Descent (1995)

Descent is a game I once thought was impossible to beat as a kid. Mainly because I believed you couldn't save in this game. I could read English, so I didn't know you save using Alt+F2, not simply F2, like in Doom.

Also, nowadays I can play it with a mouse, instead of just a keyboard, which makes navigating the corridors much easier. It is still a mindbending 3D-maze, I give it that. The vertical ring corridor on the 2nd level is still crazy. The game is brutal, with enemies strategically placed behind every door and around every curve, but at least the escape sequence is not so gut-wrenching.

One thing I couldn't enjoy is the sarcastic tone of the intro, which is brilliant.

There are secrets in this game, hidden walls and such, but the game doesn't keep count of them, unlike Doom. For the completionists, though, there's an option to rescue hostages on each level.

The original game becomes a jumble of pixels quite often. There's a source port, though, that addresses that issue. Also curious is the fact that the original game ran in 320x200 resolution, which is why some of the DosBox screenshots look a bit off.

Think you haven't suffered enough? The 3rd level introduces a generator of enemies, which, luckily, is not infinite. On the 6th level, a new, horrible enemy appears – a hitscanner.

Prepare to die to its chip-damage. The red hulks start appearing more often as well, and their homing missiles are almost impossible to avoid. Flares seem to have no effect.

The 7th level seemed easy at first, until I reached the final room. I vaguely remember playing this game as a kid and there was some kind of invisible boss that shot homing projectiles at you. I never managed to beat him, but I thought it appeared earlier in the game.

Death is not the end, though. Despite the game having a proper save/load feature, it also has a lives system. After being killed, you respawn at the beginning of the level, having left all your equipment where you died. Kind of like MMORPGs. The only downside is that you lose all the hostages if you picked any.

I found a secret level, which is surprisingly useful, as it grants you the Fusion Cannon, the last main weapon. It's interesting because this is the only weapon you can charge, but if you overcharge it, it starts to damage you instead. Also, it knocks you back when you fire it.

A problem with the weapons is that out of five weapons, four use the same energy ammo. The Vulcan Cannon is the only exception and also the only hitscan weapon you have.

I think the design of all the enemies in the first episode is simply brilliant. It is very distinct.

Later enemies, however, not so much. Some look like a flying dildo. And it's not just how they look; they are also very hard to spot and shoot at you with a volley of three rockets. Even if you dodge those, you'll probably get some damage from the splash. Prepare to die a lot to chip damage.

There are a few fresh ideas on the later levels, but none of them are very good. One is the mining robots. Another is that keys are sometimes carried by robots as well. I completed Descent out of sheer stubbornness and my current inability to play anything remotely intellectual.

Pluto Outpost is one map I don't hate in the bunch of maps after the 16th level or so. It has a nice design of recurring domes, and it's distinct and easy to navigate.

The game has just two bosses, the one on the 7th level, which I mentioned, and then the final boss. I can say that I like the first boss, but not the second one. It's basically the same design of the boss that teleports from place to place, but instead of firing cluster missiles ("smart missiles"), it fires nukes ("mega missiles"). And there seems to be an infinite number of mobs teleporting all the time, including the hitscanners I hate so much, and the bots that lay mines, adding to the chaos. There are a few invulnerability pickups, but they don't help much. So I just bruteforced it, as I had 25 lives left.

The ending is that the corporation doesn't allow you to return because it's afraid you were infected by the alien virus. Which leads to Descent 2, I guess?

Honestly, I wish I stopped playing after the first boss. The red enemies and the "minigunners" become absolutely annoying at later levels, as does the progressively complicated level design, and the game has very little to offer after that point, besides more enemies placed in every nook.

I wouldn't mind it if the armor drops were more frequent, but the way they are, it's either save/load or trying to snipe enemies around corners at later levels. Both aren't much fun.

Oh, how I want to rate this game lower. Descent's enemy and combat design represents the less fun part of early 90's FPS games, with ridiculous amounts of damage coming from bullet sponge enemies around every corner. Without an ingenious control scheme, it's also quite easy to not control the ship as easy as you'd like (break out the joystick) and cheap kills are common even on lower difficulties.

Why 3/5? To counterbalance the poor design, this game's freedom of movement is a blast - given that most other FPS games usually have you on a plane with no changing up vector of movement, Descent allows you to fly up and down, all around and upside down with tricky levels of control.

The game consists of cheesy dialogue followed by 27 to 30 (gotta get them secret) stages where you upgrade a laser with some subweapon upgrades, get some key cards, destroy a core, and get out before time runs out. The maze-like levels offer some interesting explorations where verticality as well as horizontal movement must be considered.

This would be a much more fun game if health weren't sparse and the enemies weren't so pinpoint good and powerful at killing the player. As soon as the first (out of two?) bosses one-shot you with homing plasma bursts, you'll feel the need to play something else. Alas, it's still incredibly fun in concept, if poor in execution.