June 15th, 2012 | By Dominic Tarason
Tagged in: action | fps | multiplayer | Natural Selection | natural selection 2 | PC Game | Pre-purchase | shooter | steam | unknown worlds
Multiplayer shooters are ten a penny these days, but ones with this much history – originating as a super-popular Half-Life mod – are rare. Add in the fact that Unknown Worlds are a tiny indie team producing graphics on par with the best AAA studios, and Natural Selection 2 becomes a far more enticing treat than most.
The game is still penned in for a Summer 2012 release date (so ‘any time now’, strictly speaking), and while things could slip further into the year, it seems unlikely. Especially as they’ve chosen the peak of June to release a new and impressively well-produced trailer. Catch an eyeful of alien bio-goo and caseless space-machinegun fire below.
Exciting stuff, showing off a whole lot of terrestrial and aerial combat. Keep in mind that all of this runs on Unknown Worlds’ own proprietary engine. It’s a rather fancy piece of kit, with a much greater focus on dynamic lighting (so that aliens can plunge regions of the map into darkness) than many of the big commercial engines out right now. This trailer in particular is showing off the latest map, Docking, and will apparently be available to beta pre-order folks as of Build 210.
The game is currently available for pre-purchase from the official site for $35, which gets you Steam access off the bat. We’ll be digging deeper into the alien hives for a full review once the coveted Version 1.0 rolls round. Skip watching the skies, though – keep your eyes on the ceiling. Never know when something might come scuttling overhead.
Dominic Tarason (303 posts)
A geek for all seasons. A veteran of early DOS-era gaming, with encyclopaedic knowledge of things geeky on all platforms. The more obscure and bizarre, the better. If you've got indie news you want to break in a big way, send it this way!