"Another victim of the "Me no play this anymore" effect."

Many games have claimed that they can cause motion sickness. Quake claimed it. Doom claimed it. Even Wolfenstein 3d claimed it. But only one game I can think of can actually make you dizzy, and that's because of the fact you can move anywhere you want. Up and down, side to side, even upside down. This game is called Descent, and is a forgotten classic. Currently I'm dizzy with rage that newer computers can't play this masterpiece anymore.

You are the material defender, mercenary for hire. A mysterious man named Dravis has hired you to stop an invasion. This invasion is caused by a master robot that has taken over a multitude of mines across the solar system, along with the robots within. Your objective is to pilot your ship through 27-30 mines(3 are secret), destroy them, and escape alive.

The graphics are standard at the time, with pixels showing. But they always did the job, and had many features not seen in most games back then. These little features give the game a style of it's own, creating something the same, yet unique.

The music has a variety of tunes, ranging from heavy tunes to calm tunes, such as the credits theme. A minor downfall is that the music disappears during the 2nd third of the game, and doesn't come back until late in the game. The sounds all perfectly represent what they are supposed to, and sound great.

While the controls can be disorienting at first, they will become second nature before long. Control is made using both the keyboard and mouse, and can be configured to what suits you.

The premise of the game is deceptively simple; You enter the mine, take out the robots, rescue the prisoners held in cells for extra points, collect the keys, destroy the reactor, and escape in time. Even though you collect a multitude of weapons, including plasma guns and homing missiles, you will likely be outmatched by the different robots. Ranging from weak yellow drones to gigantic robots firing fusion lasers at you, these robots will no doubt dwindle your lives down if you aren't wary. If you look in the right places you may find cells holding prisoners in them, waving for help. You may either rescue them and get points, or leave them to die in the mines. Be warned if you save them and lose a life before exiting the mine they will die, and you will get no bonus. After navigating through the confusing maze of the mines, collecting keys to unlock doors, you will reach the reactor room. Your main objective now is to eliminate the reactor. However, the reactor fights back, firing balls of nuclear fission at your ship. After destroying the core, you will hear a computer voice telling you that you have triggered a self-destruct sequence. You must escape the mine before the countdown reaches zero, or you will be vaporized. Somewhere in the mine is an exit door that will never open until the reactor blows. You must make it back to it will dealing with the shaking of the mine. Please note that it is not necessary to escape the mine, but you will lose a life along with all your equipment as a consequence. Your main objective is to destroy all infected mines as you travel throughout the solar system's different planets, and confront the master robot on Pluto.

The game is hard no matter what the difficulty you choose is, but it still makes a difference. As you move up the difficulty setting, robots get faster, smarter, and fire more damaging bullets as well as more at once. If you choose insane, you will deal with usually weak yellow drones who fire fireballs at a machine gun's pace, 10 at once, and that's only the weakest enemy.

The game is always fun, and you will likely want to try again after you have won at a higher difficulty, and to get a higher score.

If you are still not convinced to buy this game, then download the 7 level shareware and see for yourself the work of art that is here.

Good luck Material Defender, and prepare for Descent.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/22/05