Descent

[microwerx]

#294

I’d like to suggest Descent as a game of the month.

[Tijn]

#298

I’ve heard other people talk about Descent as well. We should definitely have a look at this one 🙂

[rnlf]

#304

I wanted to suggest it, too! I am only concerned that it needs a decent Joystick for playing, otherwise it’ll be really hard.

[microwerx]

#308

There are a lot of people who swear by a joystick, but it is not necessary. I never had a good joystick playing it while in the 90s. Although, I must admit that it is nice to play with a gamepad.

[pumpuli]

#547

I’ve never liked how descent plays with a joystick.. somehow I like it better with a numpad!

..so it’s definitely playable without a joystick

[toasty]

#797

I’d never heard of Descent until reading this. Apparently it’s a 360-degree, 3D, anti-gravity space shooter; what’s not to like?! It looks pretty great too!

Apparently it also has multiplayer :U

I’m definitely up for playing this 😀

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[Mgoddard]

#799

Descent was great but I couldn’t imagine not playing it without my flightstick!

[treadmikeway]

#804

I never had a joystick when I played this one as a kid, and I had a ton of fun. Freespace was a pretty cool entry in the series, but the planet/dungeon crawling of this game is amazing.

[microwerx]

#805

For me, the best part is the hordes of robots to destroy. There’s so much destruction. The other positive side is the soundtrack is amazing. I enjoy the PC version, though I love the PlayStation 1 port…CD soundtrack, colored 16-bit color, and the PSX controller was perfect. On the PC, I feel the joystick makes it harder to play…on the other hand…it feels like you’re actually piloting!

[sorceress]

#1086

Descent was one of the first PC games I saw, as someone had installed it on our school computers, alongside Doom II, and Rise of the Triad.

There was something seductive about it, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what.

– As a shooting game I don’t feel it was anything special.

– The six-degree-of-freedom control system was complicated and confusing to use. Though I often see it being referenced and celebrated on forums, where flight control schemes are being discussed. Perhaps one can master it with experience, and come to appreciate it. idk.

– 3D games were still in their infancy at the time. Even the legendary Doom didn’t have truely 3D environments. Descent was a truely 3D game, with it’s weird twisty labyrinths really reinforcing that fact, messing with our sense of orientation. Perhaps that is what made the game so memorable.

[rnlf]

#1088

Yeah, though it is really lacking fast paced action, in my opinion. That’s really where DOOM and Quake excelled!

I played Descent always with a bit more foresight and patience. The 6DOF was a lot less intuitive than the 4.5DOF of Quake or the 3.5DOF of DOOM.

[vext01]

#2555

I think Descent would be a good candidate for a podcast episode.

I have many fond memories of this game 🙂

[Canageek]

#2745

I think this would make a great episode. I played it a few times, on PCs at computer stores I think? But didn’t really get to play it back then.

[PixelProphecy]

#2838

I have a lot of nostalgia for this game. It was my first (and only) self-import from the US from a vacation. I used to play this game obsessivbly in our school’s LAN (there even were tournaments!) and was super happy when I brought it home from a dingy mall in Miami. It had Descent I, Descent II, and a level editor. And you could feed Descent II to a CD player and listen to Type-O-Negative’s soundtrack. Great stuff!

[Thraka]

#2856

I too want to vote for this. This is a game I would love to join the podcast for. I’m a big fan of the Descent series. Last year at PaxWest I had the developers of Descent sign my game boxes at their booth promoting their new game Overload.

I had a lot of fun playing with Devil the level editor for Descent. Understanding how the levels were put together made me start analyzing the world around me constantly looking at shapes and thinking about how I would put things together in the game.

This is also one of the first modem multiplayer games I played with a friend.

The soundtrack for this and Descent II are amazing and I have them in my car in MP3 format and I listen to them at least once a month.