Descent 3

This was an excellent game back during its day, but this port is in shambles. The Linux/MacOS bug that corrupts your save file is still there, and on switching to Proton, I got even more flagrant errors which dropped me to the desktop before I even reached the main menu.

This is a beefy machine which I also use for video editing, so unless an RTX 30 on a 4.0 GHz Ryzen 7 with 32 GB of high-speed RAM sounds light to you, it definitely isn't a hardware thing. If you buy, then buy informed.

If you are the Descent fan, Descent 3 is OK.

Sound wouldn't work, totally choked.
AND THEN, I found that you must set sound to "Your Card" or "Primary Setting" . It works! On my 2014 ROG mega laptop anyways.
Love this game! This port is pretty. Maybe even good.
P.S. 10 years is closer to accurate than 10 minutes. 8^S
GG

In the year 2000 it was one of the few games playable in 3D mode.

Hardware:
ASUS V3800 32 MB VGA + ASUS VR-100 shutter glases + CRT monitor with 120Hz interlaced mode support.

Unfortunately it was possible to play only first 3 levels in 3D mode, then the game flew out.
Assume the developers didn't test the game completely. There were small possibility that many people could play in 3D mode in those times, I think.

And Now for Something Completely Different.

The Descent Classic Collection Bundle is missing 4th part of Descent series - "Descent 3: Mercenary", an addon Campaign!

What a disappointment. I had so much hope after 1 let me relive my nostalgia to a satisfying conclusion and 2 ended on a tough cliffhanger after a rough experience. But after about a hundred mostly-unsuccessful attempts to start this, I'm not sure what else to do.

About half the people from online help forums say they can't get this game working, no matter what they do. The other half say the game works fine, no problems, just as long as you do five things ... and those five things are different for everyone. I spent hours trying everything I could find, from changing setup settings to trying patches to entering command lines to disabling my background themes. Doing so got me from error messages every time to simply crashing.

The frustrating thing is that the game doesn't crash roughly 1 in every 10 times I start it ... but then it crashes opening the first level, or crashes exiting the map, or crashes changing a setting. I managed to play the training mission and that raised my hopes, and I've played partway through the first level several times but then it crashes somewhere and all progress is lost. And I've heard that many people experience crashes again on exiting levels. I guess playing this might work if I saved literally every minute?

Descent 1 and 2 worked off the shelf with the help of DOSBox, but this game is a nightmare to run. Whether it works or not just seems completely random, and that doesn't help when testing things to make it work.

Doubly disappointing is the fact that what I've seen of the game so far looks good. Sure, the experience is different. They might have rewritten the code from scratch when the company broke up because the ship feels completely different to fly. It's not bad, but it's different. And the map isn't just a mess of lines, and the headlamp doesn't eat through energy, and the guide bot can attach to your ship, and the ship goes "outside" now ... There's just so many interesting and good changes, so I don't mind a small difference in feel.

Also they're doing a story now! There's a movie where the pilot learns the warp core malfunction was indeed caused by the shady corp, so now he wants to get his money and a little revenge. That's all I needed!

Overall, if I could get this to work, I think I would recommend it. If I ever get it to not crash 9 out of 10 times rather than 1 out of 10, I might change my review to a positive. Who knows, maybe this game will work fine for you and you'll have a good time. But I just can't recommend something that doesn't work.

Originally released in 1999, Descent 3 is a flight action FPS game where you have full 360 degrees of movement and it feels so good to control.
The weapons feel great, the action is fast and challenging and the old school chunky graphics look clean and stylish on a modern display. I'm impressed how well this all holds up.
The levels are huge and it could be easy to get lost but thankfully you have a little guide bot pal you can deploy who shows you the way and even extinguishes flames when you get set on fire.

The original controls are weird but you can easily remap them to WASD and have full mouse look. The game doesn't like running at modern resolutions though and i'm not sure if there is a fix.
As it stands the game does look good but you might have to play it with black borders to the left and right of your screen. I play PC games on the couch with my main 50 inch display though so it's not really a big deal.
The game also runs straight out of the box with zero bugs or crashes which is nice for such an old game on Steam. Not all games from this era are so lucky.
It includes the expansion packs from back in the day as well which is neat.

This game and series desperately need a remaster!

Descent 3 is one of the oldest games I remember playing as a kid, my family and I would play this every week on Saturday nights, usually Anarchy mode, much to my chagrin, but occasionally co-op mode, I still remember in Anarchy, switching to rear view and seeing the toothy smile of a mega missile XD

the original windows version is absolute pain to setup
the new mac and linux versions by icculus are great though as they require very little

update: with the source code releasing setting the game up on windows (and in fact anything with a loaf of bread for graphics lmao) will probably be easy as 1-2-3

This game is unbelievably fun. I can't believe I haven't tried it before. I can't decide if this is the best DESCENT or not. I love 1 and 2. But this is something special.

This just does not work. Game loads, but no sound. Then, just crashes after title screen. OS: Windows 11

Games for early Windowses aged the worst out of all PC games in regards to making them run on modern systems: DOS games and earlier are easily emulated with DOSBox and whatnot, and newer games tend to account better for constantly progressing hardware and software environments. What I want to say is, expect to jump a few hurdles while making the game run with acceptable video, audio and control setups. Throughout the play, it crashed on me maybe two times and the final cutscene did not play for me

While the previous two installments are practically 6DOF Doom clones, whats with all the tight corridors and quite repetitive levels and objectives, this game is great because it's trippy. Every level is huge, sprawling, unique and tries so hard to showcase its colorful lighting and procedural texture effects that each time it's a journey. Despite the scale and complexity of the levels, it is very hard to actually get lost, because levels have distinct landmarks, and you have 3D map and a very immersive direction arrow in form of the GuideBot. And while I think thereminvox should have stayed in fifties, the soundtrack is great.

Also includes the Mercenary addon with 7 huuuge levels

Excellent followup and evolution fo the first 2 games. Far better graphics wise. Though I wish they'd optimize it a bit more for ultra-widescreeen gamers. It has a satisfying conclusion for once for a trilogy. They expanded and wrapped up the story started by the first game in a satisfying way. This one also finally included some story cutscenes instead of just showing escapes and traveling.

This is a really fun and enjoyable game, however, on Linux there is a serious bug which causes corrupted save files. I cannot beat the game because of this bug. Cannot recommend this in it's current state, hope to see a fix soon.

The latest update for Linux means that the game works very well, though a few tweaks are required for general gameplay (as others have observed).
I had to disable the joystick option as it seemed to cause some strange keyboard drift when activated. The mouse sensitivity was way too low as well, so I adjusted that to 2.0.
Finally, the game supports my 16:10 screen just fine so no command-line settings required.
Highly recommended for old-school gamers!

I know it says I don't have very many hours, but Steam reads the launcher as playing the game not the game itself, as of writing this, I probably have around 8 hours in game.

Now remember, I write as someone steeped in nostalgia, since I literally grew up playing this game, so take my review with a grain of salt.

This game is pretty clunky, and is difficult to get running on modern machines, but if you can get it running to where it works okay, this game is super fun. Even after all these years, this is still one of my favorite games of all time.

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.

So I do not see a point in hating 3rd title and considering it a bad game. Yes, it is not perfect but first two games weren’t either. So, I recommend you to try Descent 3 too.

P.S. Use 3DFX to conveniently play the game on modern PC.

"All that's left is to go home, get my money, and sleep for the next two years..."
400Mhz AMD K6-II, 128MB ram, Aureal 3D, and a Voodoo 3 3000 pci card...

The best game ever made.
I played this far more than any other game that has since come out.
On 56k we had 300ms ping and were proud of it!
Had to guess their location before they got there.
If only I could go back in time when servers were full and the game was new.
Seems to run ok. This game has always continued to run well on Nvidia cards over the years. Most complaints will be from those using ATI... I mean AMD.
Using Creative Alchemy I can reenable EAX in the game too.
I was glad to see this game showing up here. I hope it gains popularity.

I am thuroughly impressed with this steam version of D3. I was playing my original installation just yesterday, and I did some testing with the steam version today, and I can say that this version is miraculously more stable than the original installation. Everything feels 100% the way it should be in game as well.

I am also pleased that this comes with the Mercenary expansion, and is properly updated to Version 1.4.

And finally, I did some testing with the multiplayer. I am acknowledging that someone else who gave a review said that he could only play with Steam friends. He is wrong. I have all of the tools necessary and ports open to run a game, and when I went to check Descent 3 Game Tracker, my game was there. I would like to add that just yesterday when I was trying to host a game, Windows Firewall was giving me problems and turning it off was the only solution. With this, I had no problems with the firewall.
I also tried it out with the D3Server tool. No problems there.

In short, I am very pleased with this stable version and I will be migrating all of my old and custom stuff to the Steam installation. That is the beauty of Descent, the fact that you can copy and paste its stuff everywhere and it'll run with it all.

Descent 3 is an old favorite of mine. I learned to mouse-aim in this game before I had played any FPSes with a mouse. Playing it again, those robots are still hard to hit. Oh and the Steam version does come with Descent 3: Mercenary expansion pack. For those unfamiliar with the game, when you start a new game, select "Descent 3: Retribution" for the original single-player campeign. (Note: The first time it automatically runs you through training)

The game plays pretty well on modern Windows as long as you configure a few things correctly:
1. Launcher->Setup->Video tab: The DirectX renderer no longer works correctly; lots of messed up textures. The Steam version comes with the Glide emulation wrapper nGlide, so Glide mode seems to work the best. You can configure nGlide with the configuration tool in the Descent 3 directory. If you set nGlide to your native resolution and aspect ratio to 4:3, it can cut down the resolution changes in the game (it changes resolutions between gameplay and menus), but looks a little distorted.
2. If you have a modern SoundBlaster, you can restore 3D sound and EAX effects by using ALchemy, although you have to do so manually. See http://www.gog.com/forum/descent_series/enabling_5_1_sound_with_alchemy. After following instructions at link, go to Launcher->Setup->Audio and select "Creative EAX".
3. While you are in setup, on the Speed tab, set the Detail to Very High. On network tab, set LAN and your internet speed; most likely it will be T1 ~1.5Mbps.
4. Game Main Menu-Options->Video tab: You can turn up resolution. 1600x1200 is native on a 1920x1200 monitor.
5. Detail tab: You should be able to crank all settings to max. If you have performance issues in outside areas, turn down the terrain detail and/or render depth.
6. Sound: Set quality to high, and quantity up.
7. General and HUD tabs: set to taste, with one caveat:
8. MOUSELOOK DOES NOT WORK! Under Options->General->Sensitivity or Options->Config->Joy/Mouse->Adjust Settings DO NOT choose Mosue Control: "Mouselook". Stick with "Flight Sim". Mouselook was an acceleration mode that was designed to assist low sensitivity mouses when the game was made. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work as intended any more, but either way is much much too sensitive to be usable. Also, in online play, Mouselook is considered cheating anyway.
8a. What does work for FPS mosuers: (Re-)Inverting the Y-rotation or pitch Axis - go to Options->Config->Joy/Mouse and click the (?) button to the left of the pitch setting, then click Invert: "Yes". This will be unintuitively "non-inverted" according to modern FPS nomenclature. Now you can have mouselook-style control that works; adjust sensitivity as desired under Adjust Settings dialog.
9. Config: An odd control scheme that I find enjoyable to use is to play the game holding the left side of a gamepad in my left hand and the mouse in my right. I configure the controls in a typical console-FPS way: Assign left stick Y-Axis to Throttle, left stick X-Axis to Slide Horiz, D-pad X to Slide Vert, D-pad Y to Bank (or if implemented as POV hat, to Slide Up & Down, Bank Left & Right), left shoulder to Afterburner. Mouse X is Heading, Mouse Y is Pitch (inverted). Mouse buttons as default: LRC as Fire Primary, Secondary, Flare; Cycle Primary and Secondary with Wheel Up/Down. Extra mouse buttons can be used with items or countermeasures. You can also configure the right side of the gamepad to duplicate these controls, so you can move your right hand between gamepad and mouse. In this case right stick Y is also Pitch (inverted) and X is Heading. You can flesh out the buttons from there.
10. Once in-game, F1 toggles a handy keyboard guide. Use F3 to toggle cockpit (I prefer without). Use "+" key (near backspace, not num-pad +) to scale up rendering to full screen size.

Phew, after all that work, enjoy a classic that still offers a challange.

I'm definitely liking this game so far. I bought and played the heck out of Descent 2, Descent: Freespace, and likewise games back in the day on my Windows 98. Sadly, I only had a demo for this game and never got to enjoy it to its full potential, until now.

This game requires some tweaking with the controls and settings when you first get it, as any older game released on Steam usually does. However, I did not have to install any patches to get it functioning properly, which was nice. (I have not tried joystick support but the mouse is way more sensitive in this one than the first two)

In case you were wondering this version released on Steam does include the "Mercenary" expansion pack as well as a few other tidbits to play around with so you won’t be missing any content or have to buy anything later.

The rest is for you to discover, will you take the Descent?

Had to get this since I put so many hours into Descent 2 multiplayer back in the day. It still has the good ol descent feeling to it, but if you want to play multiplayer you can only play with people on your steam friend's list.