Imagine all the things you could do with seven hours. You could have a somewhat unsatisfying sleep. You could go on a plane flight that wouldn’t quite get you to America. You could complete Dishonored fifteen times. You could clean up your Goddamn house.
One thing you don’t have to do with seven hours is spend them impatiently waiting for Natural Selection 2, which after years of development has had its release date moved forward ever so slightly.
It’ll now be early on Halloween, as opposed to midnight on Halloween. This means there are a five-ish hours to go until Unknown World’s mod-gone-pro battle of humans vs aliens is finally with us. Exciting! I’m looking forward to playing it on the morrow. Maybe I’ll do exactly that with my free seven hours, in fact.
More details, pre-order stuffs, a ticking timer and whatnot here.
30/10/2012 at 18:04 OpT1mUs says:
How come there is no pre-load option on steam?
30/10/2012 at 18:10 airtekh says:
From NS2 Twitter
30/10/2012 at 18:29 Jiblet says:
Because they’re busy jamming in very last minute fixes?
Oh dear. I had rather high hopes for this but that fills me with the worrisomes.
30/10/2012 at 19:05 Suits says:
Yeah.. why push it forward then.
30/10/2012 at 19:59 Tovarisc says:
Don’t be worried.
Game looks absolutely stunning while running extremely well even with couple years old rig (i5 750 and HD5870). Older rigs should be also fine because there is good amount of setting to tweak. Hit detection is really good and they have done very good job of improving upon it through last couple months. No bugs to speak of and if there is some left they are very small and wont jump into yours face. Maps are rather well designed and good in size, not too large so tension is there all the time but not to small either. Game balance also feels rather good, but there is always something to tweak.
Game oozes looks, feel etc. of PC game from its every pore. If they keep pushing more updates into it this close to launch, matter of hours, while game is already in extremely good shape it means good things for launch.
P.S. Views and opinions are based on latest beta build as I played some just today ;)
30/10/2012 at 20:00 quaunaut says:
To explain, it’s because while the gameplay and engine are running smooth, they wanted to get a couple things into the final build that were pretty much done, but setting things up for preload takes a decent amount of time- like, days. So they had to make the call: Do a feature freeze, or add in new stuff(like the better looking Dynamic Infestation they put in this morning) up to the last minute? They went with the latter.
Everything still runs silky smooth, just no preload.
30/10/2012 at 20:49 TheSpartan says:
Have you forgotten Red Orchestra 2 so soon? Never try to add features at the last minute or you’ll pay for it.
30/10/2012 at 21:51 Jiblet says:
No, just to be clear here, here’s part of the tweet: “because that takes an hour or two and that is significant atm”
But cool beans, cant wait to play.
31/10/2012 at 13:25 cmc5788 says:
Just to be clear, noone is adding features at the last minute. If you’d been following the devs as long as I have you’d give them a little bit more credit. Everything they are doing now is related to optimization or bugfixing, so there is no need to panic and/or criticize :)
30/10/2012 at 18:05 airtekh says:
Woohoo! Super excited for this, I really hope it does well in terms of sales.
I love how it’s releasing on the tenth anniversary of the original Half-Life mod. Can’t believe it’s been ten years since NS1, damn I feel old.
30/10/2012 at 19:45 5nak3 says:
Well, if you consider the fact the beta had 65,000 players (or at least that is what they are saying), I would assume that this should do well.
30/10/2012 at 18:07 Trithne says:
I already cleaned up my goddamn house. And five hours from now is seven am, which suggests that I should be in bed now.
30/10/2012 at 18:08 Beelzebud says:
“You could complete Dishonored fifteen times.” LOL ouch.
30/10/2012 at 20:01 phelix says:
But only if you rush through it on the lowest difficulty like a complete idiot.
01/11/2012 at 18:50 tetracycloide says:
In fairness the difficulty level really doesn’t matter at all if you’re rushing.
30/10/2012 at 20:32 Jakkar says:
It took me around 35 hours, FYI. Don’t go spreading that rumour around. The game is long if you play it with your brain switched on and your curiosity guiding you. Especially on Very Hard mode.
30/10/2012 at 20:51 thebigJ_A says:
Psst. That’s the joke.
30/10/2012 at 20:52 Jahkaivah says:
Is the Dishonored going to be a new unit of measurement like the Peggle?
30/10/2012 at 21:23 squareking says:
I’m sad because that’s apparently fallen by the wayside; it was such an RPS hallmark. :(
Much like the Electronic Wireless Show/shorter iteration of that. :( :(
30/10/2012 at 18:36 Duke of Chutney says:
Having been in the Beta est ages, I will be playing… now ahahahah no waiting for the 5 hours for me.
In terms of bugginess its pretty smooth, but as with any game, theres always more that can be done
30/10/2012 at 18:38 JonClaw says:
Yay for GMT!
30/10/2012 at 18:38 pupsikaso says:
Sweet, this’ll be right about the time I get home! :)
Can’t believe it is actually almost out. So much work by this little dedicated team.
Can’t wait to try out the map editor, too.
30/10/2012 at 20:25 derbefrier says:
This game looks like tons of fun but I have to wait a while before I get it. I must catch up on the ever increasing backlog of games that keep piling up! Maybe I can get to it in am onth or two.
30/10/2012 at 21:53 Slinkyboy says:
I lost interest in NS2 a few builds back.
I’m waiting for the NS2c Mod like any other NS3.2 cultist.
30/10/2012 at 22:59 Wombats says:
Got all the old NS blokes back together ready to play on team chat.
The original Natural Selection knocked Counterstrike, DoTA and, well, everything off their perches for our favourite game.
31/10/2012 at 02:39 The Random One says:
So is this good? The trailer makes it look a lot like Tremulous, which IIRC was a mod of a mod of the original Tribes, and also had asymmetric combat and (very basic) base building of high-tech space marines vs. creepy alien things… but it also quotes RPS as just saying it ‘looks fantastic’ or something like that, which may very well be the only vaguely positive thing in an article full of reservations and philosophications. I guess I could click the tag under the article but that is up there ^ and the wot I want to say box is down here and it’s late.
31/10/2012 at 03:30 cmc5788 says:
It is very good, and it is similar to Tremulous, but development on the original Natural Selection actually predates Tremulous. Also, I wouldn’t expect an article full of reservations. Wait and see, but if you’re looking for a reason to jump in you will be pleasantly surprised.
31/10/2012 at 03:30 The_cake_is_a_lemon says:
You could take over Earth in 7 hours!
31/10/2012 at 06:53 TychoCelchuuu says:
This game is stupendous. It’s almost like the universe would only let one sequel to an awesome mod triumph, and where Red Orchestra 2 ate dirt and turned out horrid, Natural Selection 2 has ascended to the heavens. It might be my favorite multiplayer game since the original Natural Selection.
31/10/2012 at 06:57 mckertis says:
Wait, Natural Selection is still a thing ? I occasionally encounter a player, once every couple of years, but generally speaking its as if it doesnt exist.
31/10/2012 at 07:03 Xzi says:
That’s because everyone was just waiting for NS2. Seems like a very solid game so far. I never got to play the first Natural Selection myself, but I’ve always been a fan of these hybrid genre games. The resource point distribution between both the commander and the individual player makes this more motivating than most FPS games. You really feel like helping your team is more beneficial rather than going for the longest personal killstreak or what have you. In simplest terms, it feels like playing Starcraft in the first person. Which is not an often well-executed concept.
31/10/2012 at 09:37 hamburger_cheesedoodle says:
I’ve been playing NS2 for the last five hours or so, and it’s just tons and tons of fun. Combat feels great on both marine and alien sides, and almost every game I played was close (except the one where our commander crashed three minutes in.)
There were some serious server hiccups for about an hour after release, but other than that it’s been largely bug-free fun. I’d heard that this game was a real system-destroyer, but running an old rig (core 2 duo 3ghz, ATI 4250, 3gb ram) the game still runs smoothly and looks quite nice.
For all the people out there who say they want to support small devs, play games without f2p microtransactions, and get back to games that are fast-paced fun, now is the time!
31/10/2012 at 12:25 DXN says:
This game is awesome as hell. Nuff said.
31/10/2012 at 13:14 SelfEsteemFund says:
The game itself is great (ignoring poor movement) but no where near ready for release in terms of optimisation & I fear will suffer the same fate as RO2 as a result. Many highly respected community members echo this sentiment and have requested UWE to postpone the release to focus on getting the game running as efficiently as possible because for some reason I don’t think cramming over 4 years of bugfixing and optimisation into the couple of weeks before launch as a smart decision.
31/10/2012 at 13:23 cmc5788 says:
None of what you just said is true. No highly respected community members are requesting a delay and they aren’t cramming 4 years of bugfixes into a week. Any hiccups you may be experiencing on release are minor, or perhaps related to you connecting to a weak/underpowered server (some people attempt to run servers without understanding that the serverside requires a powerful CPU).
I’ve seen this game when it was glitchy/buggy/had “poor movement,” I’ve played it since pre-alpha, since engine test. It is none of those things anymore, movement is silky-smooth, hit registration is great, etc. You shouldn’t have any problem playing this game unless your computer is an antique, and/or your drivers are badly out of date, and/or you’re connecting to an awful server.
If you want to see “cramming” and “released too soon,” just look for the nearest AAA title. Considering that NS2 has been created with a team of 7 and a budgeting strategy that is, uh let’s say “flexible,” this game’s release quality is positively angelic.
31/10/2012 at 19:58 Xzi says:
I can vouch for this. As a fresh set of eyes having never played any part of the beta, playing at launch has been very smooth for me. In about ten hours of play I encountered one bug when I got stuck, unable to move in a exosuit. I played a stationary turret for a few minutes then jumped back onto my team through the ready room. Not a big deal. Beyond that, 100+ FPS, lower than 50 ping, and a very enjoyable and well-polished experience.
And yeah, at least the last three multiplayer-focused AAA games that I bought at release were in a far worse state. Big props to the NS2 team for pulling this off as indie.