Unmissable Mods Month: Natural Selection

When we were pondering this exasparatingly difficult feature, there were a couple mods that I knew had to be in it; every cell in my gaming body cried out for them to be included.  Natural Selection was one of them.

Why?  It’s filled with that trademark modding innovation – as far as I know, it’s the first game to ever attempt the mix of FPS and RTS gameplay – and, probably more importantly, it’s a really great game about shooting aliens.  Compare it to every other release out there, independant and commercial, and Natural Selection still stands tall for being a radically different breed of scarily good fun.

Describing Natural Selection to somebody who hasn’t played it is always going to be a struggle, because nothing quite like it has come out since – excluding Savage and its sequel, neither of which really reached the same level of popularity or acclaim as their predecessor.  To grasp how a game of Natural Selection works, you have to imagine a Terran vs. Zerg Starcraft match, with all the complexities that  that entails: resource management, grand strategy, sprawling technology trees, the lot.

Now, picture that match, but transcribed to a First Person Shooter, with every character and NPC replaced by a real player – and I don’t just mean the combat characters: builders and commanders, scouts and soldiers, siege units and support gunners.  It shouldn’t work: people never, ever cooperate online, so to expect them to obey some sort of commander and form a cooherent, cooperative army should be utterly ludicrous – and yet, shockingly enough, Natural Selection just works.

The marines will build ever more powerful bases, with sentry guns, vast armouries, jetpack wielding flying soldiers and power-armour encased heroes trudging across the map, whilst the aliens will slowly grow their hive, evolving at will from lone builders to vast, unstoppable monstrosities.   As the match moves inexorably onwards, each side will change, adapt, grow ever stronger, and generally become absolutely awesome.

As far as I’m concerned, Natural Selection still stands testament as one of the rare mods that suceeded in being both ambitious, yet great.  Nearly 10 years on from release, it remains one of the most original, evocative, and memorable mods on the scene – and that’s why it’s Unmissable.

Why is it on our list?

Ridiculously, shockingly, inconceivably ambitious, Natural Selection should never, ever have worked out – it’s a crazed paradox of madness, potential, but most importantly, it’s ludicrous amounts of fun.  Having grown from from meager, ambitious origins in beta to the triumphant 3.0 release, if you’re a gamer, it’s crying out to be played.  The sequel should be released as a standalone game at somepoint this year, but you’d be mad to wait for it – grab this now.

Get it from?

Download Page

Easy to install?

Run installer, restart Steam, job done.  Have fun!