Descent 2

Released: 1995 (Shareware), 1996 (Registered)
Developed: Parallax Software
Published: Interplay
Genre: 1-8 Player Flight Based FPS
Taglines: "This can't be happening!"

I played the 3-Level Interactive Demo Version of this game and it was pretty fun as its was nothing compared to the 24 More Mining Colonies that you'll go through as you shoot your way through an army of Infected Mining Robots and to the Main Reactor of each Mining Colony that's operated by the PTMC outside the Solar System and are Light Years away from Earth.

The Gameplay is the same as Descent 1 but the Story continues where after you destroyed all Malware Infected Mining Colonies from Mercury to Pluto. Following this ordeal, your Pyro-GX Spacecraft is infected with the same Malware that caused the Mining Drones to attack everything and everyone. Worst still, since bringing the Malware to Earth will do more harm than good, the PTMC has you dock with a Space Colony, outfit your ship with a Experimental Warp Drive then assign you to destroy even more Mining Colonies that are showing the same problems. To assist you, the PTMC has a Guide Bot Drone if you're willing to have its support along with an Afterburner Engine to help you get out of tight binds, a Headlight that Lights up Dark Mining Colonies where there's no power, an Energy to Shields Converter when you need more Health and Mapper to reveal the entity of the Mining Colony.

Overall, Descent 2 is quite a pretty good Cinematic Flight Based Shooter where you have total and complete Freedom where you move about in the mining colonies and its high action gameplay is pretty nice as its a challenging game as you get into the later mining colonies.

Last but not least, you can also play Descent with one of the Source Ports such as D2X Rebirth, D2X Redux or even D2X-XL. There are 5 Different Versions of Descent 2 that I am aware of being Descent 2 Registered, Descent 2 Interactive Demo (3 Level), Descent 2 Test Flight (Also 3 Level), Descent 2: Destination Quartzon (8 Level) & Descent 2 Vertigo (Descent 2 Expansion)

That will be all, Material Defender. Prepare For Descent 2.

Descent II is definitely a bit dated, but it's still one of my favorite games! The six-degrees-of-freedom flight doesn't get old, and the jumpscares from the robots that just crept into your blind spot keep you on the edge of your seat. This game is well worth coming back to after all these years.

Sure, I'm wearing my nostalgia goggles...but I really do love this game.

An absolute classic, although 6 degrees of freedom (and more bobbing than the first Descent) makes for 6 degrees of nausea sometimes. This game can be confusing, disorienting and wildly spike in difficulty, but my goodness it was fun in the 90's and it's a blast still. It was worth pulling my joystick out of its storage box for this but it plays decently well on keyboard and mouse or keyboard-only, although the controls take some getting used to (kind of a mix of 90's FPS like DOOM and a flight simulator).

As the Material Defender (which might be the most gloriously dystopian name in video game history), you go through mines blowing up reactors or boss robots, first collecting 3 keys, with the help of the great messiah, the Guide Bot. And the great Satan, the Thief bot, is a huge pain.

Having established that the game is an awesome 90's classic, the Steam release is... an overpriced DOSBox-emulated version. I mean, it plays the game as it was pretty much at release, which is fine by me, but $10 for a game that old with no QoL improvements is steep. There are better fan-made remasters that are better ideas, but if you just want to play it as-is and absolutely want it in your Steam library, then go ahead and buy! I wasn't disappointed.

But if you want more, guides on Steam and elsewhere will get you many, many more levels beyond the 30 (24 + 6 secret levels) single-player levels in the base campaign and a better multiplayer experience.

Used to be one of my favorite PC games.

Absolute classic. Gameplay is smooth and fun. One of the early 6-degrees-of-freedom games, and improves on everything the original Descent does. 6 boss robots to fight, and a big variety of enemy robots. Try to find all the secret levels!

The game is great, but I want to draw special attention to the soundtrack. I used to put the game disc into my CD player and bump these rad industrial tracks all the time. This absolutely rips.

Best played on a joy-stick! Or probably a gamepad. Now that I think of it, I should try that.
Anyway, it controls terribly with just mouse and keys, so I would say to either git gud or play with the bindings until you have a sort of competent setting! I was using WASD and the arrow keys for all my controls. True '90s fashion.

I loved this game as a kid. My dad really liked playing this game with his joystick controller. I was and still am really bad at it. I used the CD-ROM in my walkman and I could listen to the soundtrack by doing that. Sick F***king soundtrack. I still sometimes tune into that weirdly menacing German alt metal. Makes my job kinda fun sometimes to tune into it and think that I'm a space-fighter pilot trying to destroy... bad AI? Evil robots? WTF is this game even about?

You can name the guide-bot. Name it "Bob" like my brother and I did when we were 8.

Great gameplay with 360 degree rendering. Good weapons and evasive strategies.

Love this game so fun bring back memories

you know IM BAAD, IM BAAD, shamonn AH

this game sucked me dry

ain't nothin' gonna break my stride, nobody's gonna slow me down oh no ive got to keep on mooviing