Descent

First mesmerized by this game in 1998 and, despite the pixellated graphic rendering, FINALLY beat the Boss!! Always wanted to play again since, and found the package of all 3, just 2 months ago. Now, I have logged OVER 200 hours in just 45 days!! My favorite game of ALL shooters!

I'm sure everyone has a lot to say about the game, but I thought I'd let people know I played this on an M1 Macbook and it worked great.

The Descent series should rank near the top of any all time great list. I've lost many hours exploring the mines, and many more battling my friends.

I was pleased and at smoothly these ancient games installed and ran on my machine. Of course, it never heard of the exotic buttons and hats on my Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 - forcing me to play all keyboard - but nonetheless the game is here in its old fury. One of the great shockers of the first two entries of Descent was in how truly 3-D the levels were - all notions of ceiling and floor were completely upset, forcing players to visualize their situation in completely new terms. No game since has dared challenge players with such mind twisting situations, and the freedom may have cost the game players with its steep learning curve (there are a lot of keys to learn with 6 degrees of movement). It may also have been a bit too much for nauseous stomachs, as Descent 3 was a lot more careful about establishing up and down and replacing the exotic (and somewhat frightening) alien menace with more prosaic Earthly foes. Nevertheless, action simply does not get more intense than it did in this series.

I remember playing an old Shareware version of Descent years and years ago. At the time, I hadn't played many games of the sort (save for a bit of Doom here or there), and I remember being floored by the concept of being free from gravity. As time went on, I purchased the full version of Descent, its sequel, and the tragically under-appreciated Descent 3. Since then, my attention has turned to other more modern games, but once the GOG.com beta opened, I figured exercising my nostalgia was a worthwhile investment. Boy, was it ever. It's stunning how I can return to a thirteen-year-old game and still be shocked at the experience it provides. It certainly shows its age--it's not really that pleasant to look at--but I'm struck by how much I missed having six degrees of freedom. No other game that I've played in recent memory feels so liberating. In video games anymore, we're tethered to the ground and pushed through linear hallways to get where we're going. Being able to fly anywhere, running circles around my enemies while the air fills with lasers and missiles is nothing short of a breath of fresh air. If you didn't grow up with this game like I did, or even if you have and you've just forgotten about it, you owe it to yourself to play it. I guarantee that you will not experience anything else like it.