Natural Selection 2 just hit the news on The Escapist
CanadianWolverine
Join Date: 2003-02-07 Member: 13249Members
Join Date: 2003-02-07 Member: 13249Members
in NS2 E-Team
<div class="IPBDescription">Please come help promote this game, lots of help!</div><a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95849-Classic-Half-Life-Mod-Gets-Next-Gen-Remake" target="_blank">http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/...Next-Gen-Remake</a>
Please view the comments section of their forums, we will need to get on this fast, there is a lot of misconceptions flying around there and we need to present the best face possible.
Here is what I threw in there quickly:
<!--QuoteBegin-"CanadianWolverine" post="7.152861.3658542"+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE ("CanadianWolverine" post="7.152861.3658542")</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Everyone should know that video is basicly fan service for those of us who played the Natural Selection mod for Half Life 1 - it was yet another carrot in a long list of carrots the Independent Developers of Unknown Worlds (Charlie "Flayra" Cleveland, Max "Max" McGuire, Cory "Squeal Like a Pig" Strader, Matt "Ooghijmiqtxxa" Regan, and more) that they have been giving to us: in the form of pictures, audio blogs, video blogs, twitter, and forum posts we have been following the development of their commercial game pretty much since it was a twinkle in the eye of Charlie when he was working on making the many content and tweak versions of the Half Life mod with his team of fellow modders from all around the globe. Remember how Stardock (Impulse) has been praised for letting the game community come along for the ride during development? These Unknown World guys so do that.
Want game play footage? We are still waiting on that till they release the beta to the play testers/special pre-orders.
And if you haven't heard of Natural Selection for Half-Life? It was right behind Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat in terms of numbers of players and servers ... and you have pretty much missed that bus, it is rare to find a good game of it these days, most of those servers moved on to other games by now as the player base dwindled. It has been compared to Savage and Savage 2, but trust me on this, it was way, way more fun. I played Natural Selection for years, the community around the games was just that good for that amount of time. So, if you haven't heard of it before, take note, you just bumped into what has the potential to be one of the biggest indy titles in years - we'll let you know when there is better footage to get your freak on as TSA Marine or Kharaa shape changing aliens.
Here, have some in game screen shots from their alpha testing:
<img src="http://www.unknownworlds.com/cache/thumbnails/NS2_marine_hallway_800x500.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<img src="http://www.unknownworlds.com/cache/thumbnails/NS2_skulk_vent_800x500.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<b>The future of this indy game looks damn fine.</b><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Please help.
Please view the comments section of their forums, we will need to get on this fast, there is a lot of misconceptions flying around there and we need to present the best face possible.
Here is what I threw in there quickly:
<!--QuoteBegin-"CanadianWolverine" post="7.152861.3658542"+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE ("CanadianWolverine" post="7.152861.3658542")</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Everyone should know that video is basicly fan service for those of us who played the Natural Selection mod for Half Life 1 - it was yet another carrot in a long list of carrots the Independent Developers of Unknown Worlds (Charlie "Flayra" Cleveland, Max "Max" McGuire, Cory "Squeal Like a Pig" Strader, Matt "Ooghijmiqtxxa" Regan, and more) that they have been giving to us: in the form of pictures, audio blogs, video blogs, twitter, and forum posts we have been following the development of their commercial game pretty much since it was a twinkle in the eye of Charlie when he was working on making the many content and tweak versions of the Half Life mod with his team of fellow modders from all around the globe. Remember how Stardock (Impulse) has been praised for letting the game community come along for the ride during development? These Unknown World guys so do that.
Want game play footage? We are still waiting on that till they release the beta to the play testers/special pre-orders.
And if you haven't heard of Natural Selection for Half-Life? It was right behind Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat in terms of numbers of players and servers ... and you have pretty much missed that bus, it is rare to find a good game of it these days, most of those servers moved on to other games by now as the player base dwindled. It has been compared to Savage and Savage 2, but trust me on this, it was way, way more fun. I played Natural Selection for years, the community around the games was just that good for that amount of time. So, if you haven't heard of it before, take note, you just bumped into what has the potential to be one of the biggest indy titles in years - we'll let you know when there is better footage to get your freak on as TSA Marine or Kharaa shape changing aliens.
Here, have some in game screen shots from their alpha testing:
<img src="http://www.unknownworlds.com/cache/thumbnails/NS2_marine_hallway_800x500.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<img src="http://www.unknownworlds.com/cache/thumbnails/NS2_skulk_vent_800x500.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<b>The future of this indy game looks damn fine.</b><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Please help.
Comments
However I think those that haven't played NS and learned nothing from the teaser do make a good point.
Until there's a proper preview/trailer a lot of gamers won't share our hype.
Thanks to everyone who posted some more informed posts in the comments section of this bit of news.
I was very impressed with NS1. It was so ambitious and clever for a HL mod that it made CS & DoD look basic.
I remember the first time I played I was at a private LAN in an old house separated by two rooms, I knew the people in my room but the guys in the other room were like friends-of-friends. We'd been playing CS most of the evening room vs room, then when it got real dark the guys in the other room told us to get this other HL mod called NS.
The lights were all off in the house and we were all on sugar/caffeine highs by that stage (donuts and coke :D), I had no idea what NS was about but a change from CS sounded nice.
We joined the server as marines and started getting accustomed to the game, me and one of my mates went wondering off to explore the map looking for other 'people' to shoot at as you do in HL mods.
As we got further from our spawn we started seeing weird scary things running from shadow to shadow making us jump in surprise, then we saw them running across the ceiling and jumping down to bite our faces causing us yell out profanities in shock.
We didn't immediately realize it in all the commotion but we'd had our first encounter with the Kharaa.
After some more attacks we started to get used to it, but it was hours of exciting gaming I don't think I'll be forgetting for a long time.
I am also a big fan of the movie 'Aliens' (but not the AvP series) and NS has some obvious similarities which I loved. I ended up coming across custom sounds, models and skins that made NS more like Aliens then made my LAN friends use them.
I got to scare my other friends at LANs when I learnt how to play Kharaa, for example me and this guy we called Mr.X were fades and we had cloaked before opening a door. On the other side of that door was our friend Pound playing as a marine who coincidentally was just about to open it from his side. To his surprise the door opened before he got to it and out of nowhere both of us fades uncloaked and attacked. Classic NS moments.
I'm not a good story teller but you can get an idea of how much I enjoyed NS and how eager I am to experience an updated version with even more immersion.
But of course sequels can easily fall short/miss the mark, as games like BF2, COD4 & GTA4 reminded me. So my personal hype/expectations could result in disappointment.
Even if I am unable to recapture the experience of NS in NS2 or it suffers the same player base issues as games like FFOW, I'm still happy to have supported an independent dev team as talented and bold as Unknown Worlds.
If anything it's better than continuing to waste money on overrated rip-off titles from companies like EA.
I don't think they really know what they're talking about...
Yeah, there may not be a whole bunch of servers, but there are certainly enough to find a good game.
On my part, 27€ are nothing even compared to how much I enjoyed and I'm again enjoying NS1.
Yeah, there may not be a whole bunch of servers, but there are certainly enough to find a good game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I said what I said because I didn't want to give any newbies to NS1 (and there were definitely some in that thread) the expectation that they could go jump in the half-life mod right now and expect to experience what the rest of us have for years. Because, I'm just speculating here, you can find a good game because you have some idea of what you are doing when you go play and won't, say, get kicked out of the command chair and/or reamed out verbally/in text for dropping the wrong chamber and/or lambasted for playing certain marine equipment/life forms "wrong". Face it, the learning curve is a bit steeper these days than when we were all newbs in versions 1 and up, that could throw off potential customers aka newbs for NS2.