@@lionocyborg6030 GOG too, they got restored to both shops. You can also get Forsaken Remastered now (a different game but in the same genre) and Descent Underground (4) (made by the guys who own the name) and Overload (made by the guys behind Descent 1-3).
@@lionocyborg6030 Descent Underground is mutiplayer-only AFAIR. As for Freespace, those are a totally different genre, not tied to Descent at all (but great on their own, they're one of the best space sims in gaming history).
This was the first FPS my parents let us have because, well, “no blood.” It was fun but hearing the sound in this video is surreal because the sound NEVER worked on the computer we had.
Robots don't bleed, but the game is harder than Doom, and the Plot is much darker. Doomguy refused to shoot down the mining revolt on Mars, and was send to a bad guard job, there he gets to fight demons (who can't posses him, because of his moral standarts ?). Meterial Defender, is a mercenary, who likes easy money, and work for a corporation, who wants to save money first, and save people second.
You had to add EMS memory and assign DMA, IRQ, and port of your card through the boot-up files. It takes five minutes, but some cheaper Sound Blaster clones did have problems with dropping sound, such as EMS688.
The multiplayer for Descent was a whole new breed of beast back in the day. Circle strafing vertically was beyond most player's comprehension and with the addition of Mines and Afterburner giving you new ways to kill and avoid being killed the PvP really had a depth that was uncommon for the time.
Upon replaying Descent recently, I can say that hitscan enemies in a game like this really, really piss me off. You're pretty much guaranteed to take damage as soon as any robot with a vulcan gun sees you and it's horseshit. I don't know how to ever tolerated that as a kid. The effect is made all the worse by the fact every other attack can be dodged, even smart missiles can be outsmarted. I'm glad you touched on that.
They’re supposed to piss you off. 90s games were hard. If you’re fast and are far enough away you can dodge those drillers. It’s also possible to sneak up behind them. The best way to take them out is with a single homing missile. You can also peek one wing around the corner and shoot them with the quad laser.
As brutally hard as Descent was on my first ever playthrough as a 15 year old, it was so unique and so much fun that you kept coming back for more of that unending punishment and getting lost. Eventually you get really good at keeping your direction when there is no direction and whipping that ship around lightning fast in 3 directions at once while firing lasers and missiles accurately at a dozen targets. This game demands you get good.
I remember these were among my favourite games at the time. I used to love being able to kill bots with the splash damage of shooting the lava near them.
The one thing I dislike about Descent II is the theifbot! I make destroying that little bastard my first priority. Not that it's easy to do as it can take more punishment than pretty much any other robot in the game other than the bosses. I find the easiest way is to find a long corridor somewhere, enable the rear view screen and wait for it to try and sneak up on me. When it gets near me, I spin around, fire continuously with the gauss cannon while also firing flash missiles at it. The missiles keep it disoriented and prevent it from escaping and the gauss cannon is a hitscan weapon, so it has no chance to dodge the shots.
Ha, yes! Another way is to go through a passageway leading to a door and leave a proximity mine on your side of the door. Scoot away and turn your back to the door using, as you said, the rearview. He'll eventually come through the door and hit the prox mine, then spin around and blast him. Rinse and repeat. I'll have to try the flash missiles, thanks! And you're right, first priority is to get rid of him. I'm relieved to be on the few levels that DON'T have the theifbot.
Ya the AI was way better than any game that was out at the time. Each enemy had its own behavior and personality. an all this running on a 66mhz CPU an 4-8MB of RAM. I had a pentium 100mhz with 16MB of RAM. With what was new at the time 1GB hard drive and 2x CD-ROM drive too!!!! I laugh when people try to tell me how great Doom was. They had no idea of what a REAL 3D shooter was like till quake came out As this game had 3D enemies. This game was over 5 YEARS ahead of every-single developer. id just copied all the tech from Descent games to make quake. It even had portals like well Portal 1 & 2.
@@anthonyian7344 The trick is using smart mines, let it go into a section with only one way out. place smart mines (3 or 4) in front of door and turn your back to it. turn on back cam and watch the fireworks ^^
If playing the PC release, is there a driver or some way that would let me use my Sony SCPH-1110 Analog Joysticks I use when system-linking it on PS1s?
NICE! I remember this game VERY well! It's the 90's all over again :-) I never got motion sick from it, but I remember feeling extremely disoriented once I realized I was upside down for most of it... at least that's what it always felt like. That game was a lot of fucking fun. I almost liked it better than Magic Carpet... fuck I'm old!
I remember my friends all hating it back in the 90s, but I loved it. Now that I’m in 40s I find that I can handle about one level per night before I start getting sloppy. :)
This is a TRUE MASTERPIECE, love it, played for hours and hours and hours. The freedom of movement was incredible, there is a nice port for Linux and I play it on my Ubuntu, no emulation at all, you have to compile it and link it, but once done, it is gorgeous.
Nice review! 8:12 Descent ][ actually did start as an expansion pack. Many of the features, like afterburners, were fan requested. Hope you enjoy OVERLOAD, arriving May 31st. Original games are back too!
I was 7 when my dad got the shareware of this game. I only ever played on easy but I remember memorising all the stages because I didn’t know how to read a map. I also wasn’t able to read the briefings I do remember avoiding the laser power ups past level 2 or 3 (I can’t recall which) because my favourite colour is and was purple and I liked having purple guns Seeing footage of the game now brings a gentle sadness, it reminds me of times when things were much simpler and my family dynamic was different Thanks for giving me this little flashback
Something I found useful when I went back to play it years later after having gotten into Elite: Dangerous, try mapping shift to down, and space to up, helped me a ton with complex maneuvers. Lets you have full control of almost all axis at once
I waited quite a while for you to make a review on these games. You didn't fail to make it sure as hell noteworthy for a typical 90's 3D shooter. This really made my night good. Awesome work, sir!
Great review. Loved the game back then. Did you say Mancubus in regards to heat seeker missiles instead of Revenant? :D Also, another similar game I really loved and played even more than Descent was Radix. Did you play it? Would love to hear your thoughts about it.
thank you so much!!! you brought up so many memories! this was my first pc game, years ahead of everyrhing i had played i played using a flight joystick, left and right to roll, forward and backward to pich, trigger for main fire, button on top of stick for secondary fire and two extra buttons for moving forward or reverse. i didnt have enough to move laterally, but still i beat the game
One of the reasons I love your channel is because of your amazing sense of humour... My favourite line from this video... "It just takes a hell of a pounding before going away, like my ex girlfriend" I lost it at that point. And "copies of this game seem to be rarer than photos of Jennifer Laurence with her clothes on" absolutely brilliant
I have no idea why but for some reason, this game was installed on some random computer in elementary school computer lab. I'd always try and get this computer when I first found the game was on it. Up until a couple years ago, I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of the game and once I found it, I hunted this game down and finally played the fuck out of it in peace. This game has such a special place in my childhood.
My teacher allowed me to install this game on the school's computers in eighth grade. We had two computers connected to each other with a null modem cable I brought from home and i would play against my classmates. It was a power trip for me because they were even worse at it than I was even though my older brothers would kick my teeth in every time we played at home.
I think I originally played Descent from one of those CDs with a large selection of pirated games on them that floated around back in the day. Fallout 1 was on the disc too. I spent hours just flying around and messing with the game just because of how much sense of freedom the controls gave compared to a lot of other games.
Thanks for the thorough review! Loved Descent when I was a kid. Technically impressive for its time, and the exploring those intricate tunnels was mesmerising - not to mention that satisfaction of winning an intense dogfight with those aggressive mining ships. And the difficulty was perfectly balanced, luring you in with easy enemies and straightforward level design, before quickly ramping up and demanding your full attention and dexterity (like all good games should).
Wow, this reminds me of how much I use to love this game. I also loved playing multi-player, and when Kali and Kahn allowed online play, it was just awesome! Oh yeah, the map editor was so easy to use. Such a great set of games. I still have the original CD's somewhere. ;-)
I still can't believe that someone saw this game and was like, "That's the perfect game engine for our Dungeons and Dragons game!" LGR did a really good review of the DND game made with this game engine, if you (you meaning the person reading this, not gggman) don't know what I'm talking about. The name of the game is Descent to Undermountain.
Three Mistakes: *Vulcan cannon is not hitscan. It is a realistic firearm, with finite velocity (try it in the first boss-level - there is a delay) *Don't play with a mouse. just don't. Descent limits your angular velocity (not even the supposedly realistic Counter Strike does that, but Descent does) *The M in PTMC stand for Mineral, not Mining.
I love Descent. along with Maximum the PS1 exclusive version of Descent 2 (smaller maps, same features, same story, playable in D2X) Which we started with when we got our PS1. Got me into gaming, electronic and metal music and quite a bit more. fantastic game. I'd recommend anyone play it if they love older 90's FPS games. Pretty tough as nails though, especially Descent 1, it boggles my mind that me and my Dad beat the first one on PS1 back in 99 or 2000. These games predated the dualshock. Which Is why I managed to macgyver a good dualstick layout that relates to the PS1 layout. Works great with a xbone controller. We played Maximum first lolz back in 97I just beat it for the first time in maybe a decade on dxx-rebirth. I've been following it for years.
Great idea for a game sadly ruined by shit mechanics and an uneven difficulty. Surprisingly, it was also ported to PS2 and then ported BACK to PC under a different name and removed most the cutscenes, quicksaving and third-person camera. But, it did fix a lot of the bugs, upgraded the graphics and offered support for higher resolutions this time around.
I dropped it in these trenches where TNTdawgs run at me. Still got flashback from that moment. Then played that port from PS2 and was meh. Plus some connections with Bet on Soldier at the end of the game (Syndicate).
Descent 1 and especially 2 are my favorite FPS games EVER. Even on my Dell 166XPS with its 2Mb video card Descent ran smoothly with the setting set conservatively. Descent 3 changed the gameplay and look enough that I never really got into it.
I remember my dad playing this game with me when I was 4 or 5 years old. He played while I sat by his side and tried to remember what the way to the exit was. For the longest time I have tried to find out the name of the game...now I finally found it 🥲 And the nostalgic feeling is awesome!
I remember being blown away when I saw the shareware version of Descent for the first time back in the days. I have both titles and the sequels on GOG, but they've been sitting on my pile of shame for ages. I should give them a go eventually.
Ah, nostalgia! First got into gaming in 1995 with C&C. I played Descent 1's 7 level freeware over and over with my sister back then. We loved it. Those green bots with the claws were terrifying. 😂
So, Overload soon? ;) but yeah, your review style is similar to the old PCZone magazine reviews, the same ones that gave Doom 2 an 86% for being "an expansion pack"
When Parallax split into Outrage and Volition, Volition's first series was Descent: FreeSpace. The Great War, Silent Threat, and FreeSpace 2. Excellent series and well worth a Gman review!
Hey there, I also remember a game called Forsaken which was a lot like descent from the glorious 3dfx era. I don't know how well it aged but I remember fond memories of motion sickness while playing that too.
Wow, that was a comprehensive review! Just as a note, there are no hit-scan weapons in D1 or D2. Vulcan is just really really fast: it moves at about 50 player hitboxes per second. This feels like hitscan in the singleplayer campaign since drillers don't aggro until you are near, but it doesn't in multiplayer. Have you seen Overload, a Descent spiritual successor by the creators of Descent that's now in early access?
I usually get motion sickness pretty bad on older FPS games like Duke 3D, Doom, and Hexen, but I've been surprisingly okay with Descent. The only blown chunks are the enemy ships
What to do during a virus pandemic? Find that 25 year old 'robot virus' cd rom you've had hiding in your file cabinet for two and a half decades and kill some bots! Your review was top-notch, entertaining, and inspiring! Playing this game off of the original disc here in 2021 is nostalgic to say the least! Hooked up my son's ps4 and xbox controllers today on one of our old Dell laptops that we were using as a doorstop. Running the windows 95 version in the home xp format and it's better than when I bought the bundle new to actually run on 95! Some quirks have yet to be worked around, and looking to buy a sidewinder to remedy them because I don't see myself getting efficient enough with the keyboard. I have the original 3-disc set which includes the mission builder cd. It allows you to build your own colonies, but haven't tried to load it this century. I have memories of loading it in the 90's and being overwhelmed. From one of the song titles on the soundtrack, "Are You Descent?" Yes I am!
I was rocking an Acer Aspire that had a 750mb hard drive, a 75Mhz Pentium one processor, a Matrox Mystique video card , 4mb of ram, and a 14.4 modem when those came out. I played the heck out of Descent 2. I still have that PC, and my copies of Descent 1&2. That PC and those games were cutting edge stuff back then. We played multiplayer through the TEN network which was in beta back then. On there you could do PVP with Duke 3d, Descent, Doom 2 and a ton of other stuff through it . We had a blast. Up to the time that TEN started we could only play people you knew via modem but with TEN you could play people from all over the world which was mind blowing at the time.
Another great video. I grew up being a console gamer so I missed out on a lot of these games on the PC. I had this, Doom, Hexen, Quake 2 on the PSX. I enjoyed them all but I didn't know how superior the PC was. I didn't get a gaming PC until the late 90's. it was mainly to play AVP but I said soon realized how much better the PC is for gaming.
Wonder if you heard of the 1998 title called Forsaken. Kinda similar in a way, you should definitely take a look at it if you have some time - for the amazing OST at least, if nothing else.
It's a very retro looking rogue like version of this game with very interesting mechanics, built with the unity engine, thought you might be interested.
I really want a propped console port of Descent 1, 2 and 3, throw in Freespace 1 and 2 too. Edit: as of an hour after posting this, I just found out on the PlayStation store that this December, Descent will be ported on the PS4! store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP2089-CUSA12249_00-DESCENTGAMEUS001
Hey there, as of 2018 you can buy Descent 1 & 2 off of Steam. The game was pulled because the lead designer had a deal with Interplay for royalties, and they didn't pay him the royalties for putting the game back on Steam/GOG. They pulled the game from Steam until they got this resolved.
Oh my god, Descent 2 was one of the games of my childhood. I was a beast at this game on Ace, and even got a guidebook after a few years of playing. A shame that I can't find my old disks, but at least I do have them digitally downloaded. These two games are what make flight sticks a godsend, with the Sidewinder 2 joystick being my tool. If you think the keyboard controls are fluid, then, at least this stick, feels perfectly natural.
The driller btw isn't hitscanning. It's just that its vulcan projectiles go faster than most, and that's why at close range encounters it feels like hitscan. But you can still strafe around these in larger rooms and not be hit - hence no hitscan. Same applies to your own vulcan gun which with long range shots has a tangible flight time.
I remember looking at this in awe on a PC in 'PC World' back in the day. Unfortunately, PC's were wayyyyyy out of my price range. Even the cheapest systems were around £1,200
During your intro music there are a few sound "spikes" that kind of hurt my ears. Maybe it was due to me wearing headphones? Just giving you a heads up man. Keep up the good work.
My dad works in aviation and I remember him buying me descent with a flightstick for our packard bell computer back in 1995 when I was just 4 years old. Instantly one of my favorite games of all time, along with descent 2. Descent 3 just made me sad
Usually, when people talk about old game soundtracks I think, it is just nostalgia. But without ever playing descent, this soundtrack seems to really kick as s! Also, love @GmanLives humor.
For itself as a game back then, it was basically flawless; I could even play over my 28.8K modem with a friend in the neighboring city. ...I even remember the moment I picked up Descent 2 at K-Mart a few months after it came out (I can still see the huge game-box in my hands as a lil kiddo - thanks dad)!
Worth mentioning Parallax/Revival did manage to work out their contractual issues with Interplay in 2017 and the game is available for sale again on GOG and Steam. No word on Descent 2's expansion pack though.
The licensing issue is a really sad situation... Interplay owned the rights to sell and distribute Descent 1 and 2 for years, but never paid royalties to Volition or Outrage (the owners now run Revival, and they're working on the true follow up to Descent 2, Overload). The owners just kind of allowed them to do this for the greater part of a decade, but when Interplay started licensing out the Descent name for Descent Underground for profit and they still were not paying a single royalty on Steam and GOG sales of D1 and D2, they finally forced Revival's hand and they made Interplay pull it from e-shops. They're still trying to get the name back, but with Descent Underground still a (virtually dead early access) thing, it doesn't look like that will happen for some time. Descent is my childhood, and D2 is IMHO the best old-school FPS experience from the 90s, hands down. Great review.
Grew up on these games. There was a boss in Descent 2 that legitimately scared me, can't remember what exactly but its boss room was super dark and it would turn invisible. I died any time I went in that room basically. Descent 3 was great too.
Oh yeah! I remember, it was about '96-97 when my classroom got a PC, and one of the amazing teachers we had installed Descent on it. We were awestuck - it was about the time when I was starting to figure out how to play Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, but this was on a whole new level. :P
just a side note here about the silver drillers: their vulcan fire feel like "hitscan", but the vulcan does have a finite speed, and in wider areas you may have a chance to dodge a driller. unfortunately for the pilot, these robots are usually stalking you from really close.
I got Descent 2 bundled with Wingman joystick back in the day, and believe or not I played it with that joystick. =/ And surprisingly enough it was hard as nails. And I still have the game.
This was the very first game ever where I encountered something as a network…. And saw another real person in my screen. Mindblowing making the connection between 2 pcs was like finding gold in your garden back then.
![⭐ฮิตในTikTok!! ( มะมะมะหมูเด้ง MooDeng ) Ver. แดนซ์ ReMix BY [ ดีเจกิต รีมิกซ์ ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4noyAoMa7bQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I have never clicked out of pornhub so fast
hamie I like your icon.
good meme
hamie HILARIOUS AND ORIGINAL
+a wonderful man with great knowledge of memes Yeah, just like your comment.
Xenoforge78 dude, someone has to point out the fact that this joke is not funny anymore. and saying it literally is boring
As of December 2017, the Descent trilogy is back up on Steam.
@@lionocyborg6030 GOG too, they got restored to both shops. You can also get Forsaken Remastered now (a different game but in the same genre) and Descent Underground (4) (made by the guys who own the name) and Overload (made by the guys behind Descent 1-3).
@@lionocyborg6030 Descent Underground is mutiplayer-only AFAIR. As for Freespace, those are a totally different genre, not tied to Descent at all (but great on their own, they're one of the best space sims in gaming history).
Guys, I really do not know why he keeps referring to me. I really don't, I've never met the guy.
Crazy! He keeps mistaking me for you
@Green Mamba Games Isn't it possible to just change your name?
Maybe he is gay.
Yeah, and he keeps talking about my mom. I mean I get that she likes her some gman micro-jimmy, but he needs to lay off already.
This was the first FPS my parents let us have because, well, “no blood.” It was fun but hearing the sound in this video is surreal because the sound NEVER worked on the computer we had.
Robots don't bleed, but the game is harder than Doom, and the Plot is much darker. Doomguy refused to shoot down the mining revolt on Mars, and was send to a bad guard job, there he gets to fight demons (who can't posses him, because of his moral standarts ?). Meterial Defender, is a mercenary, who likes easy money, and work for a corporation, who wants to save money first, and save people second.
You had to add EMS memory and assign DMA, IRQ, and port of your card through the boot-up files. It takes five minutes, but some cheaper Sound Blaster clones did have problems with dropping sound, such as EMS688.
@@alexandera.1411 And lucky guys with midi sound cards like Sound Blaster AWE32 or Gravis Ultrasound had cool music.
lol i played descent w/o sound too
Some 90's gamers started on Doom. Some started on Descent. I'm an original Descenter and proud. This game will always have a place in my heart
dont forget Zero tolerance from sega
I had both and loved everything about them lol
TIE Fighter
@@yendub Tie Fighter is amazing but it’s a full on space sim, whereas Descent feels like a hybrid between a sim and a FPS
Descent and MechWarrior 2 were the first games I ever played.
The multiplayer for Descent was a whole new breed of beast back in the day.
Circle strafing vertically was beyond most player's comprehension and with the addition of Mines and Afterburner giving you new ways to kill and avoid being killed the PvP really had a depth that was uncommon for the time.
Upon replaying Descent recently, I can say that hitscan enemies in a game like this really, really piss me off. You're pretty much guaranteed to take damage as soon as any robot with a vulcan gun sees you and it's horseshit. I don't know how to ever tolerated that as a kid. The effect is made all the worse by the fact every other attack can be dodged, even smart missiles can be outsmarted. I'm glad you touched on that.
Hitscan enemies in almost any game I can think of suck. Looking at you, jackal snipers.
I play this game on Insane difficulty only. You can dodge vulcan to a point. Learn 2 fly that ship mate.
I used my TV missiles for them.
They’re supposed to piss you off. 90s games were hard. If you’re fast and are far enough away you can dodge those drillers. It’s also possible to sneak up behind them. The best way to take them out is with a single homing missile. You can also peek one wing around the corner and shoot them with the quad laser.
@@matthewbaayens9394 Exactly!
As brutally hard as Descent was on my first ever playthrough as a 15 year old, it was so unique and so much fun that you kept coming back for more of that unending punishment and getting lost. Eventually you get really good at keeping your direction when there is no direction and whipping that ship around lightning fast in 3 directions at once while firing lasers and missiles accurately at a dozen targets. This game demands you get good.
Right, I spent a lot of time on this game as a kid and can remember chucking that ship about like it was a body part, awesome game!
I remember these were among my favourite games at the time. I used to love being able to kill bots with the splash damage of shooting the lava near them.
The one thing I dislike about Descent II is the theifbot! I make destroying that little bastard my first priority. Not that it's easy to do as it can take more punishment than pretty much any other robot in the game other than the bosses.
I find the easiest way is to find a long corridor somewhere, enable the rear view screen and wait for it to try and sneak up on me. When it gets near me, I spin around, fire continuously with the gauss cannon while also firing flash missiles at it. The missiles keep it disoriented and prevent it from escaping and the gauss cannon is a hitscan weapon, so it has no chance to dodge the shots.
Ha, yes! Another way is to go through a passageway leading to a door and leave a proximity mine on your side of the door. Scoot away and turn your back to the door using, as you said, the rearview. He'll eventually come through the door and hit the prox mine, then spin around and blast him. Rinse and repeat. I'll have to try the flash missiles, thanks!
And you're right, first priority is to get rid of him. I'm relieved to be on the few levels that DON'T have the theifbot.
Ya the AI was way better than any game that was out at the time. Each enemy had its own behavior and personality. an all this running on a 66mhz CPU an 4-8MB of RAM.
I had a pentium 100mhz with 16MB of RAM. With what was new at the time 1GB hard drive and 2x CD-ROM drive too!!!!
I laugh when people try to tell me how great Doom was. They had no idea of what a REAL 3D shooter was like till quake came out As this game had 3D enemies. This game was over 5 YEARS ahead of every-single developer. id just copied all the tech from Descent games to make quake.
It even had portals like well Portal 1 & 2.
Some of the source ports let you turn the thief bot off
@@anthonyian7344 The trick is using smart mines, let it go into a section with only one way out. place smart mines (3 or 4) in front of door and turn your back to it. turn on back cam and watch the fireworks ^^
played the shit out of that game when I was a kid, damn thanks for the nostalgia trip
While dated it was a technical marvel so you gotta give it respect for what it pioneered.
Great video as always
Still plays well today
dated? graphics are one of a kind
With the XL mod It still plays beautifully today. I’m doing my first playthrough in probably 20 years and it’s as fun now as it was then.
It's not dead at all.
If playing the PC release, is there a driver or some way that would let me use my Sony SCPH-1110 Analog Joysticks I use when system-linking it on PS1s?
NICE! I remember this game VERY well! It's the 90's all over again :-) I never got motion sick from it, but I remember feeling extremely disoriented once I realized I was upside down for most of it... at least that's what it always felt like. That game was a lot of fucking fun. I almost liked it better than Magic Carpet... fuck I'm old!
Serenade314 magic carpet had an atmosphere that no other titles could match. I did play 2 before one however but still, incredible titles
I like Decent, MC 1 and Mc 2, and only get sick of I play too long. Lol
I remember my friends all hating it back in the 90s, but I loved it. Now that I’m in 40s I find that I can handle about one level per night before I start getting sloppy. :)
I play it safe and rescue the hostages after I've killed eveything in the level.
This is a TRUE MASTERPIECE, love it, played for hours and hours and hours. The freedom of movement was incredible, there is a nice port for Linux and I play it on my Ubuntu, no emulation at all, you have to compile it and link it, but once done, it is gorgeous.
"Uranus... Uranus".
That's why I love you, Gggman.
Nice review! 8:12 Descent ][ actually did start as an expansion pack. Many of the features, like afterburners, were fan requested. Hope you enjoy OVERLOAD, arriving May 31st. Original games are back too!
Review the Marathon Trilogy! Or at least Marathon Durandal, it' s such an underrated series any classic-FPS lover would like!
Dude those games confused the FUCK out of me as a kid. Doom was already complicated enough when you're 7, but Marathon was just far too difficult.
Wait does this mean we get...a free space review?
Fuck yes?
Would love to see his take on the FreeSpace series, even if it isn't an FPS. :D
Holy shit I literally was just about to comment this. Gggman this would be amazing!
DIVE DIVE DIVE Write a review pilot!
He would be my hero
If you don't, i will
I was 7 when my dad got the shareware of this game. I only ever played on easy but I remember memorising all the stages because I didn’t know how to read a map. I also wasn’t able to read the briefings
I do remember avoiding the laser power ups past level 2 or 3 (I can’t recall which) because my favourite colour is and was purple and I liked having purple guns
Seeing footage of the game now brings a gentle sadness, it reminds me of times when things were much simpler and my family dynamic was different
Thanks for giving me this little flashback
Something I found useful when I went back to play it years later after having gotten into Elite: Dangerous, try mapping shift to down, and space to up, helped me a ton with complex maneuvers. Lets you have full control of almost all axis at once
I waited quite a while for you to make a review on these games. You didn't fail to make it sure as hell noteworthy for a typical 90's 3D shooter. This really made my night good. Awesome work, sir!
Great review. Loved the game back then. Did you say Mancubus in regards to heat seeker missiles instead of Revenant? :D
Also, another similar game I really loved and played even more than Descent was Radix. Did you play it? Would love to hear your thoughts about it.
thank you so much!!! you brought up so many memories! this was my first pc game, years ahead of everyrhing i had played
i played using a flight joystick, left and right to roll, forward and backward to pich, trigger for main fire, button on top of stick for secondary fire and two extra buttons for moving forward or reverse. i didnt have enough to move laterally, but still i beat the game
One of the reasons I love your channel is because of your amazing sense of humour... My favourite line from this video... "It just takes a hell of a pounding before going away, like my ex girlfriend" I lost it at that point. And "copies of this game seem to be rarer than photos of Jennifer Laurence with her clothes on" absolutely brilliant
God, I love these games so damn much. They're really fun and I quite enjoyed seeing someone actually talk about them for once. Great vid!
I have no idea why but for some reason, this game was installed on some random computer in elementary school computer lab. I'd always try and get this computer when I first found the game was on it. Up until a couple years ago, I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of the game and once I found it, I hunted this game down and finally played the fuck out of it in peace. This game has such a special place in my childhood.
My teacher allowed me to install this game on the school's computers in eighth grade. We had two computers connected to each other with a null modem cable I brought from home and i would play against my classmates. It was a power trip for me because they were even worse at it than I was even though my older brothers would kick my teeth in every time we played at home.
05:18 - never thought about it, but Descent may be actually origin of "REEEEEEEE!".
Now I hear it in the screech of the Driller Mk 1
I think I originally played Descent from one of those CDs with a large selection of pirated games on them that floated around back in the day. Fallout 1 was on the disc too. I spent hours just flying around and messing with the game just because of how much sense of freedom the controls gave compared to a lot of other games.
This game needs a remake, I played this one a lot back in the day
Exist, is called overload
I actually prefer the low res cartoonish textures and primitive lighting. Even D3 was too realistic. I prefer the simplistic polygonal caves.
Thanks for the thorough review! Loved Descent when I was a kid. Technically impressive for its time, and the exploring those intricate tunnels was mesmerising - not to mention that satisfaction of winning an intense dogfight with those aggressive mining ships. And the difficulty was perfectly balanced, luring you in with easy enemies and straightforward level design, before quickly ramping up and demanding your full attention and dexterity (like all good games should).
Wow, this reminds me of how much I use to love this game. I also loved playing multi-player, and when Kali and Kahn allowed online play, it was just awesome! Oh yeah, the map editor was so easy to use. Such a great set of games. I still have the original CD's somewhere. ;-)
I still can't believe that someone saw this game and was like, "That's the perfect game engine for our Dungeons and Dragons game!" LGR did a really good review of the DND game made with this game engine, if you (you meaning the person reading this, not gggman) don't know what I'm talking about. The name of the game is Descent to Undermountain.
Dungeons and Dragons game made with this engine? WHAT lol?
aw, dude, now you've reviewed Descent, you got to cover Forsaken at some point, Acclaim's total knock off.
Not that it's a bad thing though. And he just did.
You are everywhere I go on TH-cam XD
Foresucken.
A content creator I follow commenting on another content creator I follow??? Awesome. 😏
I thoroughly enjoyed Doom 2 and Heretic, but when I found Descent I dropped every other game. Awesome trip down memory lane.
Three Mistakes:
*Vulcan cannon is not hitscan. It is a realistic firearm, with finite velocity (try it in the first boss-level - there is a delay)
*Don't play with a mouse. just don't. Descent limits your angular velocity (not even the supposedly realistic Counter Strike does that, but Descent does)
*The M in PTMC stand for Mineral, not Mining.
Descent 1-3 are available again on Steam if anyone is interested.
Put me to rest, O Great and mighty Gggman, and make a review of Necrovision!
This Liberal Shithole , Remember Republic Commando ? maybe it's not what you really wish ...
I remember that the key to defeating the Red Hulks was to stun lock them with the Vulcan cannon.
Track 6 (Cold Reality) on the Descent II soundtrack is an AMAZING tune. it builds to insanity and was my favorite for fighting swarms of bots.
I love Descent. along with Maximum the PS1 exclusive version of Descent 2 (smaller maps, same features, same story, playable in D2X) Which we started with when we got our PS1. Got me into gaming, electronic and metal music and quite a bit more. fantastic game. I'd recommend anyone play it if they love older 90's FPS games. Pretty tough as nails though, especially Descent 1, it boggles my mind that me and my Dad beat the first one on PS1 back in 99 or 2000. These games predated the dualshock. Which Is why I managed to macgyver a good dualstick layout that relates to the PS1 layout. Works great with a xbone controller. We played Maximum first lolz back in 97I just beat it for the first time in maybe a decade on dxx-rebirth. I've been following it for years.
An Iron Storm review would be hilarious.
Great idea for a game sadly ruined by shit mechanics and an uneven difficulty. Surprisingly, it was also ported to PS2 and then ported BACK to PC under a different name and removed most the cutscenes, quicksaving and third-person camera. But, it did fix a lot of the bugs, upgraded the graphics and offered support for higher resolutions this time around.
I dropped it in these trenches where TNTdawgs run at me.
Still got flashback from that moment.
Then played that port from PS2 and was meh. Plus some connections with Bet on Soldier at the end of the game (Syndicate).
Descent 1 and especially 2 are my favorite FPS games EVER. Even on my Dell 166XPS with its 2Mb video card Descent ran smoothly with the setting set conservatively. Descent 3 changed the gameplay and look enough that I never really got into it.
I remember my dad playing this game with me when I was 4 or 5 years old. He played while I sat by his side and tried to remember what the way to the exit was. For the longest time I have tried to find out the name of the game...now I finally found it 🥲 And the nostalgic feeling is awesome!
I remember being blown away when I saw the shareware version of Descent for the first time back in the days.
I have both titles and the sequels on GOG, but they've been sitting on my pile of shame for ages. I should give them a go eventually.
Ah, nostalgia! First got into gaming in 1995 with C&C. I played Descent 1's 7 level freeware over and over with my sister back then. We loved it. Those green bots with the claws were terrifying. 😂
So, Overload soon? ;) but yeah, your review style is similar to the old PCZone magazine reviews, the same ones that gave Doom 2 an 86% for being "an expansion pack"
14:29 I Believe To Me That The 2 PS1 Ports Of Descent 1 & Descent Maximum (Descent 2.) Are Also Rare As Well.
Thankfully Overload is coming soon...
Proud member of the Descent Venture Pack here :)
Maybe a review of Descent 3?
Glad to see you got passed your motion sickness to review these awesome games!
When Parallax split into Outrage and Volition, Volition's first series was Descent: FreeSpace. The Great War, Silent Threat, and FreeSpace 2. Excellent series and well worth a Gman review!
Hey there, I also remember a game called Forsaken which was a lot like descent from the glorious 3dfx era. I don't know how well it aged but I remember fond memories of motion sickness while playing that too.
One of those crazy things, I just started playing Descent again literally this week.. man the universe is nuts.
Whoa nostalgia, I remember getting motion sickness while playing forsaken!
The games are back on gog, so no worries about where to get it.
Will there also be a review of Descent 3?
Wow, that was a comprehensive review! Just as a note, there are no hit-scan weapons in D1 or D2. Vulcan is just really really fast: it moves at about 50 player hitboxes per second. This feels like hitscan in the singleplayer campaign since drillers don't aggro until you are near, but it doesn't in multiplayer. Have you seen Overload, a Descent spiritual successor by the creators of Descent that's now in early access?
How about the Crusader series?
no
i said no
Seraphinus Not FPS but ass-kickin' games.
I usually get motion sickness pretty bad on older FPS games like Duke 3D, Doom, and Hexen, but I've been surprisingly okay with Descent. The only blown chunks are the enemy ships
The game of my childhood.
What to do during a virus pandemic? Find that 25 year old 'robot virus' cd rom you've had hiding in your file cabinet for two and a half decades and kill some bots! Your review was top-notch, entertaining, and inspiring!
Playing this game off of the original disc here in 2021 is nostalgic to say the least! Hooked up my son's ps4 and xbox controllers today on one of our old Dell laptops that we were using as a doorstop. Running the windows 95 version in the home xp format and it's better than when I bought the bundle new to actually run on 95! Some quirks have yet to be worked around, and looking to buy a sidewinder to remedy them because I don't see myself getting efficient enough with the keyboard. I have the original 3-disc set which includes the mission builder cd. It allows you to build your own colonies, but haven't tried to load it this century. I have memories of loading it in the 90's and being overwhelmed. From one of the song titles on the soundtrack, "Are You Descent?"
Yes I am!
I was rocking an Acer Aspire that had a 750mb hard drive, a 75Mhz Pentium one processor, a Matrox Mystique video card , 4mb of ram, and a 14.4 modem when those came out. I played the heck out of Descent 2. I still have that PC, and my copies of Descent 1&2. That PC and those games were cutting edge stuff back then.
We played multiplayer through the TEN network which was in beta back then. On there you could do PVP with Duke 3d, Descent, Doom 2 and a ton of other stuff through it . We had a blast. Up to the time that TEN started we could only play people you knew via modem but with TEN you could play people from all over the world which was mind blowing at the time.
Another great video. I grew up being a console gamer so I missed out on a lot of these games on the PC. I had this, Doom, Hexen, Quake 2 on the PSX. I enjoyed them all but I didn't know how superior the PC was. I didn't get a gaming PC until the late 90's. it was mainly to play AVP but I said soon realized how much better the PC is for gaming.
Creepers: I gave gamers the worst kind of audio PTSD
Vulkan Driller: *DEMONIC PIG NOISES* _hands over beer_
Man, I was hoping for this review! Yaaaaay!
how tough is it exactly to play FPS games colorblind?
Im rather curious
Well if your colorblind you don't see just black and white. You do see colors but a limited amount.
thanks for the info , and where did you get that profile pic xD?!
i made it myself. but the base image is this yt3.ggpht.com/-zc9iZ2EQZao/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAAA/c49zvdYzKRM/s900-c-k-no-mo-rj-c0xffffff/photo.jpg
thanks man xD
thanks man xD , and nice work with yours.
Wonder if you heard of the 1998 title called Forsaken. Kinda similar in a way, you should definitely take a look at it if you have some time - for the amazing OST at least, if nothing else.
Great review. We Sunny Jim's appreciate it. Until the next review old chap. How about Buck Bumble for the N64?
Love the channel! You should deff do a review of Multi Circle Run, and I will share it on Twitter and FB...let me know!
most Sonny JEEIIIM episode ever
Hey Ggg, Can you please tell the name of the source port you used ? I found a few and not sure which one to use.
OK so it's DXX-Rebirth, missed that when i watched the video.
Have you played Sublevel Zero? I heard it was a good spiritual successor
Never heard of it.
It's a very retro looking rogue like version of this game with very interesting mechanics, built with the unity engine, thought you might be interested.
I really want a propped console port of Descent 1, 2 and 3, throw in Freespace 1 and 2 too.
Edit: as of an hour after posting this, I just found out on the PlayStation store that this December, Descent will be ported on the PS4!
store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP2089-CUSA12249_00-DESCENTGAMEUS001
I have no clue why I enjoy your reviews so much. What do you do different?
Aww gggman likes us, hopefully he can take us all out for a date, or just make more kickass vids
Thank you for doing this. Descent has such a legacy, it can never be overlooked. (says the guy who coded Sol Contingency ;) )
Hey there, as of 2018 you can buy Descent 1 & 2 off of Steam. The game was pulled because the lead designer had a deal with Interplay for royalties, and they didn't pay him the royalties for putting the game back on Steam/GOG. They pulled the game from Steam until they got this resolved.
We definitely grew up playing the same games. Keep up the good work man.
Oh my god, Descent 2 was one of the games of my childhood. I was a beast at this game on Ace, and even got a guidebook after a few years of playing. A shame that I can't find my old disks, but at least I do have them digitally downloaded. These two games are what make flight sticks a godsend, with the Sidewinder 2 joystick being my tool. If you think the keyboard controls are fluid, then, at least this stick, feels perfectly natural.
The driller btw isn't hitscanning. It's just that its vulcan projectiles go faster than most, and that's why at close range encounters it feels like hitscan. But you can still strafe around these in larger rooms and not be hit - hence no hitscan. Same applies to your own vulcan gun which with long range shots has a tangible flight time.
Man i remember playing that game in multiplayer on n64
I remember looking at this in awe on a PC in 'PC World' back in the day.
Unfortunately, PC's were wayyyyyy out of my price range. Even the cheapest systems were around £1,200
During your intro music there are a few sound "spikes" that kind of hurt my ears. Maybe it was due to me wearing headphones? Just giving you a heads up man. Keep up the good work.
My dad works in aviation and I remember him buying me descent with a flightstick for our packard bell computer back in 1995 when I was just 4 years old. Instantly one of my favorite games of all time, along with descent 2. Descent 3 just made me sad
Usually, when people talk about old game soundtracks I think, it is just nostalgia. But without ever playing descent, this soundtrack seems to really kick as s!
Also, love @GmanLives humor.
I remember the MS Sidewinder stick was often bundled with this game. Does it play well on keyboard and mouse, or is a stick recommended?
I had the MS Sidewinder and I loved playing Descent with it. I play Overload with the TM HOTAS 4 + kbd but kinda prefer using the mouse and kbd.
For itself as a game back then, it was basically flawless; I could even play over my 28.8K modem with a friend in the neighboring city. ...I even remember the moment I picked up Descent 2 at K-Mart a few months after it came out (I can still see the huge game-box in my hands as a lil kiddo - thanks dad)!
Worth mentioning Parallax/Revival did manage to work out their contractual issues with Interplay in 2017 and the game is available for sale again on GOG and Steam.
No word on Descent 2's expansion pack though.
The licensing issue is a really sad situation... Interplay owned the rights to sell and distribute Descent 1 and 2 for years, but never paid royalties to Volition or Outrage (the owners now run Revival, and they're working on the true follow up to Descent 2, Overload). The owners just kind of allowed them to do this for the greater part of a decade, but when Interplay started licensing out the Descent name for Descent Underground for profit and they still were not paying a single royalty on Steam and GOG sales of D1 and D2, they finally forced Revival's hand and they made Interplay pull it from e-shops. They're still trying to get the name back, but with Descent Underground still a (virtually dead early access) thing, it doesn't look like that will happen for some time.
Descent is my childhood, and D2 is IMHO the best old-school FPS experience from the 90s, hands down. Great review.
Grew up on these games. There was a boss in Descent 2 that legitimately scared me, can't remember what exactly but its boss room was super dark and it would turn invisible. I died any time I went in that room basically. Descent 3 was great too.
Ahhh Descent... Who could forget. God bless you Gggman.
I used the Microsoft Sidewinder joystick to play this. It was by far one of the best 90s games I remember.
Are they ever going to reboot this game?
very under rated... hidden gem
How do you get the CD music to work with the source ports? I've got the gog version.
Oh yeah!
I remember, it was about '96-97 when my classroom got a PC, and one of the amazing teachers we had installed Descent on it. We were awestuck - it was about the time when I was starting to figure out how to play Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, but this was on a whole new level. :P
I'm amazed you restrained yourself to "heh, Uranus" instead of a line like "Deep inside Uranus".
Bravo sir.
It was hard, but I managed.
just a side note here about the silver drillers: their vulcan fire feel like "hitscan", but the vulcan does have a finite speed, and in wider areas you may have a chance to dodge a driller. unfortunately for the pilot, these robots are usually stalking you from really close.
I got Descent 2 bundled with Wingman joystick back in the day, and believe or not I played it with that joystick. =/ And surprisingly enough it was hard as nails. And I still have the game.
This was the very first game ever where I encountered something as a network…. And saw another real person in my screen. Mindblowing making the connection between 2 pcs was like finding gold in your garden back then.