Natural Selection: neat Half life mod

Cafe Society
1

So I’ve recently gotten back into online gaming, and this HL mod has really grabbed my attention. It’s still in early revisions, but it’s already pretty darn fun, and puts a nice new spin on the FPS genre that only a few other games have tried and done well. Unlike most team games, it REALLY forces players to engage in real teamwork and communication, and you really feel like you’ve earned something when your team pulls off minor victories. It has a high learning curve (you can’t just jump into a game fresh and expect to do very well, though the interface is really well done: it’s the maps and strategies you need to learn), but has been relaly rewarding.

Basically, the general idea is that it’s half-RTS. There are two teams, marines and aliens, and each has to battle the other for control of resource nodes from which they can research new technology and gain powerful new evolutionary traits.

The best part is that the two teams go about this very differently.
The Marines have a commander position that has a standard top-down RTS view of the entire field. He can give orders to soldiers or units, build various structures (warp gates, turrent factories, research units), and research new equipment. This gives a very heirarchical feel to the teamwork: the commander sets the strategy and has the best info: he divies out the equipment, and he directs the team to act.

The aliens, however, are closer to a pooled hive mind. They have a combined “hive sight” which allows them to see what other teammates see, IDing enemies and friendlies for each other all over the map. And while they have a class of builders which can open up new traits and evolutions with special structures and capturing more hives, they aren’t really “leaders” per se. Until the later evolutions, they thrive on ambushes and sneaking around.

All told, it makes for some really creepy and fun team gameplay. My favorite episode was as a squad of heavy armored/heavy weaponed soldiers creeping through the hallways to assault the enemy hive. Wall running skulks kept trying to harry us, popping suddenly out from a vent and then disappearing again as we got closer and closer, and we were all on edge, going into new territory. Even though we 3 were basically human tanks, it was pretty hairy going, and when we finally got to the hive we got wasted only seconds before finally taking it out after a long battle with the uber-creepy-powerful creatures called Fades.

If you are into MP Half-Life, check it out (I had to fool with my modem and max_fps settings before it got really smooth, but then that’s not a problem specific to just this game for me).

2

Ouch: seriously, no one’s played this?

It’s a great change from other team based games where it feels like two randomly milling teams crashing into each other. The game has a progression of events: taking certain areas, fortifying them in various ways, trying to defend them, trying to take down a hive before another one goes up.

The neatest games I’ve had have been the near misses: the aliens almost destroy the base, and we only barely manage to relocate to another part of the map.

3

I’ve played this game a bit. I definitely applaud the originality of it. I just had a hard time getting into it. I guess it’s that learning curve you’re talking about. It strikes me as very frezied and no one wants to take the time to explain whats going on (understandably). I tried reading the “manual” and just playing around, but I found it pretty confusing.

Also, in a lopsided game there is a very frustrating version of spawn camping in which you can’t stay alive for more than a few seconds.

Maybe I was just on the wrong servers.

4

You definately have to shop around to find a server that isn’t dominated by newbies (didn’t take me that long really). You need either a good commander (if a marine), or an experienced Gorge (in an alien) for your team to really come together: though when it does, it’s sweet. And it really pays to learn the maps, which can get confusing (of course, once you learn the hive sight and map/waypoint system, it’s easy).

5

I play this lot. Not recently (If you’ve run into Silver who always says “GG folks” before quitting, that was probably me). True, you really need to learn the maps. The manual isn’t all that helpful anymore - as far as I know it isn’t updated to the latest version. I’m pretty good at the alien team, but with humans my best bet is to hang back with a shotgun because my close-combat skills are awful.

However, I’m getting sick of the first rush that starts every game. The aliens streak in, the marines either all die or fight them off, then they relocate to somewhere else.

The best games involve fighting back from the brink of death. I was in one where we had no hives on at least three seperate occasions, and the gorge managed to get another one back up so we could regroup, and eventually took over the marine start while they weren’t looking. A-frelling-mazing.

6

It’s still a work in progress, definately, and it sounds like 1.1 will make a couple of changes that will alter the character of the game a bit, which could make it better or worse (Onos at one hive? electrified structures?). We’ll see.

I agree about the rushes and relocations, though it doesn’t seem to happen every game: it takes a bunch of more experienced players to coordinate. Hopefully the next version will do something about this.

I suck at close combat too: when you fire your weapon early on, you can barely see anything (supposedly to be corrected in 1.1): same thing for a skulk (again, supposedly to be corrected). But I guess that’s sort of the point: those horrifying ambushes where they drop right in on top of you: you see a guy ahead of you go down and it sends chills…

The best version I’ve had of that was as a pack of marines: I got a little behind, and didn’t quite make it to the big rotating wall/door in time to get in with them. I catch it on the next spin, and I’m halfway through when I hear gunfire, screams of the voice comms, and aliens slashing. I’m freaking out, and when the door opens, I see three marine bodies, but no aliens anywhere in sight. I pulled the lever and spun right back out of there in a hurry, only to find the base crawling with aliens. Suffice to say I didn’t last long :slight_smile: