Natural Selection Half-Life Mod Reaches 3.0 Beta

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the official Natural Selection page, where V3.0 Beta of the Half-Life mod "hybrid first-person/real-time strategy game" is now available. According to the page, changes include 10 new maps, as well as the addition of Natural Selection: Combat, a "...new fast and furious gameplay mode focusing on intense action. Combat games generally last less than ten minutes, and require very little knowledge to play." The mod can now be played using the add-on's "official Steam support", and will be "...listed under the 'My Games' section (not as a 3rd-party mod)", a laudable achievement for the Natural Selection developers, who've also implemented vital "skulk prediction fixes" for this update.

Re:Noobs in Selection

[Deliveranc3]

Of course not but neither is chess by nature. However the level of balance achieved offered divergent strategies for victory. The base switch the research tree, the hive grab the HMG rush and these are just a few of the more obvious strategies, not to mention the difficulties involved in getting 12 year olds to guard an important point for more than 5 seconds. PLLEASSSEE I'll give you a lolly.

The Best Game Out There

[magic]

Even in Beta, I think NS 3.0 is the best PC game out right now. It looks and plays better than the rest (yes, even though it is on the Half-Life engine) and NS:Combat is incredibly fun even if you don't feel like a full-fledged NS game.

The players agree-- within hours of release it rocketed above all but Counter Strike and Day of Defeat in the number of players.

And you can't beat the price-- free for anyone who has Half-Life (which is only $14 itself!).

-m

Re:Great. Just great.

[magic]

I think that means relative to regular Natural Selection, which has a steep learning curve.

NS:Combat is easy because at the heart, it is a point-and-shoot game. What makes it fun is the RPG aspect. You get experience for kills (and for kills scored by nearby teammates!) and can spend those to level up through your own personal tech tree. The decisions you make there are important: will you go for heavy armor to be invulnerable to Lerk Spores, or buy a Jet Pack and take to the skies? Do you want to play defensively with trip Mines and Grenades, or get a Shotgun and charge? Or maybe you should hold back and get a Welder to repair your command chair.

-m

Re:Noobs in Selection

[Deliveranc3]

I played back when there was no voice comm muting (or vote kicking, Imagine the trolling)and there were problems with 12 year olds spamming. The other team couldn't see it so you had to deal with it and it was the responsibility of the Commander to babysit. Maybe others had diffrent techniques to social engineer the little bastards into not wrecking the game but mine involved cajoling, rewards, and keeping in mind that they just want to kill kill kill. Which is fine if one of your soldiers wants to do it, everyone else can just back him up. I got an invite to write the faq's for NS 3.0 (Though I haven't played it yet), maybe I'll write some "How not to freak out" When you command immature useless players faq's.