BACKGROUND:
This game is essentially a much more polished version of the Natural Selection 1 and 2 'Combat mod', created by the same authors now under the name Faultline Games. It utilizes the engine, core gameplay elements and graphical elements of Natural Selection 2 but is not directly affiliated with Unknown Worlds. Essentially, this is a mod being sold as a standalone game at a 15$ price point. This isn't by itself a deal-breaker as long as ample content and quality is provided..

GAMEPLAY:
The combat is fun, the leveling up elements seem well thought-out, the music is great, and the map design(albeit limited number of maps) seems to be excellent. This mod seems to 'fix' a lot of core elements of Natural Selection 2 which may have driven away more casual players. Since there's no Commander or resource metagame you're more free to play aggressively in more of an arena FPS environment. Teamplay gameplay is still rewarded but you're not entirely reliant on your team to have an enjoyable experience. I'm actually getting a lot of fun out of this fresh take on NS2 and while it does play exactly as advertised, it still feels like a mod of an existing game which I already own. With only 5 maps and the game's clearly reduced complexity compared to NS2 I am curious to see what player numbers look like in a month, or two months out. Continual 'officially released content' will be very vital to sustaining any kind of player population. Since this isn't a mod, the developers should not be relying on the modding community to provide for them.

Faultline Games integrated a 'ranked' system for a lite form of skill-based matchmaking. You can still manually select servers but players have a skill value assigned based on their in-game performance. This is great. It allows for more intelligent team balance, if it were implemented. What's isn't great is the fact that rather than allow and enforce non-modded dedicated servers, server admins and gaming communities will be forced to rent ranked servers from a pre-selected list of server providers. No running your own (ranked) dedicated server on your own equipment. In my opinion this goes against the very roots of what makes PC gaming great.

A Rock and a Hard Place:
Had this been offered as a 5$ DLC to NS2, it would have made perfect sense. A price point of 10$ might have made more sense. The game really is stuck between a rock and a hard place; by selling it for too little they risk not making any profit, but also since it is a stand alone game Faultline ends up alienating the existing NS2 customer base by 'making us buy NS2 again'. Even a basic integration between the two games such as a launcher which has a server browser list that shows servers from both 'editions' would go a long way to stop this product from being such a dividing force in the NS2 community. I know there's grand plans to continue to expand on NS2:Combat's features, effectively making it the CS:GO or 'CoD' of NS2, but currently it just isn't there yet. It would be entirely possible to put 95% of this game's content into the original NS2 as a mod.

As it stands, with zero integration to the NS2 ecosystem and at a price point more expensive than you can find the full NS2 game, I can't honestly recommend it.

TLDR: What's different between this and NS2?
1) There is NOT a commander or resource gathering metagame. There are no RTS components from NS2.
2) There IS fast paced Human vs Alien combat set in a game with already well established abilities and technology.

No one plays this game.

http://steamcharts.com/app/310110

The average player count since the 30th of April 2015, is 0 players.

An overpriced mod with currently not enough content... uses all the NS2 assets, so its a mod - there's no denying it. It is not the old Combat from NS1 that we all know and loved. I bought this game on a gamble becuase I figured, "how bad could it be?" Turns out I bought this just so I could tell the rest of you it's not worth it right now for this price. If it goes on sale for a noticable amount, then it might be worth something.

The only MOBA element is the fact that each team has their main HQ building and the objective is to destroy it. There are no creep waves, no item shops or items to buy. Sure you get your upgrades, but it just feels kinda shallow, like there just isnt enough variation or something in the upgrade paths you can pick.

In terms of relating this to the old NS1 combat, it simply just doesn't have the progression and variety that it had. It doesn't have the HMG, Heavy Armor, and it doesn't have the extensive amount of upgrades that Extra Levels plugin offered in the old NS1, which is what everyone used to play with. Everyone seems to forget that nobody liked the vanilla NS1 combat that came with the game, it was the Extra Levels plugin that made it more enjoyable.

And right now, nobody plays this game. Why? Probably either becuase it just isn't fun enough to keep people interested and/or is way too pricey for the kind of game it is. Thus it probably isn't worth the price.

First off, I'm going to write about the game, not the price tag. Personally I don't have a problem with them charging extra for it, but that doesn't affect my review.

So here's where I'm coming from: I've played Natural Selection since the release of the original mod for Half-Life, Combat for Natural Selection, and NS2, but not the Combat Mod for NS2. I'll be comparing this to both NS1:Combat and NS2.

Main Differences from NS2 and/or NS1:Combat:

Good:
1) No commanders. Also in NS1:Combat, this is one of the main draws of the gametype. You don't have to rely on anyone to get the weapons and upgrades you want. You don't instantly lose because a first time commander is in the chair. It sets up a more casual game that focuses on kills instead of a big strategic plan of attack.

2) Buildings. Yes, you can build stuff, unlike NS1:Combat. A huge change. Phase gates and Gorge tunnels help you control the map like you're playing a vanilla style NS2 game. I like it.

Bad:
1) XP Gain. Another huge change from NS1:Combat is how hard it is to gain XP. Leveling is much slower and gone is the "area xp" where everyone gets XP in the vicinity of the kill. You get XP from kills, assists, and captures. Also making XP gain difficult is that with such a small player base, 90% of the players are already very skilled NS2 players. If you've never played NS, you will die alot and you will never get XP.

One of the things I really liked about NS1:Combat is it's more casual gameplay style. Level gains were quick, if you fell behind, you'd get XP anyway. Here, if you fall behind, you're done. You can't really compete when you're low level against a bunch of people with armor, and the game doesn't help you out any.

I've read the upgrade progression is very limiting as well, but I haven't been able to level up enough to run into that problem.

It's hard to recommend this game to anyone. If you already have NS2, it's pretty much the same game. If you don't have NS2, you're going to die a lot, get stuck at the bottom of the scoreboard, and never given any upgrades to help you compete. A new player would actually have an easier time in standard NS2, as personal performance doesn't matter as much.

Australians, be aware there are NO Australian servers for this game. Impossible to play on 200+ ping so don't bother buying like i just did. You've been warned.

NS2: Combat es un poderoso juego de disparos donde los marines espaciales luchan contra alienígenas a través de una mezcla competitiva de estilos de juego MOBA y FPS. ¿Estás listo?

As a huge fan of the original, I really wanted to like Combat. As it stands, here are the biggest issues:

* Not enough differentiation from NS2 base game. New weapons and abilities are present, but what would have been really great is new game modes.

* Loading times are still abysmal. One of the few games worth installing on a SSD.

* Only 1 active server, with tons of experienced players which results in ridiculously stacked games. Matchmaking is useless, so its pretty disheartening to have new players get chomped through. Much less voice chat which made the original NS2 more of a community / kept new players engaged.

All in all, worth <$5. At $15, it's overpriced for what it is. Know that you are paying to basically play against 40-50 regulars.

{Updated Review: September 19th, 2015}

The new balance patch that was just released has made some major improvments to the game overall.

Game Mechanic Tweaks:

Experience is now rewarded on a damage based system. You received experience proportional to how much damage you are doing, in addition to scoring kills. This is probably the largest overall improvment to the game. It allows newer players to keep up with the veterans instead of just getting snowballed in a long painful loss.

Command Structure armor now only blocks 90% of damage done. This means that you can effectively kill the command structure as long as you keep attacking it. The motivation behind this tweak was to prevent long drawn out games where one team never leaves base.

Additionally most of the abilities and weapons have been fine tuned to make each of them a lot more useful. Before, certain abilities (babbler bomb and acid rocket) had no real purpose in the game. By fleshing out the abilities that were somewhat neglected at launch, the overall balance of the game has been much improved, and each build is a lot more fun to play.

For example, the end game of Combat used to always end up with the marines getting exo suits, and the aliens going onos and gorge to stop it. This made the end game of combat really boring, especially if you don't like playing exo, onos, or gorge.

Now, with imrovments to acid rocket, fades have a way to harrass exosuits, giving all other alien lifeforms a more pronounced role in the end game.

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[[RESPONSE TO LOW PLAYER NUMBERS]] {9-19-15}

The last few months the game was pretty much dead while the devs and remaining community worked on building a better game. For several reasons, the release of this game was much rushed, and small greivences quickly became sticking points for why people would rather play other games.

The developers and community have spent the time since then building the game Combat should have been at launch. I'm hoping with price drop, prommotions, and much needed balance improvments, people will be willing to give Combat another chance.

For all of its problems at release, combat was (and still is) a really fun game, and it's only getting better. Now that the balance patch is out, the developers and community are focused on building the player base back up.

I'm playing games every day, and invite you to come give combat a shot with me. (Add me on steam)

I don't recommend this game, won't and never will. It's NS2, nothing is different other then a GUI change, and some simple physics changes, a couple of maps from ns1 which were already available on the workshop, they added in a gun and some other combat features that were already available in the workshop, the selling features are nothing.

I am glad they introduced extra entities and worldpoints/trains, but it doesn't justify its own standalone game.
Someone please copy all the .lua and put it back into ns2 as a mod.

(Preface: Don't be fooled by the negative reviews from people who think they deserve everything for free because "it's almost NS2". Yes, this is based on a mod. No, this is not *the same* as the mod. The developers put a good deal of work into it, and that should be rewarded. So please rate the game for how it actually *is*, and not based on some sense of entitlement.)

For background, I have over 1,100 hours of playtime in NS2 (the game this one is derived from). NS2 is a demanding, heavily team-based FPS/RTS hybrid. Well-performed maneuvers give great rewards, but at the same time, individual mistakes can quickly accumulate and lead to your team's defeat. This is part of what makes it so great - your individual decisions and fights matter. A lot.

But sometimes, you don't want that kind of pressure. You just want to kill some Aliens/Marines without that much complexity. Or you just have a few minutes to play, where an epic round of NS2 (easily 45+ mins) just won't fit. These are the situations where "NS2:Combat" shines. It retains all of the combat aspects of NS2, but removes the strategy/RTS layer, which greatly simplifies the game. Jump into a server and start fragging. Teamwork is still relevant (and highly recommended), but it is much more straight-forward than in NS2.


== The good ==

- Fast-paced gameplay
- Fun and satisfying combat
- Nice visuals (like NS2)
- More opportunity to play advanced weapons/lifeforms than in NS2 - go wild with the Railgun Exosuit :) <3

== The mixed ==

- Good maps, but only a few
- "Retro" graphics in menus and loading screens - a matter of taste
- Some upgrades are so good that they are basically a must-have, which limits build variety

== The bad ==

- Balance needs tweaking (Marines feel too strong early-to-mid game, Aliens are too strong in the end game)
- Some things could be more self-explanatory (e.g. the upgrade system and "how to play Aliens")


== The verdict (tl;dr) ==

Is it fun to play? - yes
Is it perfect? - not yet, but the issues can be fixed

Overall: recommended