Classic Half-Life Mod Gets Next-Gen Remake

In case you missed Natural Selection, hailed as one of the best mods ever for Half-Life, you're getting another chance.

Natural Selection, a multi-player mod released for Half-Life in 2002 and described as "the most ambitious mod every brought to fruition", is to get a sequel/remake early next year, bringing the game's unique gameplay to a new generation of gamers.

Players will be able to pick either the marine-esque Frontiersmen or the alien Kharaa and fight for dominance in dynamic and changeable environment, with both sides playing in a totally different way. Especially notable is the Frontiersmen 'Commander', who will play the game like an RTS.

Natural Selection 2 was originally designed to run on the Source Engine, but Unknown Worlds Entertainment, the development studio set up by NS1 creator Charlie Cleveland, have since transferred the game to its proprietary 'Spark' Engine.

Natural Selection 2is available to pre-order now, with the pennies you supply going to fund further development. Unknown Worlds plan to release the level editor to everyone who pre-orders the game, and then buy the best levels for inclusion in the final release.

For more information, check out Natural Selection 2's official site.

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never heard of this before, and the "teaser" gives me absolutely no further interests, may give it a look some time but its important to remember the importance of good advertising, just ask sony.

Interesting.
Never played the original mod, probably won't play this one either since it is going commercial. I wish it would have shown some gameplay in the teaser though.

Looks very good, but my money is needed for the plethora of other AWESOME games coming out in the next month.

NS1 was my favorite mod ever for any half-life game, and I'll definitely be dropping the dough to get this one. The game is phenomenal and the play-styles of the opposing factions make for some sweet gameplay. Although for anyone who's actually interested in the game, this is incredibly old news. :p

Sounds like gloom, a mod for quake II

This is reeeeally old. That trailer is from May.

Wow, only one person in this thread thus far has any knowledge of what is essentially one of the best games, let alone mods, ever developed. Travesty.

I've always been interested in Natural Selection, but I've always had a shitty computer. Technically I can grab NS1 now since I got HL1 via Steam, so I might give it a whirl. However, being a console gamer first and PC gamer maybe later, I had to go check the FAQ to see if it would even hit consoles.

After the initial release a Mac and Xbox 360 port is planned. That makes me happy.

So, could this be coming with the next OB?
I've not played natural selection, yet.
I should check it out.

I played the original, and it could be alot of fun to play - the only problems where at the start when the marines have peashooters, whilst the aliens were too fast to hit. But maybe I just sucked at playing it, heh.

Natural selection 1 is one of the best mods ever. It really has the feel of the Aliens movie. That sense of impending doom. You have to build your base and you cant shoot while building. So you are trying to listen for approaching aliens and hope your teammate will cover you. A good marine team could win almost every time, but that almost never happens. Due to a lack of teamwork the aliens won about 80% of the matches. The funny thing was, everyone wanted on the marine team anyway! I've never seen a game where most people want on the losing side before. I enjoyed some of my most memorable gaming battles of all time from NS1.

I have absolutely no idea what it is or what it does why would i want to pre order it?

I never played this game before but after reading the premise it looks rather intriguing.

I played once,I was shooting aliens,then a triceratops sized/looking alien came in and ruined my whole team's shit.

I was unhappy,confused as to why my gun did nothing and ponderous as to why I didn't pick the team whose units can climb up walls and ceiling and eat space marines.

Then I quit and never tried to play ever again.

Note to all game devs!!!!:

Natural Selection 2is available to pre-order now, with the pennies you supply going to fund further development. Unknown Worlds plan to release the level editor to everyone who pre-orders the game, and then buy the best levels for inclusion in the final release.

THAT IS WHAT YOU DO!

Natural Selection 1 is one of the best half life mods of all time. It is practically Starcraft turned into an FPS (except no protoss). I will definitely be pre-ordering this =)

Everyone should know that video is basicly fan service for those of us who played the Natural Selection mod for Half Life 1 - it was yet another carrot in a long list of carrots the Independent Developers of Unknown Worlds (Charlie "Flayra" Cleveland, Max "Max" McGuire, Cory "Squeal Like a Pig" Strader, Matt "Ooghijmiqtxxa" Regan, and more) that they have been giving to us: in the form of pictures, audio blogs, video blogs, twitter, and forum posts we have been following the development of their commercial game pretty much since it was a twinkle in the eye of Charlie when he was working on making the many content and tweak versions of the Half Life mod with his team of fellow modders from all around the globe. Remember how Stardock (Impulse) has been praised for letting the game community come along for the ride during development? These Unknown World guys so do that.

Want game play footage? We are still waiting on that till they release the beta to the play testers/special pre-orders.

And if you haven't heard of Natural Selection for Half-Life? It was right behind Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat in terms of numbers of players and servers ... and you have pretty much missed that bus, it is rare to find a good game of it these days, most of those servers moved on to other games by now as the player base dwindled. It has been compared to Savage and Savage 2, but trust me on this, it was way, way more fun. I played Natural Selection for years, the community around the games was just that good for that amount of time. So, if you haven't heard of it before, take note, you just bumped into what has the potential to be one of the biggest indy titles in years - we'll let you know when there is better footage to get your freak on as TSA Marine or Kharaa shape changing aliens.

Here, have some in game screen shots from their alpha testing:

Squad Advance

Skulks In Vent

The future of this indy game looks damn fine.

whaleswiththumbs:
Note to all game devs!!!!:

Natural Selection 2is available to pre-order now, with the pennies you supply going to fund further development. Unknown Worlds plan to release the level editor to everyone who pre-orders the game, and then buy the best levels for inclusion in the final release.

THAT IS WHAT YOU DO!

And add dedicated servers! /rant

Looks pretty good but I'm more excited about the Black Mesa Source game/mod coming out.

Natural Selection looks like Zombie Panic Source with aliens instead of zombies. Or ZPS looks like NS, either way.

I played the original ages ago when I was tiny. Didn't have a clue what was going on, wish I'd stuck with it now. :(

GBlair88:

Looks pretty good but I'm more excited about the Black Mesa Source game/mod coming out.

Natural Selection looks like Zombie Panic Source with aliens instead of zombies. Or ZPS looks like NS, either way.

Oh goodness...I can't believe how many people still haven't played Natural Selection on Half-Life.

This was one of the best mods ever for Half-Life 1. It was absolutely fun and there was plenty of strategy. It was also pretty damn innovative for its time, with the whole Commander thing for one player on the Marines team, and the multiple morph "classes" for the Aliens. The concept of the game was executed so well, I remember playing this a lot when I was a kid.

It's not even a "zombie panic source, but with aliens". Not even close. Seriously, it could not get any more wrong than this. Ignorance is the best way to miss out great games.

At any rate, Natural Selection 2 looks to be shaping up well...wonder if I'll be able to play it by the time it comes out though.

I gotta say though, nilcypher is incredibly late. That teaser video and the pre-orders were available possibly last year.

j0z:
Interesting.
Never played the original mod, probably won't play this one either since it is going commercial. I wish it would have shown some gameplay in the teaser though.

there is some gameplay videos out there. dynamic infection is one of them. dynamic infection is this fleshy fungus that grows on the map and tranforms the terrain that is frequented by the infected party. it is completely random, never scripted. either way, did the escapist news response get the hammer? this was known for the LONGEST time. this is like news on the escapist saying "newsflash! we had george washington as our president!"

D4zZ:
I played the original ages ago when I was tiny. Didn't have a clue what was going on, wish I'd stuck with it now. :(

I played it when I was older, but I could never kill of those jumping alien buggers - unless we had a commander who was actually worth while and got us machineguns, heh.

Fun game, played it quite a bit when I was younger. Obviously it was more fun to play as the aliens, but could do well as the marines aswell if you had a decent team. Might pick this up, though I must say AvP3 is sort of overshadowing this.

nilcypher:

Players will be able to pick either the marine-esque Frontiersmen or the alien Kharaa and fight for dominance in dynamic and changeable environment, with both sides playing in a totally different way. Especially notable is the Frontiersmen 'Commander', who will play the game like an RTS.

This has been done in mods before, Empires, is one I can remember of the top of my head.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay NS2 info \o/. I loved that game and played the hell out of it, just placed my preorder on the special edition. Hope it drags new people and new life into the series.
Battle gorge! *Jumps around like a mad woman, throwing webs all over the place*

Alright. I gotta get this game now!

I've never heard of natural selection, but this remake looks almost ripped from DOOM 3. 'Sides, zombie master is still the number one game mod for me (In your face original counter-strike and DOTA!).

I wanted to love the mod so badly, but I was about 6 years late and I couldn't play without all the pros beating the crap out of me. Hopefully the sequel will even the playing fields a bit.

YurdleTheTurtle:
*Snip*

I'm not being ignorant and I never said they were exactly the same, but both games are basically a team with guns against a team without guns and that's where the similarity lies.

GBlair88:

I'm not being ignorant and I never said they were exactly the same, but both games are basically a team with guns against a team without guns and that's where the similarity lies.

More important, that's where the similarity ends. Because other than that, they're nothing like each other.

But while I never actually played the first one, I was very intrigued by it. I'll definitely look into 2, looks really good.

Late news is better than no news.

swaki:
the "teaser" gives me absolutely no further interests

theownerer:
I have absolutely no idea what it is or what it does why would i want to pre order it?

That's understandable if you've never played NS1 or read up on NS2, as this "teaser" is basically targeted at NS fans.

I expect they will follow up with a more informative and accessible teaser/trailer.

Exocet:
Then I quit and never tried to play ever again.

Do you give up on every game you don't immediately understand?

cyber_andyy:
This has been done in mods before.

Yes and one of them is called Natural Selection (2002). Besides they never claimed it was original.

Pegghead:
I've never heard of natural selection, but this remake looks almost ripped from DOOM 3. 'Sides, zombie master is still the number one game mod for me (In your face original counter-strike and DOTA!).

There's obvious similarities in the visual style, but most sci-fi shooters 'look the same'.

As for ripped? That's a very bold, unsubstantiated statement.

NS2 is a standalone game not a mod, plus you're not limited to only playing your number one game/mod.

I saw the thread title and immediately thought of Natural Selection.

It is probably the best Half Life mod that I've played. It's a lot like Starcraft without the Protoss done in a first person perspective from the views of the units themselves; anyone who was disappointed by Starcraft: Ghost's cancellation (or enjoyed Command and Conquer Renegade's multiplayer) might want to give it a look.

I've dropped in on the sequel's website a few times but didn't find much substantial going on.

Haven't they been taking pre-orders for some months now? I think it's like $20 or something, so not a full-priced game, but the first one was easily the best Half-Life mod out there (besides the obvious in CS and DoD). I loved how they did the playing as aliens part, how the tense the game was.

Onoes :D

Might be worth the cash, but I dont like the idea of a game so reliant on the COmmander & GOrge positions being paid for.

I mastered NS1 way back when. Very fun game for its time considering how much they acomplished with the, even then, aging HL1 engine. I will wait to see how it turns out before I give them any money though. I have L4D2 now.