Natural Selection 2: Combat
60
★ /10
PCWhere to buy
NS2: Combat is a 2014 standalone multiplayer first-person shooter developed by Faultline Games and published by Unknown Worlds Entertainment. Released on October 31, 2014, it began its life as a highly popular community mod for Natural Selection 2 before its development team was given the official blessing (and engine support) to spin it off into its own independent game.
Core Concept: The FPS without the RTS
If Natural Selection 2 is famous for its incredibly complex blending of First-Person Shooter and Real-Time Strategy, NS2: Combat was designed to strip all of that complexity away.
The game completely removes the “Commander” role, the resource-gathering, and the base-building. Instead, it focuses entirely on the pure, visceral, twitch-shooter action of Marines fighting Aliens. By removing the overarching RTS mechanics, the game plays much more like a traditional arena shooter or a fast-paced MOBA.
Gameplay and Features
Because players could no longer rely on a Commander dropping them weapons or researching upgrades, the game introduced a personal progression system:
- RPG-Style Leveling: As you damage enemies, get kills, or assist teammates, you earn experience points and level up individually.
- The Buy Menu: Every time you level up, you earn points that you can spend on a personal tech tree.
- Marines can instantly buy upgrades like armor, scanners, shotguns, grenade launchers, or save up massive amounts of points to deploy a Jetpack or a dual-minigun Exosuit.
- Aliens use their points to unlock new passive abilities (like silence or adrenaline) or physically evolve into the higher-tier, incredibly lethal lifeforms like the Fade or the Onos.
- Match Pacing: Without the need to slowly build bases and expand across the map, matches in NS2: Combat were significantly faster, more chaotic, and purely combat-focused, usually revolving around capturing and holding specific control points or destroying the enemy’s singular spawn hive/command station.
The Backlash and “Dead Game” Status
Despite the success of the original mod, the standalone release of NS2: Combat was a commercial and critical failure.
When it launched, many hardcore Natural Selection fans felt alienated, criticizing it as an “overpriced mod” since it essentially used the exact same assets, weapons, and engine as Natural Selection 2, but with less strategic depth. Because it required a separate purchase, it splintered the player base.
The game suffered from an immediately declining population. With no players to fill the matchmaking lobbies, the developers eventually transitioned the game to a Free-to-Play model in a desperate attempt to bring players back, but it was too late. Today, the standalone version of NS2: Combat is essentially a “dead game” with zero active players, though ironically, fans of the format eventually just ported the “Combat” game mode back into Natural Selection 2 as a custom community mod.
Quick Note
NS2: Combat was an attempt to make the incredibly steep, intimidating learning curve of Natural Selection 2 accessible to a wider audience.
In short: It stripped out the complex RTS elements to deliver a fast-paced, RPG-leveling arena shooter. However, by charging money for what was essentially a streamlined mod, it failed to find an audience and quickly faded into obscurity.
