The Forgotten Gems of Gaming - Descent

Interplay is a name you don't hear very often in the gaming world anymore, as for some time they ceased being a company due to an outstanding debt. This was despite making some incredibly memorable game series like MDK, Fallout and Earthworm Jim.  Recently they were revived by selling the Fallout intellectual property rights to Bethesda Softworks.  With this revival, they intend to bring back many of their other classic IP's, but this article will include only one of them, one of my all-time favorites; Descent.

In 1995, Interplay released a first person shooter like no other that gave the player control of a futuristic space craft, while being confined to a zero gravity mine shaft.  That zero g confinement resulted in a  claustrophobic feel as you traversed the maze of corridors and hallways, while at the same time giving the player 360 degrees of freedom in movement.  This allowed Interplay’s developers to open a lot of new options to the player that weren't seen in any other FPS.  You could do your standard shooter turn left and right, look up and down, but the real 360 degrees came from the ability to slide left, right, up and down as well as complete and sometimes nauseating barrel rolls.  Controls were confusing at first, but the game had a well timed learning curve geared towards the average gamer so the game remained a challenge as you learned to master the controls, without being frustratingly difficult at the same time. 

The graphics were certainly pretty... for its time.

The story behind it was also something different and original. You are MD1032; a "Material Defender". Hired as a mercenary by Post Terran Minerals Corporation (PTMC) to investigate a virus that has been infecting mining robots used on planetary and asteroid mining facilities.  This investigation takes you from Earth's moon, through the solar system to Pluto's moon, Charon.  (Note: During the completion of this game, Pluto was still considered a planet). 

          Each level was laid out like the standard FPS of the time. There were the always annoying keys you had to find to open specific doors, but didn't take away from the game play.  However, one of the things that set Descent apart from the other shooters, was its weapons. There were so many weapons to choose from, the only reason you'd choose the lower level ones like the laser, was if you found the quad laser power-up or your trigger finger ran out of ammo for the others.  Descent II ramped up the weapon selection still not by just adding a few new toys to play with, but by actually doubling the destructive arsenal you had to choose from, and you already started out with a whole host of primary and secondary weapons from the original.  My personal favourite was the Fusion cannon. You'd power this up until your ship was shaking uncontrollably from the sheer ownage about to be released at your opponent.  It was rather slow to fire and it's best used in boss battles, but if you hit something, it either obliterated them, or at least knocked them down enough that a few shots from a weak weapon would end them.

Descent II also introduced guide bot.  He would seek out keys for you and fire flares at anything you should shoot.  A lot of the time would help out greatly, but the AI for it wasn't the most brilliant and sometimes would get stuck on a wall repeating the message "red key here" when it was really on the other side of a locked door, with the blue key needed it on the other side of the map.  If you left guide bot he'd follow you, flare you and spam the message "follow me".

No matter what the level though, the most fun out of every single one is the finish.  Most of the levels in Descent I and II involve blowing up a reactor and then finding the exit before the whole place blows up.  You're given a certain time and the exits get progressively further and further away making every ending a heart-pounding race for your life followed by a cinematic of an exploding mine shaft following closely behind your ship.  At the time, this was the most pulse pounding moment in any game I've played. 

Mutliplayer produced a lot more vomit than most games.

          The multiplayer aspect of the game was actually an improvement over the more popular game of the time, Doom.  Thanks to internet IPX services like Kali and Kahn, Descent I and II were able to be played over the internet smoothly due to the support for a variable packet rate.  Descent was also one of the first game to allow players to join in the middle of a match as well as have quick access to multiplayer from the main menu. 

Games like Doom required all players to join in through a command line or GUI and be queued up before a match starts. 

            We’ll leave Descent III for later, as it deserves its own episode. For now, just enjoy the nostalgia of a game that is definitely deserving of more sequels and rip-offs.

Until next time, this is TheGrOgStEr saying “Happy Fragging!”

GoG.com is having a sale on the game until Sunday at midnight. If you want to play it again, or for the first time, head on over there and enjoy the entire series.