"Just amazing, way ahead of its time"

In late 1994 (shareware) and early-to-mid 1995 (registered version and some necessary upgrades) Parallax and Interplay released one of the best, most creative games of the time: a first-person shooter like Doom before it, but with a spaceship, full 360 degree rotation, and polygonal objects instead of just sprites (true, Star Fox on the SNES and others had managed this, but not with the same degree of texture mapping and just plain competence.)

You must pilot the Pyro-GX through 27 levels (and secret areas, should you find them,) searching for the keycards to get to each region of the mines, and blowing up the reactors, or in the case of Levels 7 and 27, bosses, then escaping in due time. You are aided by wireframe maps and briefings, along with shields, energy (either in centers, to get you up to 100 no matter what, or powerups, which potentially could bring you even higher,) cloaking, invulnerability (not only from enemy fire, but from lava and from your own explosives, allowing you to get a little closer,) an arsenal of lasers, rapid-fire vulcan ammo, and missiles. You could play on Trainee, Rookie, Hotshot, Ace or Insane mode; each mode contains progressively fewer and less potent powerups, less escape time, and more, faster, and smarter robots. Even the Hotshot mode was arguably just as difficult as Ultra-Violence in the Doom games of the time, because of the additional directions of fire and modes of damage. The coloring is strong for the time; one 256-color set is used, with various degrees of lighting depending on level structure and enemy fire. A nameless bald man (to be named Dravis in the later games) briefs you on your PTMC responsibilities, and you are shown the enemies before you face them. The textures are of good quality for the time, and frequently have TV captions of robots or the PTMC.

The AdLib music is mostly outstanding for the time; there are 22 level songs (recycling the first five in levels 23-27,) along with title, ending, escape and credits songs. They establish mostly the dark, low-key mood of the mines, but are also occasionally upbeat. The sound effects for weapons, robots, doors (like the metallic and chain ones especially,) powerups, and explosions are all appropriate; there is even a digitized "Self Destruct Sequence Activated...Self Destruct in T-minus 10, 9, 8..." when you are escaping from the mine; and should you feel the need to bend the rules with certain, er, key sequences, you are even told "Cheater!" and your score is zeroed.

Descent pushed the average computer of the time to such a great degree that it put in adjustments in quality levels in case it ran slow; one could configure it to use fewer sounds and put less detail into textures.

There were even level add-ons created by fans; in level editors, you could find that key doors didn't have to have colored lights around them, that textures didn't have to fit neatly and could be wildly contorted, that an energy center didn't have to have yellow sparks and squares around it, and so on. Sound editors like DTX could also change the graphics and audio.

It's a shame that this classic doesn't even properly play in a DOS shell, but if you find the full version somewhere and have the D1X driver you'll be fine. It was many steps ahead of all the other FPSs and almost all other games of the time, both technologically and in terms of flat-out fun.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 02/23/07