Natural Selection 2
Fair · Multiplayer · 2012
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $4.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Length
- 181.5h
- Value
- $0.03/hr
- Reviews
- 85% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 6 GB of memory, DirectX 11 compatible dedicated video card with 2 GB VRAM, 13 GB of storage. Windows only.
A fast paced multiplayer shooter that pits aliens against humans in a strategic and action-packed struggle for survival!
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
The lowest price on record is $0.99, set in December 2025. It has been discounted 62 times in the 14 years tracked here, typically at 60 percent off, with about 8 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 12 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 8 weeks.
On value it sits in the top 5 percent of its genre. It is cheaper than 61 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 91 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Splitgate (free, scores 81) beats it on value, while it beats Nuclear Dawn ($9.99, scores 50).
Of the 654 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 6 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 56 percent of the 765 reviews written there were positive, against 85 percent overall, and those are 9 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
19% start to <1% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
Players
95 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
Such A unique Genre of Game that i would reccomend it just to try out, The few public servers left are pretty alright and not too toxic although You should figure the game out first before joining A match.
I haven't been able to play this game in forever since this game is heavy on CPU usage, I think it's good but honestly Tremulous and Unvanquished does the same concept except way better (for starters, there isn't a commander system and multiple people can take on building structures), only issue with both though is that barely any people play Trem or Unvq so Natural Selection 2 might still be pleasing to some...
I've tried this game a few times, and while it's sometimes fun, the fun doesn't last. It's extremely one-sided with a strong bias towards the aliens. Once they get virtually any of their upper-tier units, the game is already over. If even one player has one, they can run into a group of marines, kill one or two, then run away to recover for a few seconds before repeating. I have never seen the marines successfully...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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Natural Selection 2 scores 66/100 on the BANG Score (fair value). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/4920/natural-selection-2The BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 13, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.