Natural Selection. No, not the old survival term that leaves the survivor of an event stronger than before. I am talking about an Indi game that has taken the elements that work in an RTS game, an FPS game like Counter Strike and Left 4 Dead and combined them all into a single hybrid game with its own engine to boot. Natural Selection 2 is obviously a sequel to a former game that I never had the pleasure of playing. It is largely a community made game since the developers were bold enough to make their game code and decision making available to the general public in order to help them do a number of things. Members came together to crush bugs, polish, design new features, balance, and make sure that this game was something that all PC gamers would love to have in their library. Did all of that pay off? Why yes, in fact it did pretty darn well! Natural Selection 2 is a culmination of nearly everything that I ever wanted in a FPS game. At any point in time, a player can assume the role of Commander and take on an RTS like role over the game. You will build items like respawn points, phase gates, an armory, and even a device that will grow your available resources. It blends the RTS element near perfectly into the FPS action. You are also treated to a top down view of the map; from there you will be able to command your team to move to specific locations, supply them, and deploy new items for them to build. Teamwork is required here to the maximum in order to win! There is no dicking around to be had. Everything and everybody must work together... Not is perfect though, due to so many features ; there is a pretty steep learning curve involved here. It will take you some time to grasp just how everything handles and functions and how they all work together in order to give you victory. You cant just JUMP into the command chair and run the game with perfections. It requires: practice, careful examination, strategic evaluation, patience, and more practice. Every resource that you have built serves its own purpose and requires that you know what you are doing... Thankfully, the community is absolutely great! They truly understand how steep the learning curve is and they have the patience to help you along. My first time in the command seat was eased by the helpful advice of the player on my team. That right there made me want to keep coming back and back for more. The learning curve in this game may be a good thing, or a bad thing in the eyes of gamers. But for me, I would not have it any other way. When you are firstly jumping in, do not be discouraging by the fact that you have killed nothing for a long time. It is hard to kill and that seems to be intentional. Damage is counted by how well you keep the target centered in your screen. If you are a Marine shooting at an Alien; they will be hard to hit since they are all so agile and deal out lots of damage. It is important to stick with your team at all times in order to be effective. Being an Alien is much different than our two legged brethren. For one: you can climb up the walls without your camera flipping upside down, you evolve into a more deadly species at the click of a button, and you can stalk your prey and finish them with a good bite. Omnomnom! The Aliens come in a variety of species. You have the standard Skulk, then you move on to a healing type Alien known as the Gorge. The more powerful species are the birdlike Lark, the assassin Fade, and the massively OP Onos. The reason why I believe that the Onos is OP, is because you simply cant kill the thing! It takes soooooo much damage and deals out the same amount in return. You can pump an entire squad full of mags into it, and it simply wont die. One is bad enough, imagine three of them coming at you! In my opinion, there needs to be some balancing there. Otherwise, Natural Selection 2 is a massively entertaining and downright epic indi multiplayer game! But how does it work? Well, pretty decent to be honest. It is not all that well optimized, and the visuals wont win any beauty contest. In fact, they seem to remind me a lot of Halo CE, but combined with Aliens vs Predator. Don't get me wrong, it does look like a game that you would see today! However, it is not going to blow your mind with breathtaking fidelity. It still have TONS upon TONS of options in the menus. You have an extensive options menu with graphic settings, mouse settings, audio, etc. They even gave you an option to label yourself as a rookie until you are ready for the big leagues. It is massively obvious that these guys payed attention to what PC gamers want, and it shows big time. Lots of options! When you initially start up the game it may take some time for it to all load, but eventually it will get faster when it gets used to your system. Natural Selection 2 is the culmination of what a community can do to a game. Having a learning curve may intimidate the new people, but that is whipped away by the ever so helpful community. There is a problem with some balancing and the game is not the best looking. However, it is still one of the best Multiplayer experiences that I have recently seen. Another thing that is cool: when you join in a game, you are in a waiting lobby that you can walk around in and choose what you want to do. Areas in that room give you the choice to choose your team, spectate, or randomly join a team. When I got in, the entire lobby was decorated with snow and Christmas gifts! They even had Jingle Bells playing in the background, AND you could toss snowballs at other players in the lobby. PLEASE OH PLEASE DO MORE OF THIS!!!!