the game runs smoothly and largely glitch free. I've had an instance, as a marine, of being stuck in the floor once, too. Little things, very irregular, and certainly not the badly optimised crap heap that some reviews made it out to be. I guess YMMV, but I can account for at least three different configurations that indicate that it works fine and only the occasional moan of "urgh, game so laggy", which I attribute to already high ping players...
To date, I haven't mentioned a thing that I think is one of the single best features: rookie friendly servers. Sure, anyone could do this, but rookies are all listed in green (when they're on your team) and after a bit they stop being listed in green. Additionally, some servers are listed in green with "rookie friendly" appended to their names. In my experience, playing one of these servers, even as a first time commander, is more forgiving than I ever remembered the original, and generally this keeps the pro players away from the newbies and everyone happier as a result. I split my time between rookie and normal servers, now, as I'm still very much a rookie commander.
The community is fairly good, though language can be a problem at times, especially if your commander can't speak English. I often find I need to be the first on the in-game voice comms (which isn't filled with curse-spouting assholes as yet) but once you get some chatter going it tends to keep going. I've had maybe two instances of needing to leave a server due to excessive assholery on the part of my teammates (in terms of voice or text chat) but finding a new server was always reasonably easy and even low population servers fill up quickly.
This propensity to fill servers quickly is because the games are small. 12-20 players split between two teams is the norm. I try to target 16 player servers, personally. Far from seeming empty or insufficient, the games play more tactically this way, less chance of a mass team rush or sniper camping (not that there are any snipers).
I only have a small number of niggles:
The commander mode offers keyboard shortcuts to build things, but the keyboard shortcuts are for different menus and are shared between the menus. This can mean that you think you're building a cyst but actually you're about to send a threat warning, or something... I'd rather have a set of universal keys for command actions, not context sensitive.
There's a fair amount of marine stacking that goes on. It's somewhat common in rookie games for the game lobby to have a queue of three or four waiting to join the marines while the aliens team is one man under strength. They can't join 'til another alien joins, but it doesn't stop them queuing...
I think something else was bugging me, but I forget what it was for now.
All in all, though, it's an easy game to recommend if you're looking for a heavily team oriented adversarial shooter, can get on with its asymmetry and blend of FPS and RTS, and are prepared to get involved on voice comms in game.
Been asked by a couple of people, now, what I think of Natural Selection 2. Figured I could write a few words here and see if I can help a few more.
I played some NS1 back in the day but, on balance, I don't think I enjoyed it very much. Chiefly, I felt that the commander was absolutely vital to success and that, as a result, there was no way to learn how to command without repeatedly screwing your team (which they never appreciated).
Conversely, I've been enjoying NS2, despite it presenting largely the same concept and mechanics.
A quick overview for the less familiar:
NS2 is a first person shooter comprised of two opposing teams: humans versus aliens. The sides are not directly comparable: humans can vary the weapons and equipment they carry, where the aliens choose what type of alien to be and what attributes that alien should have. This leads to very different mechanics for each side and means that you have (at least) double the quantity to learn than in a normal shooter.
There is also the real time strategy element that is available to one player on each team, the commander. Whilst, strictly speaking, neither team requires a commander, playing without one will usually guarantee your team loses. This is because, at its heart, NS2 is a resource race. Spread around the map are resource nodes that each team needs to build on, and having done so they get resource points every five seconds. Resource points both go to individual players and to the team as a whole. The commander spends the team's points, where players spend their own.
Team resource points are spent to build structures and defences, and research upgrades for the FPS players.
Individual resource points are spent to purchase weapons and equipment, if you're a marine, or more advanced alien types, if you're an alien.
Particularly at the start of the game, resource points are acquired slowly. The 20 points required for a shotgun, for example, could take a good 2-4 minutes to build up (though you start with 20). Later, as your team controls more resource nodes you acquire points faster but building up large amount of points required to build the largest alien (the Onos) or acquire the heaviest power suit (the marine's Exo) still takes reasonable patience.
Barring major screw ups, the game is won or lost by the control and denial of adequate quantities of resources, and thus the resource nodes.
Acquiring these resource nodes is different for each team, however.
The marine commander must build a power terminal on an empty power point in a room, and they must build a resource collector on the resource node. However, all the commander gets to do is spend points to start the construction, which must be completed by the marines themselves. Thus, no marines on the ground near the construction, no building.
The alien commander must build a chain of cysts that spread infestation from their hive to the resource node. If the chain is broken, the cysts that are now no longer connected to the hive slowly start to die and their infestation withdraws. The aliens don't care about power, but to build a resource collector on a resource node it must be covered with infestation that is connected to the hive. However, the resource collector builds itself (though it can be accelerated by a the Gorge alien, which is a builder/healer type).
See? Quite different approaches to the same basic task. This extends throughout the game.
While the marines are researching better weapons and improvements to their armour, the aliens are spreading across the map, harrassing or ambushing lone marines (or attacking en masse marines in groups) and developing new alien traits such as a carapace that allows an alien to take more damage, or the ability to move without making any sound.
This asymmetric play means that the game can wash back and forth as each side adapts to the other's strategy, but both sides tend to be pushing to a fairly known end-game. For marines, acquiring the powerful Exo armours with mounted chainguns tends to signal the late game has arrived. For aliens, fielding the bull-like Onos is the same signal. Both units are strong and deadly and often they can end up head-to-head in a fairly matched game. Losing one of either unit is a big cost in resource points and this sort of resource attrition tends to mean that one side comes out on top.
However, the developments of the mid-game tend to be the most interesting. The aliens specialise down three different paths: speed, stealth and survival. Initially they can only choose one. Marines must choose to develop different weapons and equipment, or just make their existing armour and weapons better. All while expanding and fighting over the expansions.
The maps are varied but each has five critical points where a new hive or marine command station can be built. Each side starts in one, at roughly opposite sides of the map, leaving three up for grabs. The overall objective is to wipe out the opposing command structures (hive or command station), but as there can be more than one the game can shift around. Still, even if your team has more than one command structure, losing one is bad news, especially for the aliens who can then lose traits that were developed around that hive.
Everything has a suitably Aliens movie sense to it, though clearly developed separately from that mythos. Some wide open spaces, some narrow corridors, aliens hiding in vents or crevaces, marines clustering together in dimly lit corridors waving around their gunlights. Helpfully, parts of the maps are given names to aid in coordination, though for a new player this can still be troublesome (where am I? where's that place you said? how do I get there? ARGGGG, ALIEN EATING MY FACE!)... learning the maps is crucial, ideally from both sides as only the aliens (or marines with jetpacks) really get to use the map to their fullest extent.
It's really hard to say whether the game is balanced as the game hinges on the ability to get the upper hand in resources and then push the other team away. I've won and lost as both sides fairly regularly with no particular pattern. Sure, Exos or grenade launchers devastate alien hives, but then (temporarily) invisible Onos with hardened carapace and silent footsteps are equally horrific when they're eating your spawn points...
Certainly, I've never yet felt that I was playing better than the other team but they were able to steal victory away by using some tedious do-this-and-win tactic. I have also seen a losing team come back before they were pushed too far down with some good ground play and team coordination and a change of tactics from the commander.
Is it balanced? No idea and, being asymmetrical, perhaps not even relevant, but it's not obviously tilted one way or the other. I will say that the aliens are harder to play but, once they're really moving, probably harder to stop. For example, I've killed an Exo with the lowest ranked alien (the Skulk) with some speedy leaping, biting and circle strafing (on the floor, walls and ceiling, often in the same movement), but I've never dropped a full weight Onos as a marine with the basic assault rifle except when my team mates were also shooting at it. That said, maybe it was a crap Exo and a great Onos...? Hard to tell.
I paused before buying because of intermittent reports of poor framerates, bad lag, need to run on minimal settings, etc, etc. To date, I've had one outright crash, caused by a server having a fit, a couple of instances of jerkiness, again because the server was unhealthy, and a couple of games with high ping players that didn't feel as a silky smooth as I expected. However, for the most part, on middling settings, the game runs smoothly and largely glitch free. I've had an instance, as a marine, of being stuck in the floor once, too. Little things, very irregular, and certainly not the badly optimised crap heap that some reviews made it out to be. I guess YMMV, but I can account for at least three different configurations that indicate that it works fine and only the occasional moan of "urgh, game so laggy", which I attribute to already high ping players...
To date, I haven't mentioned a thing that I think is one of the single best features: rookie friendly servers. Sure, anyone could do this, but rookies are all listed in green (when they're on your team) and after a bit they stop being listed in green. Additionally, some servers are listed in green with "rookie friendly" appended to their names. In my experience, playing one of these servers, even as a first time commander, is more forgiving than I ever remembered the original, and generally this keeps the pro players away from the newbies and everyone happier as a result. I split my time between rookie and normal servers, now, as I'm still very much a rookie commander.
The community is fairly good, though language can be a problem at times, especially if your commander can't speak English. I often find I need to be the first on the in-game voice comms (which isn't filled with curse-spouting assholes as yet) but once you get some chatter going it tends to keep going. I've had maybe two instances of needing to leave a server due to excessive assholery on the part of my teammates (in terms of voice or text chat) but finding a new server was always reasonably easy and even low population servers fill up quickly.
This propensity to fill servers quickly is because the games are small. 12-20 players split between two teams is the norm. I try to target 16 player servers, personally. Far from seeming empty or insufficient, the games play more tactically this way, less chance of a mass team rush or sniper camping (not that there are any snipers).
I only have a small number of niggles:
The commander mode offers keyboard shortcuts to build things, but the keyboard shortcuts are for different menus and are shared between the menus. This can mean that you think you're building a cyst but actually you're about to send a threat warning, or something... I'd rather have a set of universal keys for command actions, not context sensitive.
There's a fair amount of marine stacking that goes on. It's somewhat common in rookie games for the game lobby to have a queue of three or four waiting to join the marines while the aliens team is one man under strength. They can't join 'til another alien joins, but it doesn't stop them queuing...
I think something else was bugging me, but I forget what it was for now.
All in all, though, it's an easy game to recommend if you're looking for a heavily team oriented adversarial shooter, can get on with its asymmetry and blend of FPS and RTS, and are prepared to get involved on voice comms in game.
