Overload

Do you remember that scene from Ratatouille when Anton Ego (the food critic) tastes Little Chef's dish and gets taken back to his childhood? That is exactly what I felt with this game. Good old 6DOF, this has been the best gaming experience I've had in a long time. The AI is competent and challenging without being frustrating (I play in the "ACE" difficulty, mouse+KB), you do feel like a badass in your little gunship but if you get cocky you'll get yourself killed fast. I wholeheartedly recommend this even at its full price.

This is Descent by another name. During my hay day, I was an ardent Descent Player. It was THE game I played as a child/teen. I spent countless hours developing and publishing levels that were getting played in high schools around North America. Kali anyone? When Ticondrius' Descent IV got canned, my heart sank. It sank even more when we were originally told that Red Faction was going to be Descent. (No Joke, I like to think I had a small hand in Enviro Booting the Enviro Suit, but that is another story.) When the Descent Underground (Descent 2019) go fund me project got started, I was all over that....until I realized it wasn't going to be Descent. Descendant Studios unfortunately bought the rights to Descent, and they turned it into a resource hunting game with no depth. My heart couldn't take much more. That was when a fellow GOG member referred me to this game. I immediately bought it, and although I have not completed it as yet, I felt like I had found a long lost friend that got lost in a copyright war. I seriously had joy playing it. The ship design, the weapons, the bots, the levels. EVERYTHING had a Descent 'air' to it. I love how they incorporated the hostage rescues into the story. I love how they progressed the story through in level audio logs. The absolute only complaint I have, was they added a 'rpg' element to it, with EXP and upgrade points for you ship. Silly if you ask me, but I suppose they couldn't carbon copy Descent, or they would get into trouble. I recommend this game to EVERY Descent fan, oh and Hi Ticondrius!

There aren't many words to describe just how truly phenomenal this game is. If you are a fan of the first 3 Descent games, and are "on the fence" about whether or not you should pick this one up, do yourself a favor and buy this game. With the exception of some interesting new game mechanics (e.g., upgrade/super upgrade points) this one is, in every way, a true sequel to Descent 1, 2 and 3. It is almost unfair to call it a "spiritual successor." Matt, Mike, Dan and their team have outdone themselves again, staying true to critical elements of the game that worked so well for the first three games: simple game play, superb graphics, and top-notch music. The game follows a nearly identical formula from the first 2 games: Go through each mine, destroy the bots (robots are called "autonomous operators" in this game), knock out each mine's reactor, and get out. There are a few missions involving boss operators (just like Descent 1/2), but there are also a few missions that add truly interesting, organic alien worlds and teleportation devices (I won't go into details here so as not to spoil anything). As you destroy each mine (by "overloading" their reactors--hence the name of the game), the story continues to unfold, and the player picks up clues (in various audio recordings) along the journey. "Upgrade/Super Upgrade Points," a new mechanic for Descent players, rewards the player for exploration. While I do occasionally miss just flying over weapon power-ups, the varied upgrade levels of the weapons make the upgrade points well worth their search. The weapons in this game are the best I have ever seen, and watching the robots spin and explode in an enormously satisfying symphony of fiery debris and particle effects is nothing short of absolute gaming bliss. The game also runs extremely well on low end CPUs when paired with a decent GPU (e.g., Athlon II X4/GeForce GTX 1060). The game is an absolute must buy, especially for fans of Descent 1, 2, and 3.

The shooting is better than in any modern shooter. Only Doom Eternal is equally intense. This is the Descent 4 I always wanted.

So far it's very repetitive, both the environments, the weapons and the bad guys. The 6DOF gameplay is as good as it always was, but I enjoy forsaken remastered much more and even went to the trouble of making an HD texture pack for it. There's no humour in this game. It's just more of the same bots in another station that looks and feels pretty similar to the last one. So far, I'm at phoebe station. Will update this review if it gets better. May take a while because I'm finding this a slog. Too many bright lights on explosions make enemies hard to see. So far, no outdoor areas like in Descent 3.