Natural Selection 2.0 has pretty much removed all possibility of me coming back to Planetside, because it’s AT LEAST twice as fun.
I just tried this mod out for the first time a few days ago, and now it’s about the only game I think about. The gameplay is just phenomenal, and the teamplay is much, MUCH better than I was expecting. Your gameplay experience is also much different depending on whether you play as an alien or a marine. The first night I played, I was up until 4:30 (while working at 8:00am the next day). I haven’t done that since Tribes came out. A big part of the cool factor is how much the voice communication is used. Everyone is constantly making useful chatter, giving status reports, asking for help, etc. It’s the total polar opposite of playing counter-strike, where I’ve already muted five or six pre-pubescent retards before five minutes have passed.
Overall, I think that the marine experience is much more fun for me, especially when you have a gifted commander watching over you. I got one chance to command, late that first night. I had read up on the game quite a bit, so I had an idea of what to expect, and that helped me a lot, but wow… it’s intimidating to jump into a command role when you’re giving orders to a dozen real, live people who are depending on you. It’s not at all like ordering a few AI automatons around. I got us off to a decent start, but I didn’t really know the map, so that hurt us. It was an amazing experience though. A couple of the guys in the game were, for whatever reasons, playing the part of panicky marines, a la Aliens. The guys would yell out in fear over coms upon being attacked, and cheer after throwing the aliens back.
Well, things ended up going kind of badly. Between watching my guys and trying to figure out the building/upgrading system, i was rather overwhelmed. My guys were split up into three squads, all away from base, when base was attacked. At the same time all of my squads ran into major trouble and were getting killed. Voice comms were filled with marines that were acting the part. (Ahhhh! It’s eating me! They’re killing us! Help! They’re coming out of the god damn walls! Oh my god! Ruuuuuun!) At that point I sort of froze up… just like the new commander did in Aliens. There was too much going on all over the place and I didn’t know what to do. Everyone in all three squads was wiped out to the last man. Another player kindly offered to take over command, and I graciously allowed him to. We ended up losing the match (which I will take credit for) but we put up a damn good fight for the remainder of it. What really impressed me was that no one bitched me out for doing a bad job, but they were all actually quite supportive of my efforts. I really expected a OMFG N00B j00 SuX0rZ!11!!, but everyone just said that I did pretty damn well for someone who was totally new to the game, and that if new people don’t get a chance to try it, they will never learn.
Since then, I haven’t commanded again, but I’ve learned a lot more about the game, and I’ve been learning the maps better. The next time I find myself in the hot seat, I am confident I will do a much better job. For now though, I am happy being the grunt - killing aliens and building resource towers and turrets as needed.
