Descent 3

The sky's the limit (almost, since there's a moratorium on altitude), and the players can now skim over enigmatic alien ruins and the bombed-out hulks of recent industry. Enemies are just as hard or harder to fight in open terrain, and some truly gifted behemoths will make players scurry for the familiar safety of the underground warren.

But the most challenging aspect of this milieu is its vigorous use of all three dimensions. If players are too regimented in forward, back, and sideways moves, some nasty 3-D accelerated surprises await them. Of course, there's standard play for the lone wolf, but for those who like to fly in packs, there's the Internet module, which enables players to congregate and interact. Descent 3 is the ultraworthy heir to a gaming dynasty, so put your tray table in its upright position and adjust your attitude. --Tamara Hladik

I think it speaks volumes about a game when I can look at it now, three years later, and see what I see. People are still building new levels for it, multiplayer is still fairly popular, and the community is still strong. The DescentBB and Planet Descent are great places to start, so look them up when you get the chance.

Anyhow, regarding the game itself. The hallmark of the Descent series is its gameplay that concerns all three axes of movement, unlike other FPS games like Quake or Unreal that largely limit your movement to the ground. In Descent, you can fly wherever you want to, stop and turn on a dime, and move freely. Descent 3 continues this with its new game engine, which actually consists of two engines - one for rendering indoor areas and the other for rendering outdoor areas with terrain.

Continuing where Descent 2 left off, the game reprises your role as the Material Defender, a mercenary hired by the Post-Terran Minerals Corporation sent to rid their intergalactic mining installations of worker robots gone amuck. As fate would have it, rather than pay you for your efforts, your boss at the PTMC named Dravis decided to sabotage your ship instead. Fortunately, before reaching certain doom by hurtling towards the sun, you are rescued by a team of researchers calling themselves Red Acropolis. It seems they know about Dravis' sabotage and that he was ultimately behind the rogue robot activity in the first place. As the only pilot with enough guts to tackle the situation, it is your duty to gather the evidence to incriminate Dravis.

Of course, this is just the intro movie. The rest of the single-player campaign features 15 gigantic levels. And I do emphasize gigantic - these behemoths are many times the size of the old Descent levels and yet still only load once at the beginning. Inhabiting them, naturally, are a varied assortment of robots arranged in various classes - security drones, miners, and even robots that sweep the floor. These are your obstacles on the way to completing your mission objectives. Unlike the first two games, which were built around gathering keys, destroying a Reactor, then escaping the mine, Descent 3 has objectives for each level that must be accomplished. These include escorting important ships, going on recon missions, and in an ironic nod to the old games, defending the Reactors from destruction.

To carry these out, you find all sorts of neat weapons. There are ten different primary weapons and ten secondary weapons. Primaries include your basic Laser Cannon, chaingun-like Vauss Cannon, railgun-like Mass Driver, searing Napalm Cannon, and shield sucking Omega Cannon. The secondaries are equally diverse and include such hits as the Napalm Missile that bursts into flame, the Frag Missile that bursts into a thousand shards, and the awesome gravity-altering Black Shark Missile that sucks your enemies into a black hole.

Multiplayer is fantastic. New multiplayer levels are always coming out and the action never grows old. Descent 3 comes with many gameplay modes for multiplayer. Anarchy is your traditional deathmatch, and as you might expect Team Anarchy is also present. Capture the Flag is also represented, and built more like other games in this regard as opposed to the bizarre interpretation of it in Descent 2. One of the more intriguing modes is Entropy, a team game where you must collect viruses and infect the bases of the opposing team.

Being that this game will be four years old this year, it is becoming very hard to find it. But, should you come across it, I would strongly recommend a purchase. This is one of the finest PC games ever designed. Just because players didn't acknowledge it back in 1999 doesn't mean you have to. A fantastic game, a fantastic community, and years of playability. Who could ask for anything more?


This is the BEST GAME EVER!   January 1, 2003
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Descent 3 has a great plot. You work for a futuristic space defender organization. Your job is to foil the plans of the evil Samuel Dravis, the president of the Post Terran Mining Corporation(PTMC). The game has the best graphics I have ever seen in a game. With a wide variety of weapons to use, robots to destroy, and mysterious puzzles to solve, you can have the time of your life. I highly suggest you get this game.

Tifus


a good series gone bad   July 16, 2001
 3 out of 10 found this review helpful

When I bought This game I expected a few things. 1) I expected more wepons that I can destroy robots with 2)I expected new levals which I could explore 3) I expected more mindless destruction 4) I expected better graphics. 5) I needed to know what happened to material defender ( the guy you play as in all the descent series)

Decent 2 had all these things I wanted. I personally think that was one of the best games out there. When I bought Descent 3 I expected a improved Decent 2. I was wrong. You do get almost all the things I expect in a sequal but you get something else that I didn't want or suspect. Now it wasn't go into a mind destroy all the robots blow up the mind and get out of there in t-30 seconds you now had to accomplish objectives and there was no center of the mind or boss robots there were objectives you had to complete. That took out some of the mindless destruction part of the series which in my opinion was the best part. One more thing this game is hard I'm stuck on leval 2. This game in my opinion is a disapointment to the series. Go buy descent 2 instead instead.