Descent

There is no up. There is no up. There is no UP. THERE IS NO UP! Thus is my descent into Descent.

Descent is a surprising title. Coming just 2 years after the original DOOM, this game takes 3-D to an entirely new level. In fact, it even takes my modern-day concept of 3-D and turns it on its head–literally. Descent is a game where you pilot a small craft through a series of complexes and fight off enemy machines. The twist? You have a front seat to the ship’s cockpit and from there it’s your job to navigate in every possible X, Y and Z axis position imaginable. It only takes me about 5 seconds of rolling twisting and turning in any level until I’m completely disoriented from head to toe. This predicament is further complicated by the numerous enemy ships that zoom around firing at you.

I think the best way I can describe the experience is that it is a first-person zero-gravity arcade-shooter game and as far as I know, this is the first of its kind that I’ve played. Considering the time this came out, this is quite a feat. A lot of the games coming out during this time period that pioneered the exploration into 3-D gaming often overstepped their bounds. Dark Forces, a game made by the already firmly established company Lucas Arts was a 3-D experience that was sluggish and laggy which took away from the fun of the game. Descent on the other hand runs smooth and crisp–the bobbing of the ship or the delay on a turn is clearly intentional to give you feeling that you really are piloting a spacecraft. I will say that it’s a bit tricky to play with a mouse though. More than once I wished that I could play the game on my old Sidewinder Joypad but as long as you move the mouse slowly it’s not so bad.

In the end, I’ve never been a big Sci-Fi fan. I’m afraid of space, I don’t like zero gravity and I never wanted to fly my own Millennium Falcon. Add to this that while Descent certainly has a challenge associated with it, it is bit too arcade-y for my tastes. In spite of this, I can certainly see great value in this game just from its allowance for your freedom of movement alone, to say nothing of the various guns and powerups you can pickup along the way. I would recommend this as a Tier 2 game to anyone with a love for shooting things in space and getting lost in a world with no up. For now though, I think I’ll keep my feet on the ground.

–note–

In 2015, due to legal reasons involving unpaid royalties since 2007, Descent was removed from the Steam market and as of today cannot be purchased anymore, so no Steam Link. Sorry! 🙁