The Natural Selection 2 team has just released a pretty big update to their game. The jetpack, Onos, and Prototype Lab have been added into the game, as well as a new map called mineshaft. To celebrate the release of their biggest update yet, they created a new trailer to highlight some of the new additions:

The full change log can be found below:

Features

• You can now evolve to Onos when your team has three hives.
• The Onos can toss marines with his Gore attack, smash structures and Stomp on the ground, sending a shockwave that disables marine structures for 5 seconds. Upgrades are no longer available, sentries stop firing, Infantry Portals stop spawning, etc.
• Added Prototype Lab and the ability to research and buy Jetpacks
• Added new map: ns2_mineshaft
• Added camera animation and display during count down phase.
• Name tags now appear over the head of nearby teammates.
• Added lines for rally points.
• Mines detonate when hit by Stomp.
• Added an option to enable mouse acceleration (off by default)
• Infestation is now displayed on minimap (dying infestation is indicated red)
• Added some missing Marine structure icons.

Balance

• Reduced Rifle butt range from 1.5 meters to 1 meter (now same as Skulk bite)
• Shotgun damage changed to Light (armor is twice as effective against it). Made it lighter to carry and increased the damage to compensate (# of shots vs. base Skulks, Lerks and Fades should unchanged, 1 extra pellet vs. Gorges). So Shotguns should become less effective against heavily armored targets. (thanks Schimmel!)
• Bile bomb range and splash increased a lot, damage decreased somewhat and energy cost decreased a little (trying to make Gorge less vulnerable on front lines and also more able to do at least some damage to entrenched Marines). He is NASTY now, watch out.
• Increased Hydra health from 500 to 600 and armor from 0 to 75.
• Increased Lerk Spike cost from 1.5 to 2.5. Changed distribution of Command Station health and armor so it’s more resistent vs. Light damage (ie, Lerk Spikes).
• Disabled res for kills to simplify the game, remove confusion about what happens when you make a kill, reduce end-game stalemates with 1 tower and to increase the strategic aspects of the game.
• Armory no longer required to drop med packs (unnecessarily restrictive during rushes)
• Lowered bile bomb damage from 300 to 225.
• Increased repair rate for Marines repairing each others’ armor from 18 to 35 (to make it less annoying and to allow Marines to sustain attacks better).
• Reverted Fade carapace armor buff from 50 to 30.
• Removed Lerk “hide” armor.
• Reduced Shotgun research time from 40 to 20 (it was 0 in NS1). Helps Marines get a foothold with early aggression.
• Increased minimum egg spawn time from 8 to 10 seconds to less that early Alien assault (now it’s the same as Marines)
• Lowered infantry portal build time from 10 seconds to 7, and Armory from 15 to 12 (to try to lessen effectiveness of Skulk rush)

ns2_tram

• Moved warehouse north.
• Removed north-east Warehouse entrance.
• Opened tram tunnel between Server and Warehouse.
• Reworked connecting corridors into Warehouse.
• Fixed drifter pathing issues between Server and Control.

ns2_summit

• Reworked Flight Control and nearby vents
• Reworked Sub Access
• Added vent between Comp Lab, Sub Access and Maintenance Access

Fixes

• Fixed bug where the Gorge Bile Bomb ability used the Spit ability icon.
• Fixed bug where the Gorge Mini Cyst ability used the Hydra ability icon.
• Fixed script error if a Hive was destroyed while the Gorge that built it as Commander was a rag doll.
• Cleaned up some Client console spam when a Fade blinks.
• Fixed script error caused by a spectating player receiving points by getting a kill with a structure placed when they were not a spectator.
• Added placeholder icons for the Shell and Veil.
• Fixed bug where the game would randomly lockup while placing a Cyst.
• Drifter spawn sound effect will no longer play at world origin.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Skulks from leaping at maximum speed.
• Fixed bug where the physics representations for the Armory and Infantry Portal did not match up with the visual model.
• Weapon secondary attacks can no longer occur at the same time as primary attacks while coming out of a sprint in some cases.
• Armory buy menu will not instantly appear once construction is completed.
• Adjusted Skulk wall walking smoothing rates so that that the 3rd person model rotates more quickly to match the 1st person model (especially while jumping)
• Health and Ammo packs can now be dropped directly on top of a Marine player.
• Restored reloading of script files when they change on disk.
• Fixed Whip ‘grenade whack’
• Bombard projectiles will not collide with the Whip and nearby friendly structures anymore and is created at the correct attach point.
• Alien player names for Hydra kills will no longer appear in blue text in the death message.
• Fixed a bug causing Mini Cysts placed by the Gorge to be disconnected when created even in cases where the ghost model indicated the connection was valid.
• Fixed bug causing dropped weapons to disappear too quickly if they were picked up and dropped again after initially being dropped.
• AI units cannot attack friendly players anymore unless FF is enabled.
• Fixed bug causing script error when a Cyst died due to not being connected to a Hive.
• Fixed crash when too many objects are visible.
• PhysX scene now supports mirrored geometry.
• Initial team starting locations chosen with a more random method.
• Mine will detect enemies more accurately.
• Slime effect during sprinting will not show up in thirdperson anymore.
• The ARC will prioritize other structures before Eggs and Cysts.
• Player turn poses (arms moving with feet planted on the ground) reset once the player starts moving.
• Fixed multi-threading crash when using the o_stats console command.
• The “getting ready to spawn” blue spin effect now disappears immediately upon the Infantry Portal being destroyed.
• Fixed bug where the Spore cloud would be created improperly when a Lerk was not moving.
• Fixed bug where connecting to the localhost would cause the game to go into an infinite loop.
• Fixed bug where Marines would spawn above the Infantry Portal platform.

Improvement

• Added “warp” console command to teleport to a position in space when cheats are on, “warp 0 0 0″ for example.
• Improved Skulk wall walking (sticks better to surfaces, thanks matso!)
• Skulks can now leap from mid-air, ala NS1.
• The “locate” Client console command will constantly display the local player’s location on the screen if “true” is given as a parameter.
• Added Mine icon for death messages (Thanks Saba!)
• Reformatted Scoreboard so more player names can fit on the screen at the same time.
• Server name is now displayed at the top of the Scoreboard.
• Improved ScenarioHandler (Thanks Matso!)

Sound

• Removed Bile Bomb hit sound when Gorge creates a structure.

Optimizations

• Optimized network fields in Structure, CloakableMixin, ScriptActor and PowerPoint (thanks Matso!)
• Reserve memory for faceSets (prevents excessive allocation)
• Reduced networked bandwidth for Camoflauge by eliminating an unnecessary network field (thanks Matso!)
• Reduced networked bandwidth for Skulks by eliminating wall walking network variables (thanks Matso!)
• Optimized Door auto-opening.
• Reduced number of cells CollisionGrid queries look through.
• Reduced network bandwidth required to send which fields of an Entity changed (uses indexing scheme when only a few fields changed and a bitmask when many changed)
• Reduced network bandwidth usage for entities that have energy.
• Reduced bandwidth for transmitting attachment points for entities by 26 bits.
• Reduced bandwidth for transmitting angles.
• Eliminated lastTimePlayerMoved networked field in Player.
• Mines require less processing time to check for nearby enemies.
• Reduced bandwidth by 20 bytes per second for each Entity sent to the client.
• Changed particle effects to only update if they were visible last frame.
• Slightly more aggressive compiler optimization options.

SDK

• Added Vector:Add method.
• Added Shared.SortEntitiesByDistance.
• Removed ProximityGrid.
• Added sphere query to CollisionGrid.
• Added EntityQueryManager (fast queries for entities within range, uses CollisionGrid)
• Exposed EntityQueryManager to Lua, started converting script to use new API.
• Added support to ObjectTagQueryManager for testing whether entity has a specific tag.
• Entities get tagged with their class name (and base class names). Tag is prefixed with ‘class:’.
• Added time network variable type.
• Added “private” network fields which are only sent to the client controlling the Entity.
• Added support for networking floating point values as fixed point (specified as float (<min> to <max> by <step>)
• Added Client.GetServerName() function to return the name of the server the client is connected to.
• Added Server.GetName() function to return the name of the server.
• Added Server.GetFrameRate() function to return the current tick rate of the server.
• Added Mersenne twister Randomizer class to Lua, same API as Lua random functions but better generator.

Star Trek Online is going Free to Play tomorrow. I have been looking forward to playing this game for a while now. There is only so much World of Warcraft I can take in a given year, and other MMOs like The Old Republic are not different enough from WoW to give me the break I am looking for. Star Trek Online looks to be significantly different, and they have been updating it for months to get the game ready for the F2P crowd.

What really has me interested in the game is how it has the standard ground combat and character building of most MMOs, but then also has a really deep space combat system that is pretty tactical. So in addition to your standard character building, you are also customizing a ship and crew – way more variety then most MMOs.

While combat in most MMOs comes down to mashing on buttons (in the correct rotation for whatever your fighting), STO’s ship combat is a bit different and much more tactical. One really simple example is that all of the ships have shield segments. The simple tactic is to target a single point on an enemy ship with energy weapons to drop that section of their shields. At that point you can hit the exposed hull with torpedoes. So positing actually matters in Star Trek Online, you need to keep your ship facing weakened points of the enemy’s shields while trying to keep your weak points out of their line of fire.

Check out some of the videos below to see how space and ground combat work:

Starship Tactics Part One

Shields, ship upgrades, and bridge crew.

Starship Tactics Part Two

Power management & Boarding Parties

Bridge Officers

A closer look at crew management

Power Management

A closer look at power management

Ground Combat

Ground combat is pretty awesome as well. They have an optional mode that makes the game control more like a 3rd person shooter and really increases the speed of the game. Its pretty cool.

Free 2 Play Trailer

Now that the game is free to play, there is really no reason not to check it out

In the past there was generally two different ways to do these re-releases. You could take the approach of games like Resident Evil 4 HD and Beyond Good and Evil HD and just port the game to modern consoles, upscale the textures a bit, and call it day. Or you could go the full remake route of games like Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes and completely remake the game on a new engine. This is the more impressive route to take, but you lose the nostalgia factor when you do it. Halo Anniversary takes a different approach, and ends up somewhere between the two.

At its core, Halo Anniversary is the exact same game everyone played a decade ago. The game engine is still around and running the show. This means that all of the gameplay mechanics are exactly the same as they have always been. All of the weapons and vehicles handle the same, and all of the AI remains unchanged. For better or worse, the Covenant, Marines, and Flood all behave as they used to. Co-op is still around as well, and this time you can play over Xbox Live.

So the Halo “combat puzzle” is still intact and as fun as it ever was. Each encounter provides a great challenge, with the game’s iconic selection of weapons providing the tools to solve them. Despite the game’s age, it still provides some of the most fun and challenging firefights in the series, especially on the higher difficulty settings. Halo: Combat Evolved on Legendary difficulty is certainly the most challenging of all in the series, and without ever feeling unfair. Those that played the game in the past will have a great nostalgia trip, while those new to the game will find what still is a surprisingly modern gameplay experience.

On the outside though, we have a brand new graphics engine and art assets. Everything visual in the game, from the smallest rock to the largest Hunter, has had a pretty impressive makeover. Since the old game engine is still running behind the scenes, it is actually possible to switch back and forward between old and new, allowing you to actually play the original game with its original graphics. It it offers a great opportunity to see how far graphics technology for games have come in the past ten years. I had a lot of fun just switching between the two in each new area to see what they changed.

All of the graphical changes are just superficial though. For example, while the elites have many times the polygons and texture resolution then they used to have, they are still the same height and width. Every rock, tree, and barricade is exactly where it used to be, the same size and facing the same direction. Everything just look a whole lot nicer. This means that the levels themselves also remained functionally untouched. The Silent Cartographer is as great as everyone remembers it, while The Library is every bit as annoying as it ever. The updated visuals do help a bit, as there is more variety in the previously monotonous hallways of Covenant ships, and some arrows added to the floors in the Library help you stay oriented. Overall though, the levels in Halo were well designed and had a good amount on non-linearity to them that modern gamers have come to expect.

All of that graphical fidelity has come at a price: frame rate. The game runs at a shaky thirty frames per second most of the time and can dip pretty low when things get frantic. Occasionally it was bad enough I actually switched back to the old visuals which runs smooth as butter. I am not sure if it is a result of running the two graphics engines or not, but it is a bit disappointing that they couldn’t have locked it down. Halo deserves better.

In addition to the graphics update, the sound effects and music also got some attention. They really should have left well enough alone though. The new gun sounds are hit and miss, with some sounding truly awful. The same can also be said for the new music. As someone who played a lot of the original game, it was really distracting at first to not hear the same music and weapon effects that I remembered. It really messes with your nostalgia until you get used to the new sounds. Thankfully you can swap out the new music score for the old one. It’s too bad you can’t do the same for the weapon sound effects.

The only real major disappointment in the package is the lack of Halo: Combat Evolved’s multiplayer. Instead of recreating it, we get an add-on pack for Halo Reach that consists of six maps (and one new firefight map). They have given a number of reasons for excluding the original’s multiplayer, but it really feels like it was cut due to time and budget constraints. The map pack consists of both Halo and Halo 2 classics such as Beaver Creek and Damnation. Since this is Reach multiplayer, the maps have been tweaked a bit to accommodate the various gameplay changes over the years such as jetpacks. If you already had your fill of Halo Reach online, there is not much here to bring you back.

Still, Halo Anniversary is an enjoyable single-player focused remake of one of the most iconic games of the past decade. It really shows just how right Bungie got things the first time around. If you have fond memories of the original or never got a chance to play it the first time around, Anniversary is absolutely worth picking up.

Nero -’Welcome Reality’

Nero, an electronic music act from London, England released their debut album this year on August 15th 2011 to much success. The album is filled with great dubstep beats and catchy tracks. Spin wrote, “Alana Watson gives Nero’s robotic skronk a rare injection of humanity, and the U.K. producers are smart enough to build most of their debut full-length around her husky voice, skipping the sampled spasticity of Skrillex in favor of Daft Punk’s melodic big beat, ’80s-inspired electro-pop, and stadium-sized mash-ups of squealing guitar and windy synths.”

Amazon | iTunes

Stanton Warriors – ‘The Warriors’

Stanton Warriors, a breakbeat duo from Bristol, England released their 7th album in March of 2011. In the mix wrote, “Dom and Mark have certainly crafted a solid offering of radio-friendly ‘songs’ on The Warriors, full of catchy hooks, vocals and clever musicality. Importantly, though, they haven’t cashed in their breakbeat credentials in the process. The beats and grooves are water-tight as always, but musically they’ve pushed themselves beyond simply crafting effective DJ tools. The different elements just interlock so cleverly, with the Stanton’s clever use of samples complimenting their songwriting, rather than being the groundwork on which the tunes are based. ”

Amazon | iTunes

Camo & Krooked – ‘Cross the Line’

Camo & Krooked are a Drum & Bass duo from Vienna, Austria. They released their second album, Cross The Line, on October 3rd 2011. Kmag wrote, “Following the success of 2010’s Above and Beyond, Austrian duo Camo & Krooked brought their second album to the table this year, the monumental Cross the Line. Aptly released on Hospital, their trademark mix of serene vocal-lead liquid, punchy electro, and filthy tear-out featured the likes of TC, Jenna G, Futurebound, and Ayah Marar to devastating effect.”

Amazon | iTunes

Since I am in the mood to post trailers, here is one more for you guys. The trailer for Peter Jackson’s upcoming film The Hobbit. I am pretty excited to see it:

Prometheus began life as a prequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien, but became something different in production. It still clearly takes place within the Alien universe though. The first trailer for the movie is here:

I can’t wait to see this when it comes out on June 8, 2012.

This is just a friendly reminder that the “Back To Karkand” expansion pack has been released for free for anyone that pre-ordered. Those that didnt can pick it up for $15. The new maps are by far the best ones in the game. If you are a fan of BF3, be sure to check it out.

“As developers, we are excited to offer a fast paced, high skill-ceiling shooter for this generation of gamers.” says Todd Harris, Hi-Rez Studios COO. “Tribes: Ascend and NASL are a great fit in terms of dedication to competition and high-quality, high-engagement content.”

Players interested in joining the Closed Beta for Tribes: Ascend can register for an invitation at www.tribesascend.com