Natural Selection 2 Command or fight, win together

Each side has one player looking down at the battlefield as Commander, and the whole match bends around that role. The Commander places structures, gathers resources, researches tech and fires off abilities while the rest of the team fights.

A human Commander can drop health packs and ammunition to a squad pinned in a corridor, then put sentry guns behind them to hold the line. The alien Commander grows new Hives, spreading infestation through captured territory so more eggs can spawn. When a Commander calls, the team that listens wins fights the other side cannot. It is a shooter where the map itself is a weapon.

Aliens pick a lifeform each life, and the choice changes everything. The Skulk is fast and fearsome, runs along walls and tears marines apart with its jaws. The Lerk flies and spreads support gasses over its teammates. The Gorge heals, and builds tunnels, hydra turrets and walls that reshape a fight.

Then there are the heavy hitters. The Fade blinks in and out of combat, cutting marines down with giant scythes. The Onos is so massive and so tough that even a full marine squad struggles to bring it down. You drop a wall-running Skulk into a vent, and suddenly the corridor nobody watched is the most dangerous place on the map.

The human side fights with rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers and pistols, and the right tool matters. Cluster grenades clear ventilation shafts of sneaky Skulks. Flamethrowers make short work of alien structures and the infestation creeping across the floor. Commander-dropped boosts raise your combat effectiveness mid-fight.

When boots on the ground are not enough, marines build hulking Exosuits with miniguns and railguns, or strap on jetpacks for high-speed assaults on the alien Hives. Every loadout is a decision, and the aliens are making theirs at the same time.