What is Descent? It's not one of the most popular games, however it has the best game play of any game I've played. In this game, you get to fly a nice little hover ship and fly around in mines destroying enemy robots. Then you have to destroy the reactor and exit the mine through an exit shaft before the whole place gets blown to smitherines.

The most amazing part of the game is the control you have for your ship. This game is basically a space simulator in a constricted space. It is truly 3d unlike other first perspective games before it, with 3d maps and 3d robots. Once you've played it for a while, it's good to customize your own controls for easy maneuvering which is needed in the tougher difficulties and in multiplayer games. Because it is in true 3d, you can slide (strafe) up-down-left-right, turn up-down-left-right, move forwards and backwards, roll clockwise or counter-clockwise. The sliding and rolling is great for expert flyers, but is not necessary for beginners. There is even an automatic centering option for beginners that keeps your ship inline with the floor.

With 5 difficulties, even the most advanced flyers are kept challenged. The game takes a bit of time to get used to, and some beginners may find it incredibly challenging even at the trainee level. It took me many hours of network play before I could even get past the miniboss at the novice level, and now I've defeated the game at insane difficulty.

The network play is amazing. My high school had a bunch of guys who would play against each other in big network games. I must say that some of those network games were the most fun I've ever had at a computer. You can have up to 8 players at a time in any given level, and with over 30 different levels with the registered version, there are lots of levels to explore. But for the sake of others- please do not destroy the reactor. My only pet peeves for Descent network play is that some bum can come in and destroy the reactor and end the game. However, the person who started the netgame can selectively choose who enters in midplay. There are many options, including team games (blue vs. red), every man for himself, robo-anarchy.

There is also a level editor (Devil) that allows one to make his own levels which is great for network play. Apparently there are some little bugs in it that some of my friends have discovered. See-through walls and 4-dimensional rooms are some of the peculiarities which add to the fun and confusion! I for some strange reason haven't been able to run the editor on my computer- I think it's because I don't have a SVGA card.

As for the smoothness of play, it is a little bumpy on my 486. However, our net games ran well on 486-66's without sound, and I suspect that it would run like butter on a pentium. The graphics are not super great, but they are good enough that you can believe you are in a mine, not just in a bunch of squares.

There is also Descent2 which was released in 1996 I think? Anyways, I haven't played the registered version of it, but in the shareware version I found that it lacked the intensity and design of the first one. The rooms seemed too big and the robots didn't look intimidating to me. I had no desire to destroy them. It did have some interesting features though, including a rearview mirror, different missiles and weapons, the GuideBot ooo That thing is annoying, and the TheifBot which steals your weapons? Some of the ideas were good, but I never quite got into it, mostly because it was too bumpy on my 486. However, I invite you to try it out aswell.

Steve's Rating for Descent

Gameplay

Fun

Difficulty

Graphics

  

Sound

  

Network

Overall Rating:

Steve's Rank - 1st

Page created by Steve- and he was not payed by Parallax Software to create this,
it was because he really likes the game.