Natural Selection 2 pre ordering

[Aldaris]

I know a few people here have heard about Natural Selection (NS), the Half Life mod, so I thought I'd post this for a heads up.

For those who don't know, Natural Selection was the most popular mod for Half life (not including the officially supported ones). It's gameplay was RTS/FPS hybrid, one of the first to try this mix, being released back in 2002. The Marines had one person, the Commander, using the resources, and placing structures for the Marines to build, and starting research. The Aliens, however, were based on individuals spending their resources on themselves how they saw fit.

As of earlier today, http://www.naturalselection2.com/ has put up a teaser trailer, and a link to pre ordering, stating a fall 2009 release. Pre ordering gives you early access to the beta and mapping tools with the standard edition, and the special edition has black armour available, with even alpha access. NS2 is the sequel to NS, made on an engine the developement team has made from scratch, and being released on Steam.

I am mad excited about this. Lost a lot of time with NS, and the sequel is looking sexy enough to really increase the nervous scary atmosphere the original had, while providing the ability for some truly innovative gameplay.

[Gig]

I loved NS for half life, I'm so glad you posted this I'm buying it right now.

[Paladin]

NS was is the best FPS around, period. I don't care that it was a mod, it's still the best FPS ever made.

NS2 may be awesome. But I reserve judgement until I at least see some gameplay footage.

I think an L4D style NS would be pretty awesome though. Let the aliens team all be advanced creatures, and the AI sends hordes of the little... base aliens... that I don't remember the name of... after you.

That'd be awesome.

[Zallis]

"Charles Darwin would be proud"

I loved NS. In what other game can you swallow your enemies whole then type "hahahaha! joo suck!" while they're being digested?!

I would play NS2 just for the nostalgia factor! And swallowing marines whole and gloating to poor guy I just swallowed...

[Caesar]

My God? Really? Pre-ordering right now bitches!

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I don't think you swallow marines with the new onos... MOUTH IS TOO TINY >:X

[Black]

In before whiners put down a great game for inane reasons.

[JHD536]

Also note, for those who missed it in the link: The standard edition is only $20.

[l337raceryo]

Fuck the standard edition. This is one of the few games that I'm willing to pay too much money on.

[CyberSargent]

Wow. I really hope they can pull this off and this becomes a huge hit.

[sporty]

OMG TEY HAVE ONOS!!!! WE ARE DOOMED (http://img4.abload.de/img/onoscs_8x64att.jpg)!!!11!

Ahem. Yes oh fuck yes. Refreshed the site like a maniac until it was "unlocked", then refreshed it even more to see the teaser (the forums choking wasn't my fault, I swear). If PayPal didn't have such a nasty reputation, I would've pre-ordered hours ago. A little extra they put in later now has me reconsider this: "Pre-order is stand-alone and will auto-update, but assume it doesn't include the Steam version." Oh how I'd love to assume that :D

Meh, it'll be DD anyway, I need to ponder about this some more. Should be Special Edition of course, not because of black armour suits or something, but as an appreciation of NS1.
Hope they find a publisher to bring it to the retail market. As Paladin said, it's the successor to the best multiplayer FPS there is. And if the teaser is any indication, it looks very fine thanks to them ditching Source :)

[Ra OwA]

Natural selection was amazing; i will be pre-ordering this as soon as i get home from work! I saw a video a while ago showing some of the development for NS2, and it looked great back then - can't wait!

I really liked the way NS combined FPS/RTS for the marines, and ofcourse playing as aliens is always fun - just like its fun playing infected on Left4Dead.

[Meatkin]

Unholy shitfuck I'd totally forgotten about this! I used to love NS but my interest slowly evaporated as progress for NS2 seemed to be taking forever. Stoked about the pre-order though! Nice one!

[SmellyTerror]

By the time I played NS, the only people in it were fanatics with a couple of thousand hours under their belts. I was fodder.

...but the game looked pretty sweet.

[Meatkin]

There was a steep learning curve. I remember it being particularly savage jumping into the commanders chair. If you didn't know what you were doing you were voted out pretty quickly. Probably put off a lot of people, which is a shame because its a lot of fun.

The pressure to not fuck up was quite intense though, I remember one time I recycling vital pieces of kit because my push to talk button was the same as the shortcut key to 'sell' buildings. Doh. If you've never had 15 people screaming at you for being an idiot, Natural Selection is a great way to have that experience.

[SmellyTerror]

Yeah, I played a bit of Allegiance, too. Similar stress, only with space ships.

Actually, that's a meaningful contribution to the thread: for those who want NS-style (including RTS / action hybrid; all-human teams; diverse roles) wiv space ships, Allegiance is free. Hell of a learning curve, but you're used to that, right?

The only link I have on hand is this one:
http://www.allegacademy.org/cadet/cadet1/contentexpl.shtml