‘Natural Selection 2′ Review – The Typical FPS Is No Longer Top Of The Food Chain

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November 1st, 2012 | By

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Fear comes fast and engulfs you completely as you charge down hallways, clutching your assault rifle for dear life. No matter how prepared you think you are for this, the training only goes so far in teaching you how to respond to an alien onslaught.

Noticing movement above your head you alert your squad to “stay frosty”, only to be dropped, seconds later, by a ravenous group of Skulks hell-bent on tearing your company apart. A fierce flurry of bullets, and blood, spray in all directions. You manage to get away, badly wounded and barely breathing, the last remnant of the human squad.

Alas, in the distance you see a grim dark shadow descend upon you. One swipe of its scythe and your body tears apart as though made of paper. Leaving behind only a bloody stain and distant memories of this former last hope for humanity. 

Natural Selection 2 (NS2) offers everything I have ever wanted from an FPS and more. NS2 really is what the Alien franchise should’ve been, yet continued to miss, and is now relegated to mediocrity.

NS2 Skulk view

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About the author

(543 posts)

Full time gamer part time writer and a Graduate of King College London I have been playing computer games ever since the days of the much loved Amiga. Playing a broad spectrum of games over as many platforms as possible with a distinct obsession with RTS games even though lacking in much of the micro ability. Tweet me @alexwilkinson

  • http://twitter.com/Wonkyth Toby Walker

    While the graphics specs are indeed high, it runs fine on my craptop if I turn it all down to minimum, and still looks half decent for it! :D

  • http://twitter.com/Wonkyth Toby Walker

    While the graphics specs are indeed high, it runs fine on my craptop if I turn it all down to minimum, and still looks half decent for it! :D

  • phoenixbbs

    The green “rookie” tag can be disabled in the menus, or will automatically disappear after you’ve played for 4 hours. If you come across an abusive player, you can mute them very easily (press tab, then click on their name to mute / un-mute).

    Load times can be a bit long, particularly after a patch, as the game recreates the shaders the first time you run it, but it’s comparable to many other FPS games.

    The graphics texture settings are best on “low” if you have less than a 1Gb graphics card, and tweaking some of the settings can make a large difference to frame rate – turning ambient occlusion off possibly being one of the biggest, but reducing the screen resolution makes a big difference on a “low-spec” machine.

  • http://twitter.com/alexwilkinson Alex Wilkinson

    O i played for over 4 hours and it didn’t remove me from it :( I think I am just that bad really! I enjoy it though and really need to play it much more when i get some time.

    It can work on low i got it working on my laptop also and it looks alright, i just wish my computer was better loading just taunts me!

  • kekekoko

    About the load times.
    I actually load really quick. The only time its slow is the first time I join after a new patch has been released.

    Anyway great review.

  • Paul Sullivan

    So the 4% was lost for what reason? (haha). NS2 is the best game I have played since Turrican 2 on the good old 8 bit C64. I have played games since the early eighties and it is refreshing to see gameplay be thought of before graphics (but oh! the graphics). Chalie Cleveland and the team have fulfilled the dreams I had of NS2 for five years and I will be a die-hard until I… well… die. See you in game nick: bluey

  • DragonGuard

    I just want to point out why the maps take forever to load (which they do).

    The maps aren’t precompiled like say in the source engine, this makes the load times somewhat longish when you first load into the map but it has a huge advantage for anyone trying to create custom maps and/or mods.

    They pretty much designed their engine with modders in mind and we will see tons of custom content for the game because of this.

    Going from the editing tools to the actual game and trying out mod or map changes you just make is really quick because of this.

    It’s slightly annoying for normal players but considering how much potential content you get in return I would call it well worth it.