| #50 | Descent |
|---|---|
| guessed by | Machina |
| platform | DOS |
| release year | 1995 |
| developer/publisher | Parallax Software/Interplay |
| genre | first person shooter, space flight simulation |
| links | Wikipedia |
| play in browser (archive.org) | |
| past years | 2021: #48, 2020: #41, 2019: #39, 2018: #49, 2017: #46 |
Exploring dark mining tunnels, hostile robots infected with an alien computer virus lurking behind each corner, on the search for the reactor to initiate self-destruction and then fleeing the mining asteroid in time before it blows up - that is the Descent experience. Alone the sound some robots made when they spotted you could bring up your blood pressure.
After Doom revolutionized the 3D games many games tried to push the envelope. Descent took a direction only few others took: a fully 3D-experience by setting it into space and allowing to move and turn in each direction. This was called six degrees of freedom.
This makes controlling a bit difficult, not because the controls are complicated, but because you have to get in a mindset of full movement freedom and the ability to keep track of your position. So the challenges aren't the enemy robots alone, finding the right path without getting lost is a challenge in itself. And extremely satisfying if you're able to pull it off.
This is demonstrated each level, as you have to find the exit after destroying the reactor which explodes after that. You have to reach the exit in time before the mine explodes and destroys you too. As navigating is a challenge, this meant I died quite a few times trying to find my way to the exit.
As you can go not only left and right, but also up and down, the level design can quite intricate. To support you, the game gives you a freely movable automap realized with wireframe models.
Other than the level-design and navigation challenge the game features more or less all that Doom had set as a precedent: destroy the enemies (in this case mining robot drones that were infected with a virus that made them rebel), finding keycards to open color-coded doors, collecting weapons, ammunition and items that float around. As an additional feature you can rescue the human staff, that is taken hostage by the robots, for extra points.
Back at the time the game devs were still using different ways to produce 3D environments, hardware acceleration was the unifying factor a while later. Descent does not use polygons placed somewhere in space, but instead uses Cuboids. The player is inside one Cuboid at all times and it's sides are either connected to other cuboids you can look into or are textured. This way could also be handled that you were floating freely in space, games like Doom had an defined up-direction and had a floor and a ceiling, things Descent hasn't.
The way this was implemented lead to interesting possibilities. As cuboids are connected at the sides and not just placed in spaces, you could build levels that cureved in on itself. The official levels of the campaign didn't do that - but as Descent (like many games at the time) came with a level editor, a lot of user-made levels made use of that. That means you start in a room, leave through a tunnel that curves back into your original position, but this is a completely different room, placed at the same place the original room was.
The story is simple. In the future (the year 2169) companies have started mining on different celestial objects in the solar system. For this many mining robots are used. A virus overtakes these robots, so that they rebel against their human owners. You are the best material defender of your company and you are sent to end this danger.
To play it today, you can use Dosbox as usual to emulate DOS. That works as usual great as Dosbox can emulate pretty much everything on that platform. If you don't own the game, you can as so often rely on GOG, where it already packaged into a Dosbox-emulation. Also you can play for free in the browser on archive.org, emulated in Javascript. As usual with this browser emulation, your performance may have issues, depending on your system and your browser. There is also a project called DXX-Rebirth, which provides a modern engine for the Descent game files. I haven't tried it yet, but seemingly it improves resolution and uses modern graphic card features.
There are many user made levels for this game. Look here for a list with downloads.
As DXX Rebirth offers clearer visuals, I use a video from that project. The original game is the same, but with lower resolution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ8IqaxBR6I
