Since the game's release over two years ago, Tactical Gamer has had an active community of Natural Selection regulars. New regulars continue to introduce themselves to Tactical Gamer, and many regulars are old favorites around here. The games are fantastic, the competition intense and mutually-rewarding. As the skill and teamwork of our playerbase continues to improve, and as we continue to become friends,
the TGNS playerbase has decided to host our own in-house Tactical Gamer Natural Selection Tournament. Six teams and an organized pool of substitute players will compete in this
6v6 tournament over the next several weeks.
For those of you unfamiliar with Natural Selection (a free Half-Life mod), understand the game as a hybrid between today's two wildly-popular FPS and RTS genres (think "Counter-Strike meets StarCraft"): players engage in melees all over a map, key areas of which the melee outcomes determine control, allowing one team or the other to advance toward their mutual objective: eliminate the opposition from respawning.
Winner of Gamespy's Mod of the Year in 2002, and recipient of regular industry praise since then, Natural Selection has been described by Halflife.org as "about as close as you can get to a perfect game."
The game pitts two teams, marines and aliens, against each other. Two unique 3+-tier tech trees, the tactical complements between and among them both, and the multitude of strategic options those complements present: these form the foundation for
some of the most intense strategies and melees online multiplayer gaming offers today.
To tell you a bit more about the game, all players play in a first person view, with the exception of ONE marine player, who sees the entire map from above (a la the RTS titles above) and issues commands to his fellow marines in real-time. Just as
Natural Selection has proven for many to offer Tactical Gamer's most satisfying teamplay offering, so too will this Natural Selection Tournament prove to offer the finest of that teamplay.
Teams registration has closed and the two-week pre-season starts next week, but
all players, new and old, are encouraged to join us on the server anytime. Just follow the instructions below for installing Natural Selection and connect to the server address below. If you're new to the game, be sure to let everyone playing know that you're new so they can help you along!
Our Natural Selection server's HLTV Proxy (a Half-Life TV client is included in every Half-Life installation) allows for 50 spectators to
watch the matches LIVE; fire up Natural Selection and connect to the HLTV Proxy address below. You can see
our Natural Selection General Discussion forum for details about match times!
Introduction to Natural Selection
* Game Overview and media praise.
Natural Selection Download and Installation Instructions
* Instructions for downloading and installing Natural Selection, including what prerequisites are required.
Tactical Gamer Natural Selection server address
* tgns.tacticalgamer.com:27015 (67.19.90.170:27015)
Tactical Gamer Natural Selection HLTV Proxy address:
* tgns.tacticalgamer.com:27020 (67.19.90.170:27020)
Tactical Gamer Natural Selection Forums
