There must be something in the this year’s ACME-grade Cola substitute that’s shipped out to games studios as Natural Selection 2 becomes another in a long line of games to reveal it will feature mechs. Does this prevalence of mechanised exo-skeletons leave us in some way disheartened? Not a jot.
Check out the trailer below.
I can’t do it. I just can’t get bored of mechs. They’re the bears in tutus of gaming, bringing joy and bloodletting in a 20/80 measure.
For those not following the lengthy development of Natural Selection 2, it’s a full-bodied version of a Half Life mod released a decade ago. Pitting aliens against humans, it was one of the first games to introduce a commander role into an FPS – something which,considering how well it worked in mixing up the gameplay,has been oddly absent from the feature list of most FPSs since.The sequel is bringing the game up to modern standards graphically but will retain the same team deathmatch main game with RTS commander meta-game bolt on as before.
Release date?According to Google it’s coming out in2010, soUnknown Worlds are being very quiet on that front. Though, Steam pre-orders open on the 4th September, so fingers crossed for a release before Christmas.
With all the talk of Oculus Rift-ifying games going on at the moment I’m always going to hold my hand up and ask for all mechs to come with VR, butI can’t help but think that those Alien mouth-views could alsobe an odd thing to try out. Whereas an FPS can be a little odd in VR- moving your head independently of the gun may be realistic but might lead to confusion in a firefight, what with you gun pointing in the wrong direction – as an alien, your body is the weapon. Looking left and right is turning your head, your head that’s lined with teeth. It could make the alien team frighteningly mobile.