So I just played Natural Selection 2 for the first time...

[T-Bone]

My God it's impressive but before that let me explain. For those of us that pre-ordered (Maybe just the special edition) we got an E-Mail today telling us that a client had been released with two small maps on it to test. I would give you the download link but a) it's easily found on their website and b) it needs your product key.

So, the two maps are called range1 and range 2 and are small maps where a bunch of wooden targets pop out of corners and what not, to emulate skulks I guess, and you get to shoot them and watch the physics blow the limbs off. You only get your primary weapon but it looks really good, a lot bigger than it did in NS1 and, in fact, looks a lot like the pulse rifle from Aliens. There are two things that really struck me.

The first is that the detail is astounding. NS1 had a reasonable amount of detail but this is just so much better. Imagine the level of detail CS had over CS 1.6...now go more...more....keep going...you know what it's over there where you need to imagine *points*. Anyway the environments look they have been lived/worked in as there such things like toolboxes, labcoats, jackets, mugs etc strewn all over the place and it looks like environments where people actually worked. The second thing that was awesome is the lighting.

It is just so atmospheric and awesome. it was one of the things I loved most about NS1 and they have made it so much better. There are areas where the only lighting is green ambience from terminals and small orange emergency lights from the floor and these combine to make an all together confusing dynamic for the marines allowing the aliens the opportunity of ambush. However, there are also areas with large windows with metals beams horizontally across them where sunlight (Well I suppose starlight) comes flooding in and can silhouette those against it favouring the marines.

From what I've seen it looks like The Haven are going to be playing this game together and I can't wait.

Finally I'd like to end by addressing a concern of Haven's which I would post if I could find it. He said once "It's a shame the game already looks old." It' really isn't a shame at all mate, it doesn't.

-- Bone

 

[T-Bone]

Actually gonna put a little more here.

I love the main menu. It's a typical source game concept of a small map loaded with the menu in front of it. There is a marine standing there on sentry and various things moving around behind him like skulks and those little yellow hoverbots from the meet the lerk promo, I wonder what they're all about. The menu music is also amazingly atmospheric and I could and have watched it for ages.

Another thing is one of the parts from the map range2. A corridor with big fans on the walks and ceilings that are lit from behind. The dynamic lighting allows shadows to be changed as the fan blades turn and if I knew there were alien players in the map I would be truly terrified.

Allow me to finish with this is awesome!

-- Bone

 

[SwampFae]

Taken a look at NS2 and it is GORGEOUS.
It is like NS. Only ten times better. More versatile and stunning in every way.
Do want.
If you do not have it. It would be recommended to grab a copy when possible.
Belly slides for the win!

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

I wasn't going to bother with any of the alpha testing stuff, but since Tbone has brought my attention to it I thought I might as well have a wee shot.

I admit I wasn't blown away by it to the same extent that Tbone was, but it definitely shows signs of promise. The lighting is indeed quite pretty, and it's definitely a dynamic they are trying to take advantage of (both in terms of atmosphere and gameplay), but I wouldn't say it's anything particularly special. I'm thinking there needs to be more of a contrast between light/darkness, as the maps seemed to consist mostly of well-lit, airy corridors and halls. Claustrophobic, shadowy crawl spaces and choke points appear to be missing at the moment (maybe on account of the absence of a 'crouch' function); whether they will be added later on is hard to tell.

Highlights *cough* include the areas T-Bone pointed out - the amber glow of sunset streaming through metal bars, or the crazy stroboscobic fluorescence of the rotating fanlights. Clearly UW have an excellent grasp of what kind of effect atmospherics and ambience can have on the experience, although I'm hoping they can apply it better in the final product.

As to the maps themselves, they seem distinctly 'deathmatchy' to me - a bit samey, and they kind of gave me the feeling that they were symmetrical and based on no sort of discernible structure. For example, in NS1 you would be travelling through different, well singposted areas like bioprocessing, computer cores, habitation etc. etc. and they would all make sense are part of a space station, research facility or whatever the map's setting may be; these sections seem a bit nondescript in comparison. Quite detailed, yes, but they need a bit more flavour and sense of purpose. It's hard to say how much of an actual, full-size map these brief glimpses represent - they feel a bit small, like maybe they are only little portions of maps that are, in fact, much bigger. Maybe they aren't actually in-game maps at all, and just custom built rec-rooms for the purpose of showing off the lighting, weapons, mechanics etc. (in fact, that might be what the name 'range' alludes to).

The single weapon you are given access to, presumably the light machinegun, split my opinion slightly as well. I'm not a huge fan of the aesthetics to be honest, it's a bit brutal and chunky looking compared to the slimline LMG of yesteryear. It sounds the same as it looks, with a meaty 'thunk-thunk-thunk' instead of a staccato 'ratatatat' that I reckon would have been more suited to the concept (sounds mean a lot to me). But hey! That's opinion for you. I'd imagine a squad of four or five all hammering away, Aliens style, would be really impressive.

There are also a couple of performance/glitchy issues, but I guess you can't expect anything else from a pre-alpha. The framerate is a bit inconsistent, and tends to drop a lot for inexplicable reasons. Looking at something you'd expect to be graphically intensive, like two of the fanlights in a large room, and it runs smooth as silk. Step into some random corridor and all of a sudden things start to grind; I'm not an expert coderman, but there must be something up with the map at those points.
When you walk up to a wall/console/target the gun clips straight through it. When you bring up the menu overlay during gameplay, it seems to mega slow the game down.

Despite these issues, I'm pretty confident that UW will have a proper good game set up for us come release day. Maybe not perfect (NS1 never was, in a technical sense anyway), but something worth getting excited about.

 

[BaRT]

The cool thing is that you were blown away by a pre-alpha engine test. And we haven't even seen the gameplay or the endproduct in action yet.

Got only emm few words, because I can't count!

CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



PS: Oh hai <.<

 

[T-Bone]

PS: Oh hai <.<

<3 Bart

 

[Macca]

Just had a quick bash of it there, Can't wait for them to finish and polish NS2 so it's nice and shiney !

Also can't wait to pwn the nublet known as barticus!

 

[DeZmond]

Any indications of how it works performance-wise at this early stage? I ask because if I go down the route of pre-ordering I'd be using it on my macbook (yeah, boo hiss I know ) so it would need to run acceptably on 2.53ghz Core 2, 4GB RAM and 9400M graphics.

Other than that, I would also like to say that from the dev updates released in the last few months (even the april fools youtube vid) it looks like some solid progress has been made and I too am excited at the prospect of getting some old-school HD NS action going again!

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Hard to say much performance-wise, Sir Dezalot. On a Q6600 and HD4870 I experienced some stodgy patches of slowdown walking through the maps, mostly at places where you wouldn't expect there to be serious graphical strain (like down a narrow corridor, for example). I put the graphics down from 'high' to 'medium' and the performance actually got worse for one reason or another. I noticed that, on medium, if you fire your gun after a few seconds of pause, it stutters on the first bullet like it has to load up the weapon noise/muzzle flash again.

Just general weirdness like that.

 

[Macca]

Yeah I also got some slow patches and graphics/sound glitches on a AMD Am2 X2 5600+, and a 4890, but I reckon it's mostly down to the fact it's a pretty early alpha.

The system requirments they've posted for it seem pretty low, and from the looks of the alpha it's not gonna be the most graphically demanding game... which is perfectly fine, aslong as they can keep it acceptable and maintain and upgrade the awesomeness/fun factor of the first NS .