Natural Selection

Originally written on 1/10/2011

The Best Game Never Played

Introducing the Genre

For a long time, the FPS genre has seemed pretty bland to me. There aren’t many stand out titles in my eyes. There was a rush of World War II shooters for a while, before that it was some senseless sci-fi designs, now there’s modern day to slightly futuristic shooters, A few stand out, usually with a theme counter to the trend at the time, or based on a pre-existing intellectual property. I think we’ve all played plenty. I’ve played the original DOOM, 2, 3, SiN, SiN Emergence, Most of the Half Life series, Dark Forces 1, Left 4 Dead, 2, Star Wars Republic Commando, Serious Sam, 2, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Star Wars Battlefront, 2, Team Fortress, 2, Hexen, Heretic, Quake, 2, 3, Star Trek Elite Forces, Duke Nukem 3D, the list goes on and on.

Introducing the Game

Some of these are more interesting to me than others. Some stand out more, while others are just, bleh. They all seem to have the basic elements of pistol, a melee weapon, grenades, assault rifle, long range rifle, close range shot gun, rocket and or grenade launcher, and sometimes an ultimate weapon of some sort. Some of those that I listed may deserve a spot on this column, while some others ought to be subject of another column about how they hold the genre back. There are a few strong stand out FPS games out there that push the boundaries into creative realms worth experiencing and in the future I may cover another. Though for now I will cover one of my favorite stand out FPS titles, Natural Selection.

Game play

This is the exceptional portion of the game. It combines FPS with RTS. There are two teams, the aliens and humans. If you’re the humans, then there is 1 player who assumes the commander’s chair. The commander sits in an armored chair and gets a top down view of the map and the ability to build structures. The commander can drop and build resource nodes which collect a resource used to buy further structures and upgrades in the traditional RTS fashion. If you’re an alien, you start out as a tiny alien that morphs into other forms. One such form is the builder, anyone can be a builder, there can be multiple builders. The game swings back and forth until the enemy base, units, and spawn points are destroyed.

This RTS game play through the window of a FPS is a clever concept that I can strongly appreciate. It sets this game apart from many other FPSs at the time and even now. The teamwork required was never seen again until the likes of Left 4 Dead or Republic Commando. In nearly any other game that you could name, you could always run in, with guns blazing, and win with all the strategy of a World War I trench rush. However most of those games are designed with single player in mind, and have multi player support added as some kind of an afterthought. NS requires teamwork and fast and efficient communication regardless of which team you’re a part of.

Story

Aliens versus humans, in space, and that’s about it. There’s a more formal story, but it’s pretty generic to set up such a cliché idea. There’s no major plot twists or story arcs with any named characters. If each map represented a significant battle in an overarching campaign and you got an ending based on that, it would be more interesting. Oh well. Maybe NS2 will have something more.

Many other FPS games try to have a good story, and some succeed. Since NS is multi player only, the way they execute it is in small death match size chunks instead of co-op.

Graphics

The graphics are perfectly acceptable for the original Half-Life engine. It has yet to get an HD remake or a Source version. However there’s a sequel in the works.

Here I ought to mention a comparison with a few modern FPS and 3rdPS games that I’ve seen. For example, Transformers: War for Cybertron has a technically capable set of models and environments. However it’s very difficult to see enemies compared to environment. There’s a techno structure planet with techno designed people. Staying perfectly still, you’re pretty well camouflaged. The graphics involved in NS thankfully did not fall in to that trap.

Music

The right music can add the element needed to make a good game great. Like Dr Hammond from Jurassic Park, “they require our absence, not our help,” a good horror game may be best without music. Music is not Natural Selection’s strong point since it is a horror FPS. I was riding Space Mountain at Disneyland once upon a time. The lights go out and the adrenalizing music plays while you ride in darkness. With the right music, the feel of darkness changes greatly. There isn’t any music in NS to remember.

Other games, depending on the theme, use music much more. The pre-existing intellectual properties of course use their theme music like Star Wars or Star Trek. Action games have the rock music or symphonic arcing suites for action sequences.

Sound

The sound stands out more than music, though that’s still not saying much. The sound in a creepy horror survival game is very important. Clicks and chatters of alien buggy things far off in the distance give a good feeling of creepiness and tension to the game. Though, when I play as the aliens, I’m not as spooked for some reason. 🙂 the chittering clicking noises are actually a little bit comforting.

Controls

The controls are FPS simple. WASD, mouse look, fire, jump, duck, flash light. Since the game started out as a Half-Life mod, it has the same controls as Half-Life. It really doesn’t take too much to get the very basics down. Building structures is simple enough and intuitive. For a game as wholly different as this, the fact that the controls didn’t require much changing from the traditional FPS mold, says something about the possibilities of innovation.

Multi player

Multi player only. And that’s a bit of a downside. There’s no bot support, at least not when I first started playing. So you can’t practice off line You need a large amount of players to get a good game in. So this is great for large to medium LAN parties. Hopefully the sequel in development now will allow some off line play.

Depth/Replayability

The game is very replayable and has as much strategic depth as an RTS game. Building placement, upgrade choice, as well as the capabilities of your team all create a different dynamic each time. Do you choose to assault the base from one corridor or another? Do you dare to use the vents(It’s coming up right behind him!), or seal them off? Who is the commander this time and how do they play? While the maps may not change, the people, opponents, and game do.

Personal

Fun, horror, multi player game that stands best on its game play. If you play it for too long, you might get nightmares. I have plenty of fun playing either side as either an alien dropping from ceilings onto the heads of oblivious humans. Or charging in as a pachyderm-sized alien, goring helpless humans. And as a human, more games need flamethrowers like this one. And jet packs. Flamethrowers and jet packs Maybe that’s why I loved Alien Carnage/Halloween Harry so much. Dark Void needed a flame thrower. I wonder what other games could come out of this RTS/FPS model? Could there be a per-existing IP that comes out of the formula? Discuss.

Boiling it Down

Great LAN material so long as you have 8 or so people.

Other Resources

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