Poll: Descent is 22 years old

[BFG10K]

The series is revolutionary for its 6 degrees of freedom with movement, and for the robot AI. The robots all had distinctive personalities and behavior which hold up even today.

1 brings back a lot of nostalgia with its classic level design and simplified weapon load-out.

2 is my favorite and I really liked the themes that each group of levels followed (e.g. lava, water, ice, etc.). Even the robots matched said themes. It also doubled the weapons and added power-ups such as the afterburner and headlight.

Spoiler

Vertigo was a really great expansion with excellent level design.

3 added some really interesting weapons (e.g. Mass driver, Cyclone Missile) and bigger levels. Also the textures hold up extremely well for a 1999 game. I felt some levels were a bit too big and the outdoor areas sometimes slightly detracted from the Descent mood.

Spoiler

Mercenary was quite inconsistent and had some really tedious and/or boring levels. This is the only Descent installment I didn’t like.

 

[Zenoth]

I played them all, well, the "main trilogy" that is. Although that wasn't exactly when they got released though, but just a few years later (all I remember is that I still had my PS2 at the time and my PC was pretty much my first one... so must have been around 2003 or 2004 I'd say; and could run those games just barely at smooth frame rates). I bought the first, second and third at a local store, they were all second hand and pretty cheap, but also in good condition (except two of the three boxes with wrecked corners).

It took me a while to actually appreciate the playstyle when I played the first one for the first time. It was technically quite impressive for sure, but the gameplay, especially the orientation and the levels layout was initially quite confusing and I often lost my orientation senses to oblivion. But I eventually got used to it, took me one or two days, and liked it enough in the end. However my 'first impressions' were mixed; but by the end indeed I was enjoying it. The second was better, although I don't have many memories of that one... not sure why, and I can't remember if I actually finished it (I did finish the first and third). And the third - for me - was the best, it just improved on everything from the predecessors, and the level design was pretty good and easier to navigate from the two others from what I recall.

I haven't played Vertigo or Mercenary at all.

I also know about the kick-started Descent: Underground, and I only wish the dev team the best for that one. I will probably buy it eventually whenever they release it. I'm not what I'd consider a "fan" of the series overall, but it was enjoyable at the time. And that Underground modern take on that sort of playstyle could be interesting to go into again. So I'll definitely keep an eye on it from time to time.

 

[Oyeve]

Wow, I remember I bought a Matrox Millenium so I could play this as the GPU I had prior would give me like 5fps.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Pole missing Descent: Freespace and Freespace 2.

Most of my playtime on the original Descent was the display computers at Best Buy. Ah, memories.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Most of my playtime on the original Descent was the display computers at Best Buy. Ah, memories.

I remember Descent being demo'ed on early VR HMDs (like VGA res), at CompUSA, back in the day. Seemed interesting. But those early HMDs died out.

 

[sdifox]

I had the asus video card with 3d glasses. I used to play descent on keyboard. Yes, not using a mouse.

 

[sandorski]

Had a lot of fun playing it on LAN against my Nephew.

 

[Ackmed]

1.

Yes Freespace too was awesome. I used to play the hell out of Decent on Kali. Probably more with Motoracer and JK though. Trying to shave a half second off my time on Motoracer, fucking annoying. Being a HPB playing against someone who was LPB even more annoying.

 

[sdifox]

Had a lot of fun playing it on LAN against my Nephew.

I remember dragging my Pentium 60 full tower and 17" crt monitor to my friend's place to set up lan party. with 10Base2 network :shudder:

 

[cmdrdredd]

I remember playing Descent over the internet via IPX. Pain in the butt but it was fun when it worked I guess.

 

[Worthington]

1.

I used to play the hell out of Decent on Kali.

Same here. Kali brings back some memories.

 

[Raduque]

I truly miss the Descent games. I still have all 3 on disk and on GOG.

I remember playing the shareware of Descent - never finished it. Finished Descent ][, one of the first games I ever completed. Ran like a scalded ape on a Pentium 100 with 32mb ram and a Voodoo Banshee.

 

[Lanyap]

Descent II was the first PC game I played and it got me hooked on PC games.

 

[AdamK47]

Played through both Decent and Decent II when they came out. The 3Dfx upgrade to II and the soundtrack make it better in my opinion.

 

[BFG10K]

FYI, all three games have silently appeared back on GOG and are currently on sale: https://www.gog.com/promo/20171121_black_friday_sale_descent_pack

There was some licensing issue which caused them to be pulled a while ago, but it must've been resolved, which is good news for these classic games.

Hopefully we're closing to getting some kind of patch/source code release for Descent 3.

 

[BFG10K]

I finished replaying Descent Vertigo and really enjoyed it. They just don't make levels like these anymore:

Spoiler

 

[zink77]

Descent 2 was the best version. That was before the rise of cinematic gaming. Descent 3 was when it all went downhill, aka too much life changes for devs as interplay was going bankrupt.

Now that Overload is out it was a mixed bag, basically the devs didn't have the money or the manpower to really recreate descent. The lack of boss structure like descent 2 was a bit weird and the story at the end went just totally downhill. I didn't realize the dev team had a singularity fetish... the singularity is a load of hogwash.

 

[Malogeek]

Loved Descent LAN parties, was so much fun back in the day.

 

[DigDog]

I was genuinely too stupid for Descent. No joke.
The best i could manage was to fly backwards when i was being shot at. So much for 6 directions.

So i never did actually play descent, and as far as i remember, most of my friends also thought it was kinda meh .. too hard, and the extra difficulty due to the 3D movement was seen as gimmicky. We all played Doom2 instead.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Descent:Freespace or Freespace 2 although I know I'm being cheeky and everyone knows that Descent was tacked on to try and up sales of a new franchise. They were far superior games than anything in the core Descent series however.

I love space combat Sims and I love first person shooters. I hated the core Descent games, since all they ever seemed good for was rage inducing frustration attempting to navigate the levels and dinghy in a cat 5 hurricane levels of nausia.

The series does hold the notable role of being the first popular game franchise that I played where I flat out could not understand the appeal. It was like an innoculation against all of the Assassin's Creed's, Call of Duties and Battlefields we have to endure today.