Natural Selection

[Rednals]

Check out Natural Selection, a CS mod.

It is awesome!

[Ripper]

It's actually a Half Life mod not a CS mod :angry:.

Anyway I've played Natural Selection a little and it's probably one of the best third party half life mods out there. It's basically a marines vs aliens FPS with a twist.

The marine team has a commander who plays from a top down view, similar to an RTS game, the commander can build structures and issue weapons, medpacks and upgrades to his teammates.

As an alien you can get upgrades and "evolve" in to different types of aliens, for example you could become a huge elephant like thing that can devour marines whole and take loads of fire without dieing.

Anyway, if you like the sound of it here’s a link to the official site http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/

[Sanjiyan]

a CS mod.
I cut you.

I'm an avid NS player, and I'm one of the proud few who can remember when Fades were endgame badasses, not just lame spawncampers played by killtastic CS-kiddy whores. By killtastic, I mean they just zip into your base, slash one of your unarmoured marines to death, then zip out again before they can be killed. Repeat up to 400 kills. Hell, I'll even give you a rundown, 'cause I want you all to love this game..

Basically, the Frontiersmen (Marines.) are sent into the most incredibly dangerous and suicidal areas to clear it, because they're the best of the best. The Kharaa (Aliens.) are a biological reaction of the 'Hive' to humans. Basically, the Hive started out as bacteria, saw humanity as a threat, and hyper-evolved into all sorts of nasty beasties in order to kill us.

Thats the story, now for the gameplay. Aliens get a set 5 classes, including:
Skulk: Free alien you respawn as, essentially a dog that can run on walls, parasite his enemies so they show up through walls, and explode. Yes, explode.

Lerk: Flying alien with big teeth that are inexplicably weaker than a Skulk's. Can spit out spores which cause non-HA marines to take health and armour damage, and 'Umbra', which reduces damage taken by all friendly units within the cloud.

Gorge: Diddy little chubby builder alien! Can build hives (Spawnpoints and ability-unlockers), Chambers (upgrades for the aliens) and heal friendlies. Can also kill marines by gobbing on them, or webbing them up and leaving them as a present for another alien.

Fade: The original bad-boy of NS, vaguely human shaped, only a foot taller and with huge scythe-like claws. The first real combat class you get. Slices and dices with his claws, spits out acid rockets from his shoulders, hurls building-destroying bilebombs, and can move so fast it can fly for short periods.

Onos: Named after the simultaneous last words of the first five marines to encounter one, which were 'Oh no..'. I'll leave you to discover the joys of this little beauty by yourself.

As for the Marines, they're split into the Commander (RTS-viewpoint, 'GO HERE AND KILL IT YOU BASTARD!' type players only.) and his Grunts ('Lets go there and kill it, fellas!'). The commander controls every facet of Marine life apart from combat; He heals, he rearms, he drops structures for the marines to build, and he's in charge of HA/JP and other upgrades. Comms can even give waypoints to their marines, so they dont get lost. They still do though.
Grunts come in three flavours; Regular, Jetpack and Heavy Armour. Heavy Armour shakes the ground as it walks, is immune to spores, can take fuckloads of damage, and is just generally badassed.
..Go download it.

[ryoryo]

I play it too, I didn`t really expect such an avid player to play it[though the probability is there, I just expected a few casual players].

It`s more of a strategy game than an FPS. Think of it as Starcraft with retarded troopers that don`t follow your commands and blind marines that cannot shoot. And remove the siege tanks.

Scattered in each map are Resource Nodes that are your equivalent of a gold mine, drop a tower on it, it just keeps sucking the resources out. Both aliens and marines can use it. Marines are supposed to kill the hive, aliens are supposed to kill the marines and stem their flow of reinforcements[respawn portals].

The rest of the game is just how you duke it out. No 2 games are the same, ever. You can opt to remove the enemy`s resource flow, or just do it the kill the head way. The best thing is, there`s no 1 shot kill sniping rifle, no bigass bazooka. Just good old you, your rifle and your sidearm with your buddy.
When you fire, there`s no crosshair recoil like CS. The firing arc is always static, meaning you can monkey around the aliens as it tries to bite you.
And skulks can hang on walls.
I love this game.

[Sanjiyan]

It`s more of a strategy game than an FPS. Think of it as Starcraft with retarded troopers that don`t follow your commands and blind marines that cannot shoot.
Haha, yeah. And then theres the constant whinging for advanced weapons and medpacks, followed by a vote-out if you dont pander to them :P
Also I love the lack of a sniper rifle/bazooka. It makes the game so much more interesting: Especially seeing as a sniper rifle would be essentially useless, seeing as most of the maps are full of claustrophobic 'Alien'-esque tunnels and twisting corridors..

Ooh, do you play seige maps a lot? I love 'em. Basically theres a big steel door seperating the marines' half of the map from the aliens', giving them both five to ten minutes to cap all the res nodes on their half, get all the upgrades etcetera. After that, the door opens, and you get huge 6-man-onos assaults on rooms FULL of turrets, electrified structures, Fades blinking around like crazy trying to get past all the defences.. Brilliant.

[Yuri]

My friend has been orgasming over NS for years, but I've just been ignoring him >.> Cause I lost my copy of HL along time ago.

I was waiting for it to come out on HL2, but I doubt it'll happen anytime soon, if ever. Unles they announced something i was never told about.

[Kash]

I loove this game that's with 2 o's I usually play as marines, even though everytime I join a game I just choose random. I rarely ever play ns maps. When I do I am faithful to my commander if he sais build, I build, he sais die for the greater cause, I die for the greater cause. I am more of a CO map player I like the leveling system where we don't have to gather resources.

[ViciousEternal]

I love NS, great stuff....

[hamsterman]

Ye, ns's great. But we stopped playing it when all complained about the theams beeing poorly balanced. Those artilerys were just unfair