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
Read More: Best 6DOF First-Person Games.
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
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 Classic 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
Pixelpunk XL
This game feels really good to control, it sounds cool, its aesthetic is really, really nice, and the missile launcher is incredibly satisfying to wield.
My main complaints with the game involve the enemies, and the lack of a map. The entrances to other rooms are pretty small, and it can be sorta difficult to actually find them. Along with that, the enemies have a lot of health, either that or your starting gun just isn’t very good. I find myself using the rockets, and just hoping that I find more rockets, or a different weapon. The kamikaze enemies are extremely annoying, as they trail you, and it’s often difficult to turn around and shoot them. Considering that they explode upon death, this makes it almost nigh impossible to kill them without taking damage, after they’ve locked onto you.
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best 6DOF Procedural Generation Games.
I had a great time once I cracked open Pixelpunk XL.
PPXL has super smooth controls, and you feel totally free when flying around, always anticipating what the next room will have in store for you. I played for almost 4 hours straight on the first play, the only thing dragging me away from the screen being my pregnant wife’s request for a run to the local store for food.
The random generation of levels gives a fresh feel to each play, and the option to retry a generated level after losing, or generating a new level is great.
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game
Gravity in Space
I played it in alpha already, it’s a really good, sometimes tricky game. Fun to play with friends :)
– Real player with 3.4 hrs in game
Great game! the physics are amazing, graphics look good, just not that many features. as of now, there aren’t many people playing the multi player, but it’s a blast when there are.
would recommend
– Real player with 1.9 hrs in game
Move Forward
Good fun if you’re up for the challenge and occasionally yelling at the screen.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
Thick Air
Love it! I consider myself a pretty competent HOTAS pilot, but I find it impossible to win any race… Best position I’ve done is 5 of 8. I love a challenge and I can see many hours trying to master this. I would’ve happily paid 3 times more for it.
– Real player with 7.6 hrs in game
This game is still in the begining of the way, but obviously it has a good future. At least it is clearly getting better with updates. If before it was almost impossible for me to win the race, but now controls are pretty comfortable.
Graphics still has low fps on my machine, and the GUI should be polished, but the game has a good potential. It would be interesting to try it with the VR headset (I played on a normal monitor).
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
NeonXSZ
It’s not descent, so get that out of your head. It’s way faster pace, and includes millions of upgrade combinations with hundreds of different play styles based on what loot you get and how you combine it together and upgrade. This is a very unique game in that the upgrades are so varied for both the player, the friendlies, and the hostiles, but they are mostly all the same sets! If you can do it, an enemy might do it too.
There are many lovingly made details, good progression that keeps the pace up to whatever speed you choose, and some pretty tough puzzles.
– Real player with 179.5 hrs in game
I’ve been playing and testing this game for over a year, since April 2013. I was the first pre-alpha tester and I’ve submitted the most bug reports. I know the game. When I started it was great, and it has just been improved a lot in every area since then. I have played for hundreds of hours if you qount all the non-steam dev builds and while I have tried a lot of different ship loadouts there are still many ships and loadouts that I want to try but haven’t because new things to try is added all the time :) And this is true even after I’ve played past the levels where new qontent is unlocked for every progression!
– Real player with 109.7 hrs in game
Teleball
Teleball is the world’s first first-person Virtual Reality platformer! Throw Teleballs to navigate over 30 environments dodging over 60 traps, obstacles, and more!
Features:
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Designed from the ground up for accessibility and VR friendliness!
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30+ levels each adding new mechanics across 6 different zones!
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Use 8 different Teleballs to navigate environments and avoid over 60 obstacles and traps!
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Try to beat the developer’s time trials and par scores to earn secret levels and mechanics!
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Customize your experience to suit your needs with sliders for strength and ease-of-use features tailor-made for VR!
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Accessibility features like colorblind mode, left-handed mode, and fear-of-heights mode!
BLAST-AXIS
Edit: Added some gameplay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMYDIrcV0D0
As a big fan of 6DOF games i had to give this game a try.
So i played the free demo 20 minutes then instantly bought the game !
Really good gameplay, tight controls and great sense of speed.
The level design is quite good too with nice music and great atmosphere within the levels.
BLAST-AXIS also deliver many satisfying weapons to use and also give you the choice to play in first person or third person (worth mentioning as it’s not always the case in many other games).
– Real player with 11.6 hrs in game
In this game you play as a cute little maintenance robot fighting blobby blue aliens who have invaded phobos for some irrelevant reason. It isn’t the most polished 6DOF (descent-like) shooter, but it probably is the most unique and original, and it might just be the most fun. The game’s main strengths are solid level design and a diverse and fun arsenal.
There are six weapons in the game but thanks to ammo types and alt-fire modes these unfold into… a lot of weapons, I can’t do the math. For example, the “tube” mortar launcher has three ammo types: flame rounds, grenades, and flak shells. Drilling down further, the flak shells can either be fired in “burst” mode, acting like a shrapnel shotgun, or in “fuze” mode, which fires a single projectile that explodes with AOE damage when it hits a wall or enemy. There’s a tool for every job, and each weapon is a good mix of quirky and powerful which gives them a real sense of personality. They’re your friends and you come to love them as you spend time hanging out. The cluster missiles in particular are an absolute joy.
– Real player with 9.4 hrs in game
STRAYLIGHT
The heart of this game is its locomotion. It is intuitive in the beginning, yet has some intricacies you can learn to use later in the game. I am somewhat sensitive to other types of VR movement, but this one did not affect me at all. Would be a good introductory game to folks new to VR.
I quite enjoy the aesthetic of the game. You do feel quite alone and you can lose yourself in the visuals and music while casually hopping around the orbs. The level design is nice in that you can either slowly navigate while enjoying the sites, or try to rocket through it as fast as possible, if that’s your thing.
– Real player with 26.1 hrs in game
Full disclosure: I know one of the devs (so my expectations were pretty low… :P j/k), and I probably wouldn’t have picked it up otherwise, but MAN am I glad I did!
This game is super fun! Launching myself at top speed through the levels and whipping around turns is exhilarating, and despite the crazy acceleration I never once felt motion sick.
While it might seem a little short at the moment if you’re just trying to get to the end of each level, going back to collect all the cubes is a fun challenge, and trying to reach the top of the leaderboard on each level has eaten up more of my time than I care to admit. Mastering the movement and physics is rewarding and finding routes and shortcuts through each level really made me feel clever.
– Real player with 18.7 hrs in game