The Mess Hall

Are you a fan of the Alien films? Are you a fan of RTS games? Do you like to support indie developers? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should try out NS2.

Natural Selection 2 has been released for a few weeks now and it has been on the Top 10 Steam sales since. Astro and I have been playing a few hours a day for the past week.

You can find it for £12 here: http://www.gameholds.com/natural-select ... d-key.html

or its on Steam for around £15.

it looks good and different. But what's it like for a first time player?

If you are commandering, it is very much like a base building RTS. If you have ever played Warcraft 3, Starcraft, Age of Empires, or any other RTS, commandering should feel very similar. You place buildings, research upgrades, and expand your base to different parts of the map, all from your command chair. The commander is very important, since Aliens expand extremely fast. If you fall behind, Aliens can easily overwhelm you. You can see some tutorials by TotalBiscuit here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDwUxISMvk0

Playing as Marines, it plays very much like your traditional FPS shooter. You start with a light machine gun, pistol, and combat axe. You then proceed to follow the commanders orders, as he builds buildings and resource miners. The marines arsenal completely relies on the commander/team. Do you need flamethrowers or grenade launchers first? Would and Exosuit (think the mechs from the Matrix movies) or jetpacks be more beneficial.

Aliens are also played through the first person view, but aliens are primarily melee. The camera is in the mouth of the alien and almost every alien "bites" as its main source of damage. There is the "support" alien that serves as a healer, builder, and artillery. The aliens evolve and you get to personally choose what attributes you want. There are 5 different forms of the aliens and as the game goes on and the aliens have expanded with many hives, the forms become unlocked.

Let me know if you guys have any other questions.

It looks real good fun, Ill be distracted with planetside 2 for a month or 2 though.. but if you guys are still playing it when I get bored I might buy it.