Natural Selection 2 beta's running

[Caydr]

FYI, Natural Selection 2 beta's running. Probably old news but I only just heard about it.

For some reason you can't buy it directly through Steam yet, but you can get the pre-order and beta pass here:

http://www.naturalselection2.com/buy

~~~

Ok, so it works like this. When you order, they email you a key. You then go into Steam and say, "ADD A GAME", "Activate a product on Steam", and then paste your serial.

See y'all there in... 57 minutes. Damn Canadian internet...

[Licho]

Atm its barely playable, its very laggy. I'm one of original playtesters of NS1 and i do play NS2 but im not recommending it for fun gaming yet.

[SeanHeron]

If you liked Natural Selection, you might be interested in Trem(ulous). While it's quite different in a number of things, the base concept is pretty similiar - and at least for me, a hell of a lot of fun.
New version is apparently (after almost endless wait...) out soon, but even the current version ranks as one of my favourite FPS titles.

P.S. check out the promo video (cool despite old graphics).

[SirArtturi]

Atm its barely playable, its very laggy. I'm one of original playtesters of NS1 and i do play NS2 but im not recommending it for fun gaming yet.

Even after Build 161?

Whatsoever, not going to buy the game until its released and properly reviewed. As much I hope that NS2 will success I still have my doubts.

I was pretty dissapointed when they decided not to include dynamic infestation into the official release, hope it will be modded someday into it.

[Licho]

Yes even after build 161
They screwed themselves by developing their own engine. I never understand why they didnt stick to source just because of few extra visuals.

Instead you have poorly made lagging game with typical low level bugs like randomly missing textures, units falling through walls/floors, audio and video not being in sync etc.

Dynamic infestation could still be included.

I tried tremulous but NS1 was simply much more interesting game with greater emphasis on cooperation. NS2 makes departure here too, making commander more independent (you don't need marines to build stuff, drones do it) and aliens more like marines (same resource model, alien commander).

[SwiftSpear]

I haven't bought it yet, but I'm pretty involved in the community. Pretty much everyone is saying it's extremely unfinished now, which is understandable as a huge amount of active work is going on still, and will be for a while, so please don't buy it if you're going to judge it by the quality of the current version.

This isn't a minecraft type game where all they have left to do is add features, it's not really balanced, and while it's playable, it's not fun yet at this point in time, other than to see what might one day become.

[Caydr]

The game itself feels mostly finished, there's just lag issues from hell. Apparently building an excessive number of defensive structures is the biggest contributor to the problem.

Since there's no way to demolish your own existing structures and you have such a large area to defend and often no more than 5-7 players per team (due to lag), it's sort of... well right now there's some fun to be had but it's one of those rare times when a "beta" truly means "we'd like feedback and testers", not "this is a pre-release promotional demo".

Desperately needs some kind of tutorial/hint system, akin to L4D or Alien Swarm. There's so much you need to understand in order to play, especially as commander.

Once they get the lag ironed out and they get up to 32 (IIRC) players per server, it'll be a much better game. Sort of like Counterstrike but with aliens and construction.

[SirArtturi]

Wohoo dynamic infestation is back! Plus many more cool features

http://www.youtube.com/unknownworlds

When this thing is officially released you wont see me around here anymore!

[Gota]

It doesn't look like dynamic infestation though...
I mean nothing like what they showed a while back..

[SirArtturi]

It doesn't look like dynamic infestation though...
I mean nothing like what they showed a while back..

It's still a prototype, they wanted to add it part of the gameplay to test how it works. It most probably will be more "dynamic" in future. It looks a bit crap atm.

[Gota]

Why u so excited bout this game?
Werent there a number of similair games to NS1?I mean was NS1 really THAT good?

[SirArtturi]

Yes there was, but there isnt really anymore
NS1 was honestly one of the best games ever. And still is. I have big expectations for the second one.

[knorke]

I mean was NS1 really THAT good?

imo yes. It just worked, maybe a case of "right place, right time" or maybe it was the players too? But I never really cared much about ie Tremulous .

(you don't need marines to build stuff, drones do it)

lol..

[zwzsg]

I'd rather keep my fond memory of NS 2.1 from years ago.

[SirArtturi]

Actually, now that you mentioned, was there really good FPS/RTS games besides NS and tremulous? And what comes to tremulous, I really never had reason to try it, NS was perfect.

There was really good similiar games, but they were already old and suffering lack of players, like Battlezone and Tribes.

NS was the first game that introduced intensive team cooperation with the coordination of a commander. I have never played so demanding and competitive clan matches after that.