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Throwback Thursday: Descent (1994)
Post by Steve Farrelly @ 06:42pm 27/11/14 | 18 Comments
When Doom popularised the budding FPS genre back in the 90s, there were all sorts of knock-offs. But it was a knock-off called Desecent that tried to turn it all on its head, (sort of) literally. Taking the FPS plane and allowing 360-degree movement within the 3D space was... interesting, writes Kosta in this week's Throwback Thursday -- complete with a "Let's Play" level capture.

In Descent, players take control of a spacecraft and fly around a bunch of planetary mining facilities in order stop some rogue AI or some such from taking control of stuff. There’s actually a pretty thorough backstory and a lot of story text to read, but one doesn’t play an FPS from the 90s for its rich, multi-layered narrative. So all you really need to know is that a bunch of space mines have gone bad and you need to find their reactors, take them out, and escape before they blow. Oh, and along the way you’ll encounter enemy ships, which is where the shooting comes into play.
Click here for our Throwback Thursday "Descent" edition.

And if you have any requests for this new weekly column; games or genres you want explored, throw your two-cents in the Comments section.


throwback thursdaydescentdoom90s fps





Latest Comments
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dais
Posted 07:15pm 27/11/14
Forsaken also did this sort of game really well.
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KostaAndreadis
Posted 09:04pm 27/11/14
Indeed forgot to mention the similarity to forsaken in the piece. Although that was almost a direct copy of Descent.
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BladeRunner
Posted 09:30pm 27/11/14
This is one of the first PC games I ever played, Command and Conquer, AoE, Trophy Bass Fishing were also there too.
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hardware
Posted 09:52pm 27/11/14
Cool game, i remember it well. Easy to get yourself disoriented.
Also, similar to Terminal Velocity
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Meddek
Posted 10:44pm 27/11/14
Descent forgot about this game, Terminal Velocity was fun as well.

I remember some Win98 game Hellbender or something that was again similar fly around in a space ship shooting stuff.
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SwissCM
Posted 01:54am 28/11/14
A fun, little known fact. Descent, Red Faction and Saints Row all take place in the same fictional universe.
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Che
Posted 11:10am 28/11/14
Descent 2 multiplayer over KALI was so much fun. There was a good community and the AD2L kept it interesting.

Needed a joystick to be played well though, fired it up recently with an xbox controller and that worked reasonably well. The Descent series could use a console reboot.
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KostaAndreadis
Posted 11:30am 28/11/14
Swiss, I was thinking there's no way that's true. So I just looked it up and there we go Red Faction was built from Descent 4.
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eski
Posted 11:31am 28/11/14
I loved me some Descent back in the day, although I would always end up disoriented and flying backwards.

Would love to see a throwback piece on System Shock the First. It's a pretty awesome game in the vein of the Ultima Underworld series, and apart from the crazy controls, it still holds up pretty well today.
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Steve Farrelly
Posted 12:40pm 28/11/14
Forsaken was rad, it had seriously good music and was one of those early N64 Acclaim games that just seemed to know how best to use the plaform
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dais
Posted 12:50pm 28/11/14
I remember buying the boxed PC version for $7.50 at Bi-Lo, of all places.
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KostaAndreadis
Posted 12:54pm 28/11/14
Haven't played the first System Shock eski, but will add it to the list :)
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arkter
Posted 01:27pm 28/11/14
I am pretty sure this came on one of those demo discs that came with PCWORLD or whatever magazine...

Good times.
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groganus
Posted 03:52pm 28/11/14
My best memory of Descent is getting extremely confused by the 360 movement and flailing all over the place, then giving up.
I wen't back a few years later and gave it another bash and was a lot better and getting around, but there was just so much better s*** out that it never got much attention from myself. That era of gaming was a f*****g boom town for hits.
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E.T.
Posted 12:14pm 30/11/14

Decent was a great game. I enjoyed making maps for it for me and my mates to play head to head on. I'm looking forward to the remake becoming available. Some dude is reengineering the whole game with the Unreal Engine.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/indie-dev-remaking-descent-with-modern-graphics-sound/



EDIT:
I just read these guys have had a Cease and Desist order handed to them by Interplay. That's a bugga. I hope they can work around this. Interplay needs to pull their head out of their ass. They could sanction the remake and make a few $ as well.

This was posted up to Youtube in October, 2012

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Winston
Posted 06:53pm 03/12/14
One of my favourite games ever.
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Rdizz
Posted 07:16pm 03/12/14
One of my favourite games ever.


same here. Descent 2 & 1 were both awesome
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rrrocket
Posted 09:16pm 03/12/14
Same here

I used to love playing this an LAN parties on my 20" CRT!
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