First-person shooter and shoot 'em up game wherein the player pilots a spaceship through labyrinthine mines while fighting machined and robots used for off-world mining operations that were ... Read allFirst-person shooter and shoot 'em up game wherein the player pilots a spaceship through labyrinthine mines while fighting machined and robots used for off-world mining operations that were infected by a mysterious alien computer virus.First-person shooter and shoot 'em up game wherein the player pilots a spaceship through labyrinthine mines while fighting machined and robots used for off-world mining operations that were infected by a mysterious alien computer virus.
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- TriviaIn 1999, there was news that Interplay Productions started a division known as Interplay Films, Descent was adapted into a NBC TV movie but then was decided to become a feature film, however, since 1999, there has been no new updates on the Descent movie adaptation so the movie is considered to be dead.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Gamesmaster: Episode #5.2 (1995)
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94% -- how to take Doom to 3D space
PROS
CONS
CONCLUSION: Descent is an adrenaline-inducing space combat simulator that takes first-person shooters to space in a conflict against robots.
- Imagine Doom and the joys thereof, but with robots, six degrees and three axes of freedom, mostly 3D animated models instead of just sprites, even more detailed level structures, rescuing hostages as a secondary objective, the plot being that mining robots have been illegally reprogrammed for all the wrong purposes and that the player must destroy all the mines, and the only primary objective being to destroy a mine's reactor and escaping before the mine self-destructs. That is Descent, and it is an excellent comparison.
- There is something unique about this game, something unprecedented. Flight combat games have been a classic before year 2000, and first-person shooters, which historically involved some degree of labyrinths, were already gaining popularity in the 1990s. Parallax Software thought, "What if we took elements of a flight combat game, and combined them with elements of a first-person shooter like Doom?", and out came such a game. Parallax risked their budget developing a flight game that also felt like playing a first-person shooter, with some expectations that there might never be sequels (which would go on to also be critically acclaimed) if this one commercially failed, and the result was overwhelmingly positive. It is one of the earliest games, and perhaps the first, to be a first-person shooter with six degrees of freedom (6DOF), and it certainly is the icon of that subgenre of FPS games.
- Technically, mechanically, and gameplay-wise, even by today's standards, it is still fun. It was a drastic step to make almost everything a part of the truly 3D environment. The campaign formula as we know it is run-and-gun, but who does not like firing laser cannons and machine guns and launching missiles and deploying bombs and mines as countermeasures at something that can be destroyed, be it computer monitors or robots, along with additions such as the arcade-y scores and game-changing powerups? It is also unpredictable, where the player is not certain what may lie in the unexplored, whether an enemy would launch a surprise-attack as he or she progresses, and most importantly, what type of robot it is. As if that does not produce enough adrenaline, the background music keeps the player motivated and confident, as well as occasionally wrought with fear or tension, which all fits well with the speedy pace of this robot-blasting game.
- The addition of an automap is greatly needed, and it is useful for finding one's way through large mazes. The absence of it would have made the game frustrating and tedious, as the player would travel room-to-room, trying to figure out where to go.
- Very importantly, Parallax knew from the start that a PC FPS-styled game is only a half of a game without multiplayer. The multiplayer has all 30 levels from single-player mode plus an additional 5 with four game modes: Anarchy (basically Deathmatch), Team Anarchy, Robo-Anarchy (Deathmatch with a twist of robots as obstacles), and Cooperative, which--yes, you are right.--is single-player campaign with multiple players. On the note of multiplayer, Parallax had long terminated its servers, but what is amazing is that the player can configure DOSBox (the emulator for Descent) to host an IPX as a TCP/IP under a defined IP address, and those also connected to the internet can find the player's IP address and play online. Ultimately, multiplayer still works!
- Another important thing is that this game is designed from the start to render homebrew levels (both single-player and multiplayer) easy, meaning that if playing the many but same levels over and over is repetitive, new levels could be made, and the fun is still retained. A new custom campaign could even be made.
CONS
- Unfortunately, the wireframe automap is not perfect. With numerous lines obstructing the view of the paths, navigating may become confusing, especially if the level structure is more complex, and controls for that can be confusing, all depending on the angle of the player ship. Changing the viewing distance, which limits how many lines are displayed, does help, but not always.
- Multiplayer could have had more than just 4 modes, three of which being a unique style of deathmatch, and a total of 35 levels, and that would have eliminated some degree of repetition. It should be noted, however, that multiplayer is only the second most important aspect of the game, since the focus is single-player. Still...
CONCLUSION: Descent is an adrenaline-inducing space combat simulator that takes first-person shooters to space in a conflict against robots.
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- FreeMediaKids
- Jun 22, 2018
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