Balance makes or breaks a multiplayer game. It’s hard enough to make sure individual weapons don’t tip the scales, but with Natural Selection 2 , the team at Unknown Worlds Entertainment decided to go where few others tread, creating a multiplayer game with two very different sides. Mutating aliens slash with claw and tooth, rending marines who desperately fight back with assault rifles, shotguns and intimidating exosuits. With so many factors that could go wrong, not only because the two sides play so differently but because Natural Selection 2 integrates RTS gameplay within a shooter, it’s an achievement that it works so well. It has rough edges, and doesn’t do a very good job of teaching you the finer points of how to play, but Natural Selection 2 stands proudly as a fun multiplayer option that dares to be different.

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Success or failure in a round of Natural Selection 2 comes down to the Commander. This player starts out as the same grunt as anyone else, but then hops into a human command station or alien hive. This changes their interface completely, switches their perspective from first-person to overhead view and gives them access to numerous new commands. The Commander plays similarly to any RTS game, issuing orders to the other players on the field and building new structures. The reason it works so well is due to the fact that the Commander is so integral to victory. Without the commander securing additional resources and the ground troops providing areas for expansion, the Commander can’t give their soldiers in the field the upgrades they need, and players won’t be able to afford new options without helping their leader build resource harvesters that give them currency to spend. A good Commander who understands how to adapt to the needs of their soldiers and the tactics of the enemy can change the tide of a fight. Conversely, a bad Commander can single-handedly lose a match.Commanding thus provides a great option for someone who’s more tactically minded than skilled at shooting. Like a game of StarCraft or Command & Conquer, Commanding requires you to constantly monitor and respond to a number of crises, and when you’re kicking ass it instills a sense of power. The other players are rewarded a few points for following your orders, and when you’re doing a great job they’ll know you’re instrumental to that success. Commanders on both sides have a few powers that even allow them to directly influence a battle by healing troops or providing immediate assistance such as ammo dumps. Consequently, Natural Selection avoids any disconnect that would make you feel relegated to a backseat role. You can even build units that you can directly control in order to provide direct support to your warriors, though this layers on even more responsibility that takes practice to do without feeling overwhelmed. After all, Commanding already induces a large amount of stress, since it’s essentially like playing an RTS where every soldier can berate you, make demands over their headset, and deliberately disobey orders.Similar to playing Terran or Zerg in StarCraft, the two Commander experiences in Natural Selection 2 both play similarly and wildly different. Each faction’s Commander has largely the same goals (secure resources, assist soldiers directly and build structures that provide new tech), but it’s the small things that change the pacing. Humans are reliant on electrical power and have to constantly make sure that they’re building or repairing precious power sources, otherwise all their facilities cease production. As an organic race, the Aliens rely on the Commander’s network of cysts that lay down a living carpet called Infestation. The Alien Commander doesn’t need minions to construct buildings since they’ll grow naturally over time, but maintains the Infestation to prevent connection breaks that cause structures to die. It helps keep things exciting no matter which side you’re Commanding, and offers just enough variation in play style to make the two sides feel unique.Playing as a fighter is a bit more straightforward in Natural Selection 2. Whether you’re on the Alien or Marine side, your job is seek out and destroy the enemy’s command buildings. How you do so comes down to a combination of cooperating with your Commander and making sure to move with your team. Shooting as Marines is immediately familiar to anyone who's played a FPS, though there’s an interesting hook that comes from the need to constantly build structures. The human Commander can eventually construct robots to assist them, but by and large Marines have to build structures on the front. Marines then have to balance their desire to make the Aliens bleed with the needs of their team, and when you move as a unit it’s really gratifying. It’s also consistently unnerving because you never know where the Aliens are coming from – or what they’ve evolved into. The Marines also get plenty of tools to make sure that how they play at the start of the match isn’t how they end, including more ordinary tools like shotguns to the extraordinary jetpacks and exosuits, but they don’t outright mutate like the Aliens. Like an RTS the tactics and gameplay evolves for the soldiers, helping longer matches stay exciting from start to finish.If the Marines feel familiar, the Aliens feel, well, alien. Alien warriors start off as the same quadrupedal, scythe-armed warriors who can cling to walls and disappear into vents. Aliens can then use their resources to mutate into other life forms that play differently. From flying beasts who can distract the enemy and spew poisonous gas clouds to builder units that operate as field medics and can build small, thorn-shooting turrets, the Alien force feels much more diverse than that of the humans. The Alien faction offers a chance to fulfill the fantasy many of us have had since seeing James Cameron’s Aliens film. It presents a sense of speed and brutal force to play as the monster on the hunt rather than the prey.Victories regularly go to both teams, so one side doesn’t always dominate the other. The Aliens’ speed and ability to use the nooks and crannies of the environment, alongside their various forms, feels like the perfect counter to the Marines ranged-combat advantage. Likewise the power vs. Infestation mechanic always gives the units in the field a tangible way to lash out at the other side even when there are no players to shoot at.Natural Selection 2’s greatest flaw is its lack of a great tutorial. A fair number of tool tips encourage you to try out unit abilities during a match, and before you start you can learn some of the more basic gameplay through the provided YouTube videos. Additionally there’s an “Explore Mode” option if you want to just hop into a level and try to get the gist of how Commanding and the various game elements work. All of these options help, sure, but they don’t explain a number of small things such as that Marine welders can also be used to build new structures faster, not just repair them. Ultimately it comes down to a trial by fire to learn the real intricacies of the gameplay, which in the case of Commanding can result in a lot of insults and pissed off teammates. Natural Selection 2 could really just use the option to play with bots, or to even do an oft-dreaded, take-you-by-the-hand tutorial to show you the ropes. Natural Selection 2 just has so much to learn, and as it stands now is intimidating for new players. The community is almost unnaturally helpful, though, perhaps due to the fact that it smartly colors your name and chat as green to let them know when you’re new.Natural Selection 2 has moments of beauty, where it’s easy to get wrapped up in the intense fighting, but other times it shows its low-budget roots. Marines, and the various forms of Aliens, all look like clones of one another. The environments are also pretty similar looking, though it’s hard to notice when you’re fighting for you life. I’ve also encountered a few issues where it locks up after failing to load a level properly. Even more frustrating is that there’s no way to group with friends to go into matches together, nor is there a way to see how far along a match is before you join. Smartly, though, the team has integrated mod support into the main menu, and it’s great to see how active the community has been in implementing new skins and the like into Steamworks.