Posted on: September 28, 2025

dnovraD
Verified ownerGames: Reviews: 73
A maze of twisty little passages!
Another game I wish I was more fond of. Descent was very much a fever pitch pioneer in the 6 degrees of freedom genre, if you don't count games like Interphase. Descent is a quaint game about blowing up reactors because you're a contracted mercenary and a virus is ruining the operations of a mining corp. (Yeah, the story doesn't make much sense, presumably they want to claim insurance or something.) And it works for the first half of the mission. Finding the reactor and blowing it up, great. The problem comes in the very short lived second half where you get 45 or so seconds to escape. The problem tends to be that you get a little turned upside down or turned around at points, which makes escaping a shaking, exploding twisting passage, a little hard. And of course, since this is a first person game released during the 1990s, there's of course, obligatory keycard hunts. Before anyone asks: Descent II is literally more Descent I, and even harder. It's that kind of sequel. So if you liked playing this one, go ahead, buy the second. The map in Descent 1 leaves a lot to be desired in readability, using primitives instead of a useful reference projection. There's a classic old source port called DDX Rebirth, it has some quality of life changes, and newer ports such as DXX-Redux. You should use one of those instead of trying to throw DOSbox at a game that barely fit in DOS in the first place.
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