Descent

[Anonymous No.4810117]

How come the Descent games never quite got the cult following the same way most old-school first-person shooters do?

Alongside all the 90's classics, Descent 1 and 2 practically never get mentioned, despite being very good games which did 3D graphics and level design before Quake and intelligent AI with varied behavior before Unreal. On top of that, its controls were on another level at the time, especially considering most 3D games at the time were still fucking around with a proper camera and control layout. It was present on nearly every shareware compilation disc at the time, but has been seemingly forgotten nowadays. It's bloody well underrated, comparatively speaking.

I'm also making this thread because the spiritual successor to Descent by the original creators, Overload, has been released today on Steam and GoG, and is very good based on from what I've played from the Playable Teaser.

Also, what's your:
>Most hated bot
>Most favourite level
>Most favourite song
>Most favourite weapon

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.4810414]

>>4810117
I don't like descent very much it kind of makes me nauseous but it was extremely popular back in the day, to the point of there being a special "4D" controller for it, with the sphere on it. I've never tried playing it with that controller and I still don't own one. I do have a Microsoft Sidewinder flight stick that rotates now and could maybe be convinced to play it especially as a lead in to pic related, a (widely panned) D&D game I've never played. The complete deadness of this thread though, combined with your point about it basically NEVER being discussed here, not even as a game that "aged poorly" makes me doubt it would be worth my investment. Is there maybe a stereoscopic VR mod for it? I've been wanting to tinker with that kid of stuff.

[Anonymous No.4810447]

>>4810117
One word...

>Minerva

[Anonymous No.4810451]

>>4810414
>a special "4D" controller for it,

What? I don't know what that is. Who made it?

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.4810497]

>>4810451
This thing. ASCII also made one for Playstation, the "Sphere". Dual analog basically made all these other philosophies for 3D controllers obsolete but they're kind of interesting. Have you ever used a flying mouse?

[Anonymous No.4810545]

>>4810497
Can't say that I have. I had a ThrustMaster Joystick back in the days of Descent. I had bought my self a Sidewinder Force Feedback Gen. 1, but I didn't get to use it much. Didn't work with XP and didn't think to go back to win98 at the time.

[Anonymous No.4810546]

Shooting little triangular robots in a topsy-turvy environment was just not as appealing to me as shooting demons in Doom.

I played Descent 1 & 3 but I don't remember any music in them. It was either forgettable or I didn't have it in my versions. In any case the games just didn't work for me as well as Doom and other Doom clones.

[Anonymous No.4810598]

Descent 1 still holds up in terms of gameplay and level design but its difficulty is bullshit even on easier difficulties. Placing hitscan enemies and the homing missile hulks between doors and in large open areas isn't a great design decision at all.

Descent 2 is almost perfect except for the fucking thief bot that wrecks the difficulty curve. It's fast and aggressive and takes way too long to kill after stealing all your best weapons. Would be a masterpiece if this fucker didn't piss me off so much every playthrough

[Anonymous No.4810609]

>>4810117

Never cared for them much as a kid. Recently revisited them by trying to play through the first one, but honesty, they are just alright, nothing special. They are a pain to navigate due to either the auto-levelling fucking up your flight-path, or turning it off and becoming mis-aligned which makes me feel very uncomfortable on an OCD-like level.

Also, the game is basically built on putting bullshit-robots in bullshit-places, so you have to memorise enemy placements and corner strafe already shooting before seeing the enemy to stand a chance of winning.

[Anonymous No.4810680]

>>4810546
>I played Descent 1 & 3 but I don't remember any music in them. It was either forgettable or I didn't have it in my versions
Descent 1 had some of the best music to ever grace the Soundblaster canon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55mges6wGV4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSKFj6b3Gg8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JryY7GZ-4ZU

Descent 2 MIDI tracks OTOH were pure fire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9_uUCBCuUs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQcjd9Nh87c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFxnYgXjYzs

>>4810598
>Descent 2 is almost perfect except for the fucking thief bot that wrecks the difficulty curve. It's fast and aggressive and takes way too long to kill after stealing all your best weapons
I like the elements of improvisation and randomness the Thief-Bot adds to the game, though it would have been preferable if its health was reduced significantly. You can hear the ominous humming of the Thief-Bot when it's about to sneak up on you, that's the cue to turn around and tell it to fuck off.

>>4810609
>Also, the game is basically built on putting bullshit-robots in bullshit-places, so you have to memorise enemy placements and corner strafe already shooting before seeing the enemy to stand a chance of winning.
Honestly, that's just Descent 1 for the most part. Descent 2 has more space to dodge around in and less bullshit bots to fight on the whole, so the challenge of a level feels more like it's slowly grinding down your resources rather than being insta-killed because of a sudden Driller or Red Hulk in your face.

[Anonymous No.4811868]

>>4810497
I found one of those at a thrift shop for 3 bux the other day! haven't quite figured out how to actually use it yet. thing hooks up via fuckin RS232 if you can believe that, and if drivers ever existed for any operating system im afraid they have been lost to the mists of time.

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.4811881]

>>4811868
Someone sold this one on ebay that looks like it has maybe a gameport adapter plugged into it. People pay $20 for themso someone somewhere must have drivers though they probably only work on 98.

Making dumb crap like that I'd find at thrift stores work, often at the cost of 10+ hours of my time and 4x the money I paid for it only to barely play a game with it is the kind of thing I used to do all the time in the '00s

[Anonymous No.4812069]

>>4811881
>maybe a gameport adapter

considering it's RS232 that's more likely to be just a 9-pin -> 25-pin serial adapter

[Anonymous No.4812336]

>>4811868
Had one of these many years ago, it worked with Windows 98. and I'm sure we got it to work on 3.11 too.

Played some Quake and Decent as well as some weird demo game thing. Couldn't hack it as a 12 year old, but I'd be curious to give it a go now.

[Anonymous No.4812367]

>>4810117
There's also Sublevel Zero Redux, another modern day Descent clone.

[Anonymous No.4815075]

>>4810117
Descent II was my childhood.

[Anonymous No.4815102]

>>4811881
i prefer playing it with joystick

[Anonymous No.4816797]

>>4810117
Non /vr/ but. Is overload worth buying? Everyone on steam review prasing it but im not sure yet

[Anonymous No.4816819]

>Forsaken for PS1 is 60 fps

[Anonymous No.4816934]

>>4816797
I wouldn't be overexaggerating if I said that Overload is a refinement and straight up improvement of the Descent formula. It takes all the good parts from Descent 1 and 2 but also avoids some of the pitfalls Descent 3 fell into.

Most bots in Overload are considerably less bullshit compared to assholes like the Red Hulk or Class 1 Driller, even the ones which do have hitscan weapons, though in Overload it is pseudo-hitscan to make things somewhat more fair. Some of the enemies will only start firing their hitscan weapons if they get close to you, instead of sniping you afar. There is one bot which can snipe you with hitscan weaponry, but it is very slow and often tries to move away from the player, on top of usually being well telegraphed enough through shadows or see-through grates, and being very susceptible to impact force (or in other words, hitstun). I'd say Overload is much more fair and less bullshit than most of the levels in Descent 1 which required trial and error to beat.

Matcens were a pain to deal with in Descent, but in Overload you can actually destroy them. Sometimes matcens are protected by shields so they can serve a similar role like they did in Descent, but most of the time you can find and destroy a nearby generator to disable the shield and in turn destroy the matcen.

Reactor rooms are now way more fun to deal with. Often you could take potshots at them in Descent, but in Overload they're often protected by shields, so you need to fly around the room to find a generator. However, reactor rooms are protected by matcens with shields which can't be disabled, so you really have to go right in the thick of it.

Enemies also drop more shields/energy if you are low on them to keep things more fair.

There's even a New Game+ mode where you keep all your shit but levels get altered enemy placement to be more difficult overall, shields yield even less, and you can't save mid-level.

It's legit the best FPS released in this decade.

[Princess Sevenleaf !AnVbXjgZco No.4816938]

>>4810117
It's like Doom in zero-gravity. It can imagine it being a lot of fun for the right kind of person, but I find it very disorienting, and honestly kind of painful to play if you're prone to motion sickness (which, I am).

[Anonymous No.4817029]

>>4816938
I was watching a stream playing the "spiritual successor" and holy shit that was the first time I got motion sickness for the last 20 years, first one was Goldeneye 64.

[Anonymous No.4817034]

>>4816938
You mean Quake in zero gravity?

[Anonymous No.4817696]

>>4816934
holy hell. that sounds bloody superb. thanks man

[Anonymous No.4817721]

>>4810117
What controllers and buttons mappings do you guys use? I use my DualShock 3 like this:

Left stick up and down -> Move forward and backwards
Left stick left and right -> Strafe left and right
Right stick up and down -> Pitch up and down
Right stick left and right -> Turn left and right
L2 and R2 -> Descend and ascend (strafe down and up)
D-pad left and right -> Roll left and right

R1 -> Fire laser/cannon
L1 -> Fire missile
X -> Change laser/cannon
Square -> Change missile
Triangle -> Fire flare
O -> Drop bomb

[Anonymous No.4817727]

>>4817721
I forgot to add that I kind of want a DualShock 4 so I can use its motion control functionality for rolling left and right and maybe even pitching up and down. I know most people would disregard motion controls entirely, but something like this should be able to have more flexibility in button mapping. Plus I would be able to roll while keeping my thumbs on both sticks and index fingers on both triggers.

[Anonymous No.4817826]

>>4815075

I was in my early 20's, but oh that feeling when I finally beat it...

[Anonymous No.4818330]

[Anonymous No.4818335]

[Anonymous No.4818338]

[Anonymous No.4818339]

[Anonymous No.4819041]

>>4818339

Ooh that's a nice one. level 26 was pretty cool.