- Joined
- Apr 19, 2012
- Messages
- 12,062 (2.75/day)
- Location
- Gypsyland, UK
| System Name | HP Omen 17 |
|---|---|
| Processor | i7 7700HQ |
| Memory | 16GB 2400Mhz DDR4 |
| Video Card(s) | GTX 1060 |
| Storage | Samsung SM961 256GB + HGST 1TB |
| Display(s) | 1080p IPS G-SYNC 75Hz |
| Audio Device(s) | Bang & Olufsen |
| Power Supply | 230W |
| Mouse | Roccat Kone XTD+ |
| Software | Win 10 Pro |
Introduction
Natural Selection 2: Combat is an FPS/Action game with RPG elements driving the progress of the multiplayer matches. The game is developed by Faultline Games and published by Unknown World Entertainment. The game is made in the same engine as the previous NS2 game, the Spark engine. While the game has DX11, it is defaulty run in D3D9 mode for all players unless specified otherwise. You play either the Aliens or Marines with the general objectives being simplified in both Capture and Base mode games. The game is based upon the NS2: Combat mod, but is now going standalone for streamline and bug squishing purposes. It’s also considered to be the best way to entice new players into the otherwise complicated and elongated style of the first iteration of NS2. Similar to that of League of Legends and Counterstrike, the game is extremely skill and team based.
Storyline
As a marine, you need to kill all the aliens while on the way to decimating the alien’s base. Either that or defend a random point. The same goes for the aliens; the only difference between the two is the approach that is taken. As the game is multiplayer based, there isn’t really a basis for a storyline that would otherwise be forgotten and wasted on such a game. Like CounterStrike, a storyline really isn’t necessary, and all focus is on the gameplay and mastering controls.
Gameplay
I’ll split this into two sections, one being for the marine side, and the other for aliens, and cover both modes that seem to be the most played, the one I like to call a base-race mode, and the capture mode, similar to holding points in Battlefield Conquest, only with smaller maps and fewer points.
Base-Race:-
Both sides must be the first to destroy the enemy’s base. The marines “chair” as players call it, and the alien’s hive have a HP pool and a shield-like pool. The shield pool is the first to be damaged, but can be repaired, either by Gorger’s secondary attach, or the marine’s repair tool. Damage dealt to the main HP pool is irreparable. The first to destroy the enemy’s base wins. These matches can be over as quickly as 15-20 minutes. In the event you have a team of 8 vs 8, of developers and veterans, as well as terrible press players (like me), matches can sometimes last up to 45 minutes. In terms of gameplay for both sides, during the 96 hours live stream, I noted that about 85% of all base-race matches were won by aliens. Most of the time the alien team would struggle severely in the first part of the early game, and marines would mostly get a large lead in terms of kills.
Most games I played as aliens, I probably only got 2 kills for the entire early game, and had access to nothing besides the armour or speed improvements. Marines would simply get stronger and unlock the shotgun, which is a 1 or 2 shot weapon in CQB. CQB is the only way to get kills as an alien for the first two levels, so it gets incredibly frustrating. Aliens heavily rely upon swarm tactics, so if your team is not communicating and organising, you will lose the early game without question.
At the mid game, aliens get access to the Gorger, which is an awesome support unit capable of deploying two types of defensive units, barriers, heal all friendlies, and gain access to different types of attacks. Each attack and abilities will have strengths and weaknesses against certain opponents. The midgame is a nice even ground, by which point both aliens and marines will have counter units, abilities, and some armour and hp improvements, so the field is more level. This is the point where a lot of corridor supremacy becomes important, and allows your team to press forward. Obviously the maps have a dozen ways to reach the enemy base, so defensive areas are always necessary.
It took me a very long time to get to the mid game however, as I was new to the game, and had to learn how to use abilities. In the event you don’t get any more than 2 kills, you can’t reach the mid game as kills are required to gain levels and unlock the other units. If one side gets a lot more kills than the other, then they gain a massive tech and upgrade advantage and it makes the game very difficult to claw back. If you join a game midway through, you still start off at a low level with only a tiny amount of XP, so you get instantly KO’d by just about everyone and have to pray for some lucky kills. The issue is your deaths further increase the enemy team’s lead. It’s an odd turn of affairs, and something that needs to be looked into in terms of balance. I found it near impossible to provide anything useful to my team if I joined midway through, and did not have very much fun at all playing the game to its end. By this point most marines will have shotguns or heavy rifles, as well as grenades of varying types to counter certain types of aliens. A lot of the cluster grenades will instakill weaker aliens with pure attack and speed upgrades, and defence turrets slaughter the weaker aliens. The midgame is also where tunnels (for aliens) and gates (for marines) are deployed to circumvent the use of corridors and make surprise attacks.
Late game was odd. The second the aliens got the Onos, not even the marine’s late game mechs could kill them. After trying out both mechs, rail gun and Gatling gun, I found neither was capable of taking on a single Onos one on one in any situation. It seems a little strange to me, but the endgame marine units are best at taking on early to mid-game alien units. The alien late game units however, can decimate just about anything. This process of events is what led to aliens winning almost all matches I played. I tried both sides evenly, and marines struggled to win any games, despite dominating the early game in almost every case. There were some occasions when a heavy cluster of marines was able to take out two Onos, but only with a number of us throwing grenades and equipping flamethrowers and grenade launchers. Even then, the Onos were able to kill a large portion of us.
The game mode almost always ends up being a base race, where whoever can get the most endgame units through a tunnel or gate to the enemy base and deals more damage in a quick burst wins. So despite the best of planning, you can lose simply because 3 Onos charged into your base and killed every single defender.
Capture:-
The gameplay is largely similar to Base-Race, only with 3 capture points. My one irritation with this mode was that the minimap does not specifically state which points are A, B and C, the points are merely marked with a white hexagon. There is then a map on the lower part of the UI which shows where each point is, and labels them. I genuinely don’t understand the point in this, and they should have just labelled the points on the minimap clearly and removed this extra map. As it stands, new players who hear people screaming over the comms “GET TO B! YOU’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY” get frustrated, because we simply don’t know which point is which. It needs to be clearer. It’s all well and good if you’re a veteran and know the deal, but this is a big off-put for me, a new player. I also found that a single marine with a heavy rifle very early on in the game was able to camp and kill almost every alien that tried to attack down one corridor within the first 2 levels of alien evolution. It took about 5 tries to finally kill him with another player acting as a decoy. Again, marines seem to dominate the early game as usual, but it gets more even the further into the game you go. In this match type, I did notice that the win/loss ratio was a lot more even for both sides. I even managed to get top on the kills list in this mode for a single match.
Kills award XP, and XP levels you up slowly throughout the match. Each level grants you a skill point, or for aliens, an evolution. Each point can be spent on the following:
Marines –
· New weapons, unlocked for skill points, but only available after reaching certain levels
· Upgrades, including Armour and HP pool, and weapon Damage
· Items
o Grenades of varying types, with strengths and weaknesses
o Support items, including ammo replenishment, alien scanners
o Deployables, these include “gates” which when placed allow marines to teleport across the map, and turrets for point defence
· At level 10, marines can access the big mechs, equipped with chain guns, rail guns etc.
Aliens –
· New aliens, including Gorgers, flying units, stealth units, and the massive endgame units, the Onos
· Abilities, varying depending on alien, including bile bombs for armoured opponents, and poison clouds.
· Upgrades, including Armour and HP pool, Health regen, and movement speed
· Passives, including increase in all damage, but increase in energy cost of abilities
In general the gameplay is good; however it took me 2 evenings to learn how to play the game. If I weren’t reviewing this, I’d have stopped playing and uninstalled the game after 2 hours. I have to be honest, and in my experience as a new player to the game, it is immensely frustrating. The difficulty curve is ridiculous to begin with, and the skill ceiling is immensely high. In my first evening playing the game, I probably got about 3 kills after 4 matches, because there was no way to teach you how to play either race, what their abilities were, how to activate them, and what was effective against something else. The brief video tutorials are not enough to equip a new player with confidence that they know what they’re doing. Only after asking in general chat and voice chat did the developers and veterans explain things. Even after that it took me hours to get used to playing any character from either team. Most of the people playing were veterans, with very few new players from the press like me. All of us were at the bottom of the leader board, barely getting past level 3, and were getting completely trashed by the players who knew how to move around as an alien, and what guns were effective against certain aliens.
In Beta there were no matchmaking options, however I’ve been told that will be available on launch.
Controls
Most of the controls are standard FPS controls. For marines, 1 is your primary, 2 is pistol, 3 is knife, and 4 is grenade (costs a skill point to unlock). In the event you unlock deployables, 5 is the menu to choose from, and then it’s 1-4 to choose a deployable (if you have it unlocked). F is for flashlight. As for the rest, you point and shoot at things that move. Nice and simple, although in the middle of a firefight, it’s a bit difficult to quickly deploy a turret. Probably not advised, but leaning over to 5 and then pressing 1 while dodging is no easy feat.
As an alien, things get more complicated based on what you’re playing. The starter unit can jump and climb across any surface, and the general climbing can get a bit clunky. You don’t unlock any kind of secondary ability like leaping at enemies until later on in the early midgame, by which point you’ve probably switched to a different alien after getting tired of being 2 shotted by everything. Gorgers can’t climb anything, but they can slide everywhere by pressing shift, which is actually marginally fun. Gorgers can deploy tunnels, defensive “plants”, sticky lines to slow marines, and clots for blocking off access to areas. They can also heal units with secondary fire.
The flying units have a ranged but extremely weak attack, and their primary is the same as the starter unit, which is a melee bite which takes about 3 body shots to kill your average marine. They fly by flapping their wings, the faster you tap space, the faster you fly in the direction you’re facing. This can be pretty tricky to get the hang of, but abusing the flying mechanics can help you get in and out of places with some skill. The stealth units can teleport in and out of combat, and make quick mincemeat of singular marines, they’re also rather tanky. I recall shooting one with 3 or 4 shots with the shotgun and he was still standing and impaled me shortly after.
Onos are stupid, stupid endgame units. Stack armour and charge in and click as fast as you can on those meat bags. No complicated controls for those.
Video Settings
A nice selection of options, including the choice to use D3D9 or DX11. Ambient Occlusion is a bit weird for aliens. I turned it on for benchmarking, but I wasn’t a fan of the fish eye it caused. It also has an Oculus option! Kudos for that. The graphics are nothing particularly special, they’re not quite AAA, and reminded me of a slightly higher poly count version of Doom 3. Certainly nothing to compare with the likes of Battlefield, but the lighting and colour is quite nice on the more vibrant maps, but be prepared to see a lot of brown and grey. It also has a super nice feature that lets you select just how much VRAM you have. This is for sure something I’d like to see in future games.
System Performance
CPU: i5 4670 (Stock)
GPU: MSI GTX 970 (Stock)
RAM: 16GB 2133mhz
Storage: WD 1TB 7200RPM
Display: 2560 x 1440
On standard 1080p the game runs perfectly fine in all cases, with very little frame drops below 60FPS. I honestly didn’t notice anything poor in that area. As for 1440p, there are a number of areas where the game tanks slightly, but because the game is so intense, I didn’t honestly notice any of it. It’s worth noting that the game is probably heavily GPU orientated, as both settings saw the CPU at roughly the same load in both cases.
1440p
1080p
Conclusion
Natural Selection 2: Combat is an odd one to talk about. The game is terrible to new players, frustrating, demoralising, and altogether unenjoyable for the first 2 – 4 hours. I honestly didn’t want to carry on playing, as I didn’t understand everything, and there was no way of learning other than checking the internet and asking experienced players. It starts off as a pretty large brick wall, and takes ages to get over it. Even after all the time I spent, it still takes me a very long time to get past level 1 or 2 as an alien in every early game example. That’s pretty frustrating, and if you don’t have voice comms turned on at least, and don’t organise ambushes, then your team will be stuck in terms of advancement. Climbing about as the starter alien is something you have to capitalise on in the early game, but I find the jumping and general movement pretty clunky and awkward. Even when I successfully sneak attacked a marine on his own; he could turn around and kill me with a short spray of bullets.
The late game needs some severe balance for new player games. Get 4 Onos as the aliens and the game is won. I’m sure that in games with experienced players, this is not an issue, and they know how to counter these things, but even in games with the devs most matches were won as soon as we got more than 2 Onos. When I played marines, I was in a mech, and it was completely worthless against the alien’s endgame units. Even the melee on the mechs is entirely worthless, and takes almost a dozen hits to kill a basic alien unit. Even with matchmaking in perfect condition, I feel the late game is going to be a massive issue for a lot of new players. I also honestly found the marine side a little boring from early to mid-game, as you would unlock a couple of guns and run around and shoot things with not a lot else going on. As aliens, midgame was a haven for trying different things; making tunnels, blocking passages, making webbed areas, deploying defences, sneaking through vents, and generally providing massively different play styles for every player. Midgame as aliens was where I really enjoyed myself. I ended up levelling up as a Gorger (tier 2 alien) about 7 times, and really found my element with that class.
After spending a few days playing the game, I did eventually get to a point where I was genuinely enjoying myself, could get to grips with counters, learnt movement techniques and provided a decent contribution to my team. It got pretty tense at times, and I felt really involved in what was going on. I imagine for all players who liked every Natural Selection game out there, this is a great addition. If you’ve never played Natural Selection, you need to consider the fact that you’re going to suck at it. You’re going to die, you’re not going to kill anyone, and you won’t get to play any endgame units for a few matches. The skill required for early game aliens is quite high, it’s immensely frustrating, and requires a lot of time to learn how to play properly. If you are looking for a new game to spend most of your free evenings progressing on, then I can say you will eventually enjoy NS2: Combat without a doubt. The game becomes extremely rewarding to good players, and the community around the game is amazingly friendly.
If you’re looking for a multiplayer game to dabble in, there is little point in looking at this game. You will not be happy playing it. Ask yourself if you have the patience to learn to play Counterstrike, or League of Legends, or DotA from scratch and become good at it. If you do, and have the time, NS2: Combat is most definitely worth a try. It brings some super interesting play to the FPS genre, and rewards good players. If you don’t want to spend hours becoming skilled in basic movement and combat, while dying every minute of gameplay, you will not have fun playing this game.
Natural Selection 2: Combat is available on Steam for £8.99/$14.99
Natural Selection 2: Combat is an FPS/Action game with RPG elements driving the progress of the multiplayer matches. The game is developed by Faultline Games and published by Unknown World Entertainment. The game is made in the same engine as the previous NS2 game, the Spark engine. While the game has DX11, it is defaulty run in D3D9 mode for all players unless specified otherwise. You play either the Aliens or Marines with the general objectives being simplified in both Capture and Base mode games. The game is based upon the NS2: Combat mod, but is now going standalone for streamline and bug squishing purposes. It’s also considered to be the best way to entice new players into the otherwise complicated and elongated style of the first iteration of NS2. Similar to that of League of Legends and Counterstrike, the game is extremely skill and team based.
Storyline
As a marine, you need to kill all the aliens while on the way to decimating the alien’s base. Either that or defend a random point. The same goes for the aliens; the only difference between the two is the approach that is taken. As the game is multiplayer based, there isn’t really a basis for a storyline that would otherwise be forgotten and wasted on such a game. Like CounterStrike, a storyline really isn’t necessary, and all focus is on the gameplay and mastering controls.
Gameplay
I’ll split this into two sections, one being for the marine side, and the other for aliens, and cover both modes that seem to be the most played, the one I like to call a base-race mode, and the capture mode, similar to holding points in Battlefield Conquest, only with smaller maps and fewer points.
Base-Race:-
Both sides must be the first to destroy the enemy’s base. The marines “chair” as players call it, and the alien’s hive have a HP pool and a shield-like pool. The shield pool is the first to be damaged, but can be repaired, either by Gorger’s secondary attach, or the marine’s repair tool. Damage dealt to the main HP pool is irreparable. The first to destroy the enemy’s base wins. These matches can be over as quickly as 15-20 minutes. In the event you have a team of 8 vs 8, of developers and veterans, as well as terrible press players (like me), matches can sometimes last up to 45 minutes. In terms of gameplay for both sides, during the 96 hours live stream, I noted that about 85% of all base-race matches were won by aliens. Most of the time the alien team would struggle severely in the first part of the early game, and marines would mostly get a large lead in terms of kills.
Most games I played as aliens, I probably only got 2 kills for the entire early game, and had access to nothing besides the armour or speed improvements. Marines would simply get stronger and unlock the shotgun, which is a 1 or 2 shot weapon in CQB. CQB is the only way to get kills as an alien for the first two levels, so it gets incredibly frustrating. Aliens heavily rely upon swarm tactics, so if your team is not communicating and organising, you will lose the early game without question.
At the mid game, aliens get access to the Gorger, which is an awesome support unit capable of deploying two types of defensive units, barriers, heal all friendlies, and gain access to different types of attacks. Each attack and abilities will have strengths and weaknesses against certain opponents. The midgame is a nice even ground, by which point both aliens and marines will have counter units, abilities, and some armour and hp improvements, so the field is more level. This is the point where a lot of corridor supremacy becomes important, and allows your team to press forward. Obviously the maps have a dozen ways to reach the enemy base, so defensive areas are always necessary.
It took me a very long time to get to the mid game however, as I was new to the game, and had to learn how to use abilities. In the event you don’t get any more than 2 kills, you can’t reach the mid game as kills are required to gain levels and unlock the other units. If one side gets a lot more kills than the other, then they gain a massive tech and upgrade advantage and it makes the game very difficult to claw back. If you join a game midway through, you still start off at a low level with only a tiny amount of XP, so you get instantly KO’d by just about everyone and have to pray for some lucky kills. The issue is your deaths further increase the enemy team’s lead. It’s an odd turn of affairs, and something that needs to be looked into in terms of balance. I found it near impossible to provide anything useful to my team if I joined midway through, and did not have very much fun at all playing the game to its end. By this point most marines will have shotguns or heavy rifles, as well as grenades of varying types to counter certain types of aliens. A lot of the cluster grenades will instakill weaker aliens with pure attack and speed upgrades, and defence turrets slaughter the weaker aliens. The midgame is also where tunnels (for aliens) and gates (for marines) are deployed to circumvent the use of corridors and make surprise attacks.
Late game was odd. The second the aliens got the Onos, not even the marine’s late game mechs could kill them. After trying out both mechs, rail gun and Gatling gun, I found neither was capable of taking on a single Onos one on one in any situation. It seems a little strange to me, but the endgame marine units are best at taking on early to mid-game alien units. The alien late game units however, can decimate just about anything. This process of events is what led to aliens winning almost all matches I played. I tried both sides evenly, and marines struggled to win any games, despite dominating the early game in almost every case. There were some occasions when a heavy cluster of marines was able to take out two Onos, but only with a number of us throwing grenades and equipping flamethrowers and grenade launchers. Even then, the Onos were able to kill a large portion of us.
The game mode almost always ends up being a base race, where whoever can get the most endgame units through a tunnel or gate to the enemy base and deals more damage in a quick burst wins. So despite the best of planning, you can lose simply because 3 Onos charged into your base and killed every single defender.
Capture:-
The gameplay is largely similar to Base-Race, only with 3 capture points. My one irritation with this mode was that the minimap does not specifically state which points are A, B and C, the points are merely marked with a white hexagon. There is then a map on the lower part of the UI which shows where each point is, and labels them. I genuinely don’t understand the point in this, and they should have just labelled the points on the minimap clearly and removed this extra map. As it stands, new players who hear people screaming over the comms “GET TO B! YOU’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY” get frustrated, because we simply don’t know which point is which. It needs to be clearer. It’s all well and good if you’re a veteran and know the deal, but this is a big off-put for me, a new player. I also found that a single marine with a heavy rifle very early on in the game was able to camp and kill almost every alien that tried to attack down one corridor within the first 2 levels of alien evolution. It took about 5 tries to finally kill him with another player acting as a decoy. Again, marines seem to dominate the early game as usual, but it gets more even the further into the game you go. In this match type, I did notice that the win/loss ratio was a lot more even for both sides. I even managed to get top on the kills list in this mode for a single match.
Kills award XP, and XP levels you up slowly throughout the match. Each level grants you a skill point, or for aliens, an evolution. Each point can be spent on the following:
Marines –
· New weapons, unlocked for skill points, but only available after reaching certain levels
· Upgrades, including Armour and HP pool, and weapon Damage
· Items
o Grenades of varying types, with strengths and weaknesses
o Support items, including ammo replenishment, alien scanners
o Deployables, these include “gates” which when placed allow marines to teleport across the map, and turrets for point defence
· At level 10, marines can access the big mechs, equipped with chain guns, rail guns etc.
Aliens –
· New aliens, including Gorgers, flying units, stealth units, and the massive endgame units, the Onos
· Abilities, varying depending on alien, including bile bombs for armoured opponents, and poison clouds.
· Upgrades, including Armour and HP pool, Health regen, and movement speed
· Passives, including increase in all damage, but increase in energy cost of abilities
In general the gameplay is good; however it took me 2 evenings to learn how to play the game. If I weren’t reviewing this, I’d have stopped playing and uninstalled the game after 2 hours. I have to be honest, and in my experience as a new player to the game, it is immensely frustrating. The difficulty curve is ridiculous to begin with, and the skill ceiling is immensely high. In my first evening playing the game, I probably got about 3 kills after 4 matches, because there was no way to teach you how to play either race, what their abilities were, how to activate them, and what was effective against something else. The brief video tutorials are not enough to equip a new player with confidence that they know what they’re doing. Only after asking in general chat and voice chat did the developers and veterans explain things. Even after that it took me hours to get used to playing any character from either team. Most of the people playing were veterans, with very few new players from the press like me. All of us were at the bottom of the leader board, barely getting past level 3, and were getting completely trashed by the players who knew how to move around as an alien, and what guns were effective against certain aliens.
In Beta there were no matchmaking options, however I’ve been told that will be available on launch.
Controls
Most of the controls are standard FPS controls. For marines, 1 is your primary, 2 is pistol, 3 is knife, and 4 is grenade (costs a skill point to unlock). In the event you unlock deployables, 5 is the menu to choose from, and then it’s 1-4 to choose a deployable (if you have it unlocked). F is for flashlight. As for the rest, you point and shoot at things that move. Nice and simple, although in the middle of a firefight, it’s a bit difficult to quickly deploy a turret. Probably not advised, but leaning over to 5 and then pressing 1 while dodging is no easy feat.
As an alien, things get more complicated based on what you’re playing. The starter unit can jump and climb across any surface, and the general climbing can get a bit clunky. You don’t unlock any kind of secondary ability like leaping at enemies until later on in the early midgame, by which point you’ve probably switched to a different alien after getting tired of being 2 shotted by everything. Gorgers can’t climb anything, but they can slide everywhere by pressing shift, which is actually marginally fun. Gorgers can deploy tunnels, defensive “plants”, sticky lines to slow marines, and clots for blocking off access to areas. They can also heal units with secondary fire.
The flying units have a ranged but extremely weak attack, and their primary is the same as the starter unit, which is a melee bite which takes about 3 body shots to kill your average marine. They fly by flapping their wings, the faster you tap space, the faster you fly in the direction you’re facing. This can be pretty tricky to get the hang of, but abusing the flying mechanics can help you get in and out of places with some skill. The stealth units can teleport in and out of combat, and make quick mincemeat of singular marines, they’re also rather tanky. I recall shooting one with 3 or 4 shots with the shotgun and he was still standing and impaled me shortly after.
Onos are stupid, stupid endgame units. Stack armour and charge in and click as fast as you can on those meat bags. No complicated controls for those.
Video Settings
A nice selection of options, including the choice to use D3D9 or DX11. Ambient Occlusion is a bit weird for aliens. I turned it on for benchmarking, but I wasn’t a fan of the fish eye it caused. It also has an Oculus option! Kudos for that. The graphics are nothing particularly special, they’re not quite AAA, and reminded me of a slightly higher poly count version of Doom 3. Certainly nothing to compare with the likes of Battlefield, but the lighting and colour is quite nice on the more vibrant maps, but be prepared to see a lot of brown and grey. It also has a super nice feature that lets you select just how much VRAM you have. This is for sure something I’d like to see in future games.
System Performance
CPU: i5 4670 (Stock)
GPU: MSI GTX 970 (Stock)
RAM: 16GB 2133mhz
Storage: WD 1TB 7200RPM
Display: 2560 x 1440
On standard 1080p the game runs perfectly fine in all cases, with very little frame drops below 60FPS. I honestly didn’t notice anything poor in that area. As for 1440p, there are a number of areas where the game tanks slightly, but because the game is so intense, I didn’t honestly notice any of it. It’s worth noting that the game is probably heavily GPU orientated, as both settings saw the CPU at roughly the same load in both cases.
1440p
1080p
Conclusion
Natural Selection 2: Combat is an odd one to talk about. The game is terrible to new players, frustrating, demoralising, and altogether unenjoyable for the first 2 – 4 hours. I honestly didn’t want to carry on playing, as I didn’t understand everything, and there was no way of learning other than checking the internet and asking experienced players. It starts off as a pretty large brick wall, and takes ages to get over it. Even after all the time I spent, it still takes me a very long time to get past level 1 or 2 as an alien in every early game example. That’s pretty frustrating, and if you don’t have voice comms turned on at least, and don’t organise ambushes, then your team will be stuck in terms of advancement. Climbing about as the starter alien is something you have to capitalise on in the early game, but I find the jumping and general movement pretty clunky and awkward. Even when I successfully sneak attacked a marine on his own; he could turn around and kill me with a short spray of bullets.
The late game needs some severe balance for new player games. Get 4 Onos as the aliens and the game is won. I’m sure that in games with experienced players, this is not an issue, and they know how to counter these things, but even in games with the devs most matches were won as soon as we got more than 2 Onos. When I played marines, I was in a mech, and it was completely worthless against the alien’s endgame units. Even the melee on the mechs is entirely worthless, and takes almost a dozen hits to kill a basic alien unit. Even with matchmaking in perfect condition, I feel the late game is going to be a massive issue for a lot of new players. I also honestly found the marine side a little boring from early to mid-game, as you would unlock a couple of guns and run around and shoot things with not a lot else going on. As aliens, midgame was a haven for trying different things; making tunnels, blocking passages, making webbed areas, deploying defences, sneaking through vents, and generally providing massively different play styles for every player. Midgame as aliens was where I really enjoyed myself. I ended up levelling up as a Gorger (tier 2 alien) about 7 times, and really found my element with that class.
After spending a few days playing the game, I did eventually get to a point where I was genuinely enjoying myself, could get to grips with counters, learnt movement techniques and provided a decent contribution to my team. It got pretty tense at times, and I felt really involved in what was going on. I imagine for all players who liked every Natural Selection game out there, this is a great addition. If you’ve never played Natural Selection, you need to consider the fact that you’re going to suck at it. You’re going to die, you’re not going to kill anyone, and you won’t get to play any endgame units for a few matches. The skill required for early game aliens is quite high, it’s immensely frustrating, and requires a lot of time to learn how to play properly. If you are looking for a new game to spend most of your free evenings progressing on, then I can say you will eventually enjoy NS2: Combat without a doubt. The game becomes extremely rewarding to good players, and the community around the game is amazingly friendly.
If you’re looking for a multiplayer game to dabble in, there is little point in looking at this game. You will not be happy playing it. Ask yourself if you have the patience to learn to play Counterstrike, or League of Legends, or DotA from scratch and become good at it. If you do, and have the time, NS2: Combat is most definitely worth a try. It brings some super interesting play to the FPS genre, and rewards good players. If you don’t want to spend hours becoming skilled in basic movement and combat, while dying every minute of gameplay, you will not have fun playing this game.
Natural Selection 2: Combat is available on Steam for £8.99/$14.99
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Just like marines without JP can't do much against Onos unless if you're really good at dodging and with lvl 3 shotgun, it can be done.
£8.99/$14.99