Descent
I played this game like crazy when I was young. It’s really hard until you get the hang of it, and then you become basically unstoppable. The most scary part of the game for me was level 7, the first time I encountered the first boss. I went out into this big lava room and the boss made such a horrible scary sound when he appeared, and it killed me. Then I would hide inside the tunnel leading to the bosses' room, and it would appear nearby. My heart would nearly stop when I would hear the sound effect he would make, because then I knew he was nearby. The boss would fire missles into my tunnel I was hiding in, and the little green balls would lock onto my ship and destroy me. After trying countless times to beat him by shooting at him from inside my not-so-safe tunnel, I made a bold and daring move. I left the tunnel. And amazingly, even though I played only with the keyboard, my little fingers would move so fast I could slide up, down, right, left and spin in all kinds of crazy circles, the little green balls would try to lock onto my ship but I was able to dodge them all. The funnest part of this game for me was its built-in replay recording feature, which will record a replay of your game. Once I got good at beating the boss, I increased the difficulty level to “insane”, and recorded countless epic replays of me beating the boss on insane. He would shoot missles as fast as a machine gun on insane difficulty, and every one of those missles would explode into a cloud of green balls. Hundreds of green balls would be in the air at once. Shoulda been impossible for me to dodge them all. Even just one or two of them hitting me would destroy my ship at that level of difficulty. But I would dodge them all. I would do loop to loops around the boss, zig-zagging through all the green balls, all the while shootting at him and throwing his own green balls right back at him, destroying him with his own green balls! It was so much fun. Some of those replays were so insane, I wish I still had the recordings, but that was a long time ago. This is one of the few games where you will often be turning both up/down plus turning right/left plus sliding up/down plus sliding right/left plus moving forward/backward plus shooting –- all at the same time!
– Real player with 51.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best 6DOF Old School Games.
Descent is the kind of games which are hard to write a review about. No, not because it is kinda tricky and complicated or controversial. No, it’s quite opposite actually. The problem is else… Modern player will hardly pay attention to it and fans will buy without need of any reviews. So there is no audience for the review and a question, whether I should write it at all, rises. And that’s a pity because the game is quite unique and it still doesn’t have proper rivals (apart from its other titles). So, I am going to try to describe it shortly in hope that at least one rookie will pay their attention to it.
– Real player with 49.7 hrs in game
Descent 2
Download the DXX-Rebirth source port to play in 1080p without dosbox!
Vertigo expansion with its own redbook audio is available here.
The base D2 metal Redbook audio soundtrack is already included in the steam release, but you will have to download and set it up as an addon if you use DX-Rebirth.
As for the game itself, 1st Descent remains the best imho. Here you get the most overpowered weapon on lvl 3 (Gauss) and never switch to anything else, unless you run out of ammo (you don’t, not even on higher difficulties), shich kind of ruins the nice variety in weapons that D1 had. In D1 every weapon had it’s use, which was nice.
– Real player with 24.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best 6DOF Old School Games.
My childhood games have returned. Descent 2 and Descent: Freespace were the #1 hits of my day on the Windows 98 and finally after many years I get to relive these experiences. It’s taking me a while to get reacquainted with my old joystick but I’m totally loving every minute of it.
Descent 2 requires some definite tweaking. It took my about an hour to figure everything out, including my joystick issues, but it all functions properly and took no additional patches to work. Using the mouse could be an issue unless you really know how to modify the game. I however do not know this, but I feel the joystick is the only way to properly relive the experience.
– Real player with 19.2 hrs in game
Descent 3
Third and last title of Descent series. After release of the second one Parallax Software broke into Outrage Entertainment and Volition Inc. The former made the last chapter of Descent series and the latter created not less interesting Freespace series.
Despite quite a big development in contrast to the second title, the third one was not accepted by all fans. The main reason is leaving simple shooter behind and changing it with narrative and complicated locations with alternating vast spaces and narrow corridors, and also kind of cartoon graphics. And though I understand what fans do not like about Descent 3, I don’t understand why they don’t like it. Yes, third title moved away from its origins but is it bad? I don’t think so: levels are now really complex and rich. And though developers tried to diversify maps even in the previous titles, the mines remained mines, but here we have mines and caves, industrial structures and planets’ surfaces, and even night city with a subway. Yeah, graphics became cartoonish because of engine change but game’s seriousness and difficulty didn’t vanish. The same can be said about gameplay. Though every mission now has its own goal, the main aspect of it is still shooter with simple spatial puzzles.
– Real player with 30.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best 6DOF Old School Games.
While I do have fond memories of this game, it has not aged well. There are issues with the graphics implementation of both OpenGL and Direct3D, with only a Glide wrapper offering good, non-glitchy visuals (on is included in this version). That said, many graphical niceties aren’t present if you don’t have a Pentium 3 or better also includes AMD CPUs. Many audio APIs that D3 can use have been deprecated and/or removed from later versions of Windows, making the only good audio choice be DirectSound. The game wasn’t designed with widescreen displays in mind, meaning that setting it to, say, 1080p is a pain and the graphics will either be squished or parts of the HUD will be cut off.
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
Terminal Velocity
Terminal Velocity is a game that I didn’t get the chance to play when I was younger. I ended up playing Microsoft Hellbender when I was younger instead and later looked to play the earlier games by TRI. Finally I played both this and Fury3 years later.
This game is extremely nostalgic to me and have plenty of great memories. It definitely would be hard for many to get into it since this comes packaged with DOSbox and does not have the same resolution settings that we are accustomed to today.
There is an attempt at a game engine rewrite called Terminal Recall which seems decent, however it is very slow on the laptop I usually use. I even made an attempt to dig into creating an engine to play the games but only ever got as far as opening and reading the game’s data files.
– Real player with 16.6 hrs in game
Great game, even to this day. Controls are perfect using the 360-Controller - firing with the right trigger is extremely satisfying! The levels however are a bit pale from a game design standpoint - you pretty much do the same all the time.
Note: I’ve played using the Microsoft 360-Pad and the Saitek PS3200. For some reason, the controls using the MS-Pad are a bit stiff in that the Analog Stick doesn’t seem to support diagonal movement. That means you can either move to the X- or Y-axis, but never both. The Saitek-Pad however works just fine and lets me do vertical movement. I don’t know if this is a problem with my PC but I thought I’d share this with you.
– Real player with 16.2 hrs in game
Forsaken Remastered
Note: This game unfortunately does not have joystick support. Still fun as hell to play though
Forsaken was my favorite 6DOF title back in the 90s, and I was elated to see it finally was remastered, and even managed to include content from the N64 version which I grew up with, making it more complete than the past PC/PSX/N64 releases. It looks fantastic in full HD, you can finally adjust your FOV properly, and when you find opponents, the multiplayer is absolutely mental. Also, the addition of a much needed map system was also added, which makesthis game MUCH less frustrating to play, I remmeber losing my mind as a kid getting lost in some levels. Nightdive, you guys rock, love that you did this for your Turok remasters as well.
– Real player with 71.4 hrs in game
When a legend was FORSAKEN
Nightdive worked its magic to revive that which had been
FORSAKEN.
Do yourself a few favors:
-Buy the game if you’re even considering it, at least as a fan of the 6DOF genre- because while both this and Descent couldn’t be more different thematically, both games were (at least in my biased opinion) leaders of a new genre that has only recently seen some new life since the very inception of it back in the ’90s. The remaster does not stray from the original formula, instead only facelifting the long-since-abandoned PC version, which has been left to be remade by the fans (producing a version without the memorable sountrack, and stylistic HUD elements.)
– Real player with 52.2 hrs in game
Overload
Overload is a Six Degrees of Freedom first person shooter with a single player story mode, replayable challenge modes with leaderboard, and online multiplayer. If you enjoyed Descent, you will enjoy this. But why? What about this game is special?
- The Nostalgia
The moment you teleport into Ymir Outpost and start moving around, you already begin to recall the feeling of the original series. The first secret you discover. The first robot that pops out of a secret room after you trigger it. The first time a Scorpion surprises you. The first cryotubes you rescue. The first secret level you find. You will remember everything you loved about the original game as you get introduced to some of the new concepts that Overload brings to the table.
– Real player with 942.0 hrs in game
The crew from the classic Descent games returns for a modern incarnation of the 6-degrees-of-freedom games we all know and love. There are three primary game modes available:
Single Player Campaign
Much like the old-school shooters it draws influence from, the biggest draw in this game is easily the single player campaign. The Cronus Frontier campaign is no-nonsense, fast-paced action. While a little bit shorter compared to the classics of old, the overall level design and difficulty balance is much more polished. With five selectable difficulty levels, both directionally-challenged newbies and challenge-seeking veterans should be able to find some enjoyment here. The upgrade system offers a nice bit of flexibility to your playstyle and nicely rewards those with a keen eye for secrets. My only criticisms are that I found most of the boss fights to be somewhat underwhelming, and that some players might find the lack of mission variety to grow a bit repetitive by the end.
– Real player with 745.2 hrs in game
AquaNox
TL:DR Aquanox is the kind of game you call a solid 6. Its not great and has lots of flaws, but it’s decent for a romp.(also see my final verdinct, pros and cons at the end)
To start off with the visuals. They were ok then, and they are passable for their age, but I think they could do better even back in the day when the game came out.
Soundwise the game is average with ok-ish sounds for weapons, good sounds for torpedoes and a repetitious soundtrack.
Voiceacting is wierd. It’s exaggerated in a cartoonish way in some instances, while its good in some others.
– Real player with 28.6 hrs in game
This has been a game I’ve wanted to play for a very long time, but just couldn’t seem to find the time. There always seemed something better. I eventually decided that today was the day, and have now finished it in around 20ish hours.
The game is all set underwater in the watery realm of the Earth’s oceans. Being set 3 to 5 km under the water, there is still light, somehow, which is where the game derives much of its aesthetic charm, the rippling patterns of light on everything. If it wasn’t for that, the low-poly models and simplistic textures would look quite bland.
– Real player with 25.2 hrs in game
Porsche Hall of Legends VR
I play alot of VR apps that are basically just commercials for really rich people who are interested in a fancy car, homes, or air travel. People think because you have VR hat that you are rich. I’m dirt poor. I own several thousand dollars of student loan debt that I refuse to pay off. This, and other life stressers require me to indulge in this cybernetic escapism, even though I still feel jealous and bad when I’m inside something like this. It’s pretty god though There is a talking robot, a big hub environment, and 4-5 various car showrooms with some interesting models and videos and narration.
! It ends at some point too. Can’t wait for the end. https://youtu.be/ynSRHCRGM7E
– Real player with 1.0 hrs in game
Eh, it’s cool I guess. I frequently play racing games (Forza Horizon) and it is interesting to see some of the Porsche cars fully modeled right from your room.
The only complaint from me is that you are able to move inside of things, which makes me go a bit bog-eyed.
It is good if you are looking for a short VR experience about cars though.
I’d recommend this.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game