Overload - Spiritual Sequel to Descent, from the original developers

Yeah, that’s the main key. Especially since on Ace difficulty, you take more damage, and blue armor power-ups heal you less, it’s really key not to get hit. That’s fine for the early enemies, who fire slow moving projectiles. But later enemies fire almost-instant hit guns and fast missiles at you (by level 7), so it’s pretty key to try to prevent them from firing by using missiles.

Started on Ace and I think I’m in love

<old school d1/d2/d3 player for years>

I started with M/K but I am looking at the Thrustmaster HotasX gathering dust that I bought for Elite - which I abandoned playing

Will Hotas setup work? I have to move my strafe keys to the hat switch. And get banking to the twist of the stick.

The problem is that I’ve never really used HOTAS. I had (still have 5 actually) 3DPro’s and used in combination of M/K.

boy do I suck with a joystick! This is going to require me to drop down several levels in difficulty until I get my muscles trained. It has been too many years w/out a joystick!

Thanks though - it was pretty painless setup, doing a lot of remapping to try to find what my brain / hands remember. lol.

I found the second clearance level key last night. Now I just need to find the second clearance level door somewhere. Level 7 is really big and confusing. A lot of the corridors that lead into caves look the same to me. But then I think, wait, maybe they don’t look the same, maybe I’m just in the same corridor and cave where I was before?

I’m very lost in this level, and having to rely more and more on my guidebot. Thank god for the guide-bot.

I found the map to be good to orient yourself, as it marks in yellow the unexplored areas.

I got to the end of level 7 a couple of nights ago, and was banging my head against that boss. My god, I thought, this is impossible isn’t it?

But last night, I got into a groove. Long story short, I’m on Titan now. God, that felt good.

Oh yeah, I meant 5. I don’t know why I jumped to thinking it was 7. And yes, I’m on Titan Observatory now. The enemies with the reflex cannon are weak, but man that reflex cannon is a pain in the ass.

I finished the first Titan level today. Onward and upward! The new enemies in it were pretty tough. Especially the ones that fire the small missiles, the Super Goblins.

I love this campaign by the way. It’s really designed well to showcase each of the robot enemies in turn as you play through each level. The game is a series of flying and shooting at robots, obviously, but none of the levels ever feel like you’re repeating the same thing over and over.

For example, the current level I’m doing is really challenging because they introduced the robots that fire homing missiles at you, and also the little ninja robots that sneak in and out of view to take a few potshots at you. This makes this whole level feel completely different from what has come before.

And it validates my reasons for not playing Challenge mode yet. I’m really happy with the way I’m being introduced to all these robots. I can tackle challenge mode once I’m done with the campaign.

I found a secret level inside Titan Workshop. Basically it warps me to a challenge level, but only starring the autobots that I’ve already discovered in the main campaign so far. My objective is to kill 40 auto-bots, but the best I’ve gotten is 21. The nice thing is that if I decide to quit here, you get a skill point when you reach 20 kills. But I keep loading my saved game and trying it again. It’s very addictive! I can see that challenge mode is going to be digital crack for me.

I reached 25 kills on that Titan Workshop Secret level but then time ran out. TIME RAN OUT. So not only do you have to get 40 kills, you have to somehow do it really fast. No way can I do that. I’m out. 25 kills isn’t bad for the amount of time you’re given. Maybe I can get that up to the lower 30s if I really hurry, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to kill 40 in that time. Not without using some superweapons or something.

Actually, can I use my superweapons? The devestator missile and the Nova? If I use them in the secret level, are they gone when I leave the secret level and get back to Titan Workshop?

Well, I do use missiles, I just try to stick to dumbfires, the little small rapidfires and the homing missiles. I usually need things like my Devestators or Novas for the end of the regular levels, which is why I wasn’t sure if I should use them in the secret level.

This game has a freakin’ shotgun you guys. I wonder why they never thought of it in the original Descent trilogy.

I have to admit it, finally, but I think Ace difficulty is starting to become a little too hard. It was a really good difficulty setting for me at the beginning of the game, but then became harder and harder and harder, and now it’s crossing the line into too hard in Titan Workshop.

I’m sure I’ll make it past this level, if only barely, but it does not portend glad tidings for future levels. Or start saving the game more often, even though that risks saving myself into unwinnable situations.

My diabolical plan to save all my Nova missiles for the reactor at the end of Titan Workshop failed hilariously last night. I had 5 Nova missiles by the end of the level, and I fired one at the reactor once I got the reactor’s shields down. And it took off about 5% of the reactor’s health bar. Hahahah. Joke’s on me.

Not only that, the Nova takes forever to get to the reactor as it’s a really slow missile. So there’s no way for me to even fire 5 of them before getting killed by the constantly spawning autobots. And even if I did fire all 5 of them, it would only take the reactor down to about 75% health. So yeah, I guess the new plan tonight will be to try to take out the autobots with the Nova missiles while I work on the reactor with my guns, which take it down much faster.

I spent a couple of hours trying to wrangle that reactor room tonight. And more importantly, to try to get to the exit once the reactor is down and the doors open near the exit to let in additional enemies at a moment where I’m always already close to death.

Titan Workshop down.

Titan Forge is next. Two new robot enemies. Gulp.

I looked up a list of levels on the internet, and it turns out, I’ll be at the half-way point in terms of levels once I finish Titan Forge. However, since the levels get more and more complex as you go along, I’d say I won’t really be at the half-way point yet, even after Titan Forge.

So this is a pretty massive game. As long as they can keep up the enemy and level variety like they’ve been doing so far, they should be able to keep it feeling fresh.

I wonder if they’re going to eventually have outdoor areas like in Descent 3? Those didn’t really work for me in D3. They did in the beginning. But eventually I got to a point in D3 where I just couldn’t advance forward anymore because I was in this huge outdoor area, and the AI for the bots is too good at dodging in outdoor areas. If you shoot long range lasers at the enemy, they would just easily dodge it. You could shoot them with the physical ammo guns from far away, but with limited ammo available, I soon ran out of it. And if I tried to get close enough to shoot bots with lasers, I’d get overwhelmed pretty fast. D3 was the only Descent campaign I was never able to finish because it was just too hard for me. And I blame the outdoor areas for that.

I made a lot of good progress on Titan Forge tonight. I feel like I’m finally making some good progress in the level. What’s amazing about this level is that I can play for a couple of hours, and then look at the map, and realize all I really did was clear two cave areas and a little off-shoot cave area.

I finally found myself in a room where I’m shooting at some generators (probably just shielding something) but there’s a new enemy shooting mines at me, that slowly home in on my position and kill me. It’s funny being on the other side of those mines. I thought they were useless at first, but you were right upthread, once you get the upgrade to make those mines last longer they become a great weapon.

I had stopped playing this because my PC gaming chair has been getting more and more uncomfortable. It was just too painful to sit down to play a game anymore.

Well, yesterday I was given a relatively new office chair at work, which I happily brought home. I’m back baby! PC gaming still isn’t as comfortable as couch gaming, but at least it’s not actively painful anymore. Woohoo!

Last I played Overload was August 5th, so I spent a bunch of time being really lost today.

Nothing fancy. When I was in Seattle, I had a more comfortable office chair from Office Depot. But this is the most comfortable one I’ve had in years and years:

The cushion makes it so that I’m not constantly aware of sitting on my butt bones!