Natural Selection 2

[Jschmuck2]

http://www.naturalselection2.com/

I have nothing but fond memories of the first one - very AvP with a sort of Battlefield 2 (but before they did it) mechanic of having one player with a top-down RTS-style view of the battlefield, building structures and sort of directing the flow of the fight. It was very, very cool for its time.

The just updated the sequel two days ago and I thought it would be a good time to jump in and see what's what. The price is a *little* steep at $35 but you get access to the beta, the game when it's released and the knowledge that you're helping out a small dev team, which I'm all for.

Let me know if you jump in and we can mess around with it

 

[DrunkenSano]

Was definitely a very fun mod back in the day, even on the competitive scene. Had a lot of kick ass games back then in the tournaments, playing with #cri.

 

[DarkForceRising]

Let us know how it is. Last I had heard about it was several months ago, where the consensus was "has promise, but needs a lot of work." Of course, that was early beta, so it was understandable.

I only played a little bit of the original, but I remember enjoying it. I'm quite interested in this one.

 

[crisium]

Oh wow does that bring back old memories. I too only played very little, but enjoyed what I came across.

 

[Scouzer]

I was better at that game than any other game I've ever played. So fun. Played on G4B2S for hours.. hours..

I hope the new one is half as good when it's done.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

I got the feeling they shot themselves in the foot big time when they decided to make their own engine. Is it playable now? My friend preordered early and was never able to really get it going.

 

[RayCathode]

I always thought the original version looked fun, but never got around to doing more than glancing at it.

This guy has a lot of videos on his youtube site showing the game's progress. Looks pretty nice considering it's a small team making it. I probably wouldn't have made my own engine, but I assume they know best.

http://www.youtube.com/naturalselection2hd

 

[Avalon]

Been playing since the pre alpha engine test, and can say the game is a million times improved since then.

Server CPU utilization is still high, so mediocre servers still run poorly when it gets to around 12-14 players. On the bright side, FPS is now not a bottleneck, but intense combat can drop the framerates down into the 20s, but I do have everything maxed on an older system.

They still need to optimize for more performance with multi core setups, and the onos and jetpacks/exo suits are still MIA, but everything else is in place. Couple placeholders for art (like dynamic infestion), but it's pretty much there. If you're on a good server, the game is definitely fun. Still needs about 6 months of work.

 

[Magusigne]

I'm thinking about picking this up.

I'm all over helping out a small dev team. Also rewarding creativity unlike the crap that most big name publisher's have been putting out.

 

[JTsyo]

Enjoyed the first one but going to see how this pans out before I jump in.