Halloween is an extra-special time of year for sci-fi FPS-RTS Natural Selection, as the birthday of both the original Half-Life mod and its standalone commercial sequel [official site]. In celebration, developers Unknown Worlds have opened up NS2 for the weekend and let everyone play for free. Battling aliens, knee deep in bacterial gunk, or chomping on the juicy heads of space marines seems fittingly frightful Halloween fun. … [visit site to read more]

Last year, Natural Selection 2 [official site] creators Unknown Worlds handed development duties on their aliens vs. space marines FPS-RTS over to a team of community volunteers, then themselves dived down into alien oceans to build Subnautica. Ah, but landlubbers will always pine for the shore (or for space?). A year-and-a-half later, Unknown Worlds are getting back into NS2, hiring some of those community folks on as an in-house team to resume development for a few months.

… [visit site to read more]

August was a busy month for the RPS community, with action seen in Dirt Rally [official site], Rocket League [official site], Terraria [official site] and others – including Awesomenauts [official site], Natural Selection 2 [official site] and Killing Floor [official site].

Click on for information about each, along with how you can get involved.

… [visit site to read more]

Gathering together the best shooters is no easy task, but if you’re looking for a new PC FPS to play, look no further.

Your favourite game is at number 51.

… [visit site to read more]

No-one in their right mind would have put down money on ‘sandbox submarine adventure‘ being the next project from the creators of human vs alien FPS/RTS crossbreed Natural Selection. I> did, however, and as a result I became a billionaire. Unfortunately I then put down a billion quid on Destiny turning out to be Frog Fractions 2 in disguise, and now I am poor again. Swings, roundabouts.

Devs Unknown Worlds have been teasing bits and bobs of Subnautica – for that is the submarine game’s name – for a while, but now they have video footage of how badly wrong being full fathom five can be. Here is a fact: a video is like a picture, but it moves and sometimes there is sound too. I hear it’s the future. … [visit site to read more]

I do enjoy visiting horrible guts. I’ve leapt between the grinding teeth of The Many in System Shock 2, chainsawed a city-devouring worm’s heart(s) in Gears of War 2, and admired a meatwizard’s DIY skills in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Now I’m keen to play Natural Selection 2: Combat, as developers Faultline Games have showed off its horrors of being devoured alive.

Being swallowed by a space-rhino will leave us trapped in its guts, desperately calling for help and pounding on meat as it closes around us and as acids fizz at our flesh before we reach, er, the finale of the digestion process. All from an appalling first-person view. What great guts!

… [visit site to read more]

Well here’s a thing. Unknown Worlds is (mostly) moving on from excellent humans vs aliens multiplayer FPS Natural Selection 2. It’s a relatively small team, and Subnautica isn’t going to build itself. NS2, however, will. Sort of. A community dev team has been given UW’s official blessing, so expect to be gorging yourself on their creations soon. Details below.

… [visit site to read more]

Can any of us honestly say we have never dreamed of creating a beautiful garden from flesh and bone, bile and spit? I thought not. That’s the problem with these ‘Craft’ games: they tend to use everyday building materials like stone and metal. Give me great citadels of bone draped in banners of skin, the absurd excesses of heavy metal album covers come to virtual life. Or, failing that, GorgeCraft will do.

The mod turns Natural Selection 2 into a building sandbox, letting us cough up biological lumps and structures wherever we please as architects of oozing monstrosities. It left beta and launched over the weekend, and you can snag it from the Steam Workshop.

… [visit site to read more]

Half-Life begot the mod Natural Selection, which begot standalone sequel Natural Selection 2, which together with NS1′s Combat mode incestuously begot NS2′s Combat mod, which now begets standalone game Natural Selection 2: Combat. It’s all a bit like Chronicles with assault rifles.

Faultline Games are taking their Combat mod standalone, they’ve announced, expanding and polishing it up as one would expect. Combat’s a murder-oriented version of Natural Selection, focusing on the asymmetric humans vs. aliens FPS combat while doing away with RTS-y bits like resource-gathering and commanders. It also splashes in RPG-y levelling, with murder-earned skill points unlocking new weapons, tech, life forms and whatnot.

… [visit site to read more]

Are you tired of sales? Did Black Friday and Cyborg Monday beat your wallet to a penniless pulp? Well, TOO BAD. Games will continue going on sale from now until the end of time, and somewhere in between, you will cast off your mortal coil poor and probably alone. I apologize. That was too much. Sales just get me super amped up> about mortality, is all. Anyway, the Humble Jumbo Bundle is composed of six games and tons of DLC. Standouts include Natural Selection 2, Sanctum 2, and Orcs Must Die! 2. Details below.

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