Overload - Spiritual Sequel to Descent, from the original developers

I played some more yesterday. The combination of avoiding the melee robots while trying to shoot the other robots, while also trying to dodge incoming laser fire; it just all hits a satisfying nerve. I just love it.

I learned in the VR thread from @schurem that there’s a new Overload Playable teaser.

It’s coming out on May 31st!

Wooo!

Trailer time.

Is this a mouse & kb game, or joystick?

I played some of the clones/‘inspired by’ games and while they can nail the exploration side, they usually fail at combat. Narrow corridors where you can only fly onwards or backwards, poor variety of enemies, which also are hardly identifiable, stuff like that isn’t conductive to good gameplay.

Where did I ever get the idea that this game was primarily multiplayer, and that single-player mode was an afterthought? I’ve been kind of ignoring this game because of that, but after reading a few posts here, and then checking out the Steam page, it looks like SP has received just as much attention as MP. I swear I read somewhere a couple years back that SP was looking pretty tacked-on.

Maybe there was another similar game I’m thinking of?

Anyway, if this can deliver the same feelings I got while playing the Original Descents 1 and 2 back in the 90’s, I am so totally in. Time to dig out my joystick and download the demo!

I am claustrophobic and directionally challenged. I did not like the original game LOL.

Dude, that was half the fun!

You’re thinking of

And yeah, I backed out of that kickstarter once I found out they might have bought the Descent name, but the game was going to be some kind of multiplayer battle arena/MOBA type thing.

Overload is the real Descent successor.

Ah, that’s it then. Thanks!

remember that logitech controller that was supposed to be 3d and stuff… i guess it sucked?

Ok I had to do some searching, but it wasn’t logitech… it was called Space Orb 360…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceOrb_360

Oh yeah, I remember seeing ads for that in all the PC gaming magazines back in the 90’s. Back when those magazines would typically run to 400 pages, and I would have such fun looking through those ads and seeing all that crazy inventive stuff companies would come out with back in the PC’s Golden Age.

Can confirm the SpaceOrb did NOT work well.

OMG, thanks so much! I was in the same boat as @Giles_Habibula in that I completely conflated these two games. I was wondering why you guys sounded so excited about some dopey multiplayer arena game just because it was riffing on Descent’s six-degrees-of-freedom.

-Tom

Sweeeeet. I can’t wait to play it tonight.

First impressions:

  • On Ace difficulty (second hardest), the first level starts out fairly easy, but the second level is quite a bit harder. It’s the same enemies, but harder level design. For example, more rooms that are setup as ambushes where multiple bots come after you at the same time.
  • I finished the first level but only found less than half the secrets? Oh man, I apparently suck at finding secrets in this. The playable teaser’s secrets were much easier to find.
  • I’m really enjoying playing with the controller. Left stick is WASD, Right Stick is mouse, LB is to strafe up, LT is to strafe down. The combination of those 3 things is pretty intuitive, I’m finding.
  • I’m trying not to save scum. Of course, I also keep forgetting to save, so that’s not all on purpose. There is no quicksave option on the controller, it’s only on the keyboard (F8), so saving has to be a pretty deliberate thing, going into the menu.
  • All in all a very vanilla experience so far, not as good as the playable teaser, but I think it’s a slower build up since this is the full game. Once the more interesting robot enemies get introduced, things should get a lot more interesting.

I finished the second location. Good god, how many moons does Saturn have? I’m onto my 3rd moon now.

On the second location, I destroyed the reactor and got out in time. But then I looked at the number of people I rescued, and secrets I got, and it was pathetic, so I reloaded to a time before I destroyed the reactor and tried scouring the level again. I found the other people to rescue. I just hadn’t realized what they looked like. And I found another secret. But despite searching for a long time, 3 secrets still couldn’t be found. That’s despite repeatedly looking at the map, and trying to fire at every wall. The secrets are crazy-well-hidden in this one. That’s going to bug the shit out of me. Especially considering that the secrets contain the power up things you need in order to improve your ship.

Just tried the tutorial level to see if I liked gamepad or mouse/keyboard more (DEFINITELY mouse/keyboard), but wow did they nail this. Unsurprising, given their history, but still, I’m so giddy about it. Maybe they’ll make a sequel that’s like Freespace 2 but called something else!!!

What? It could happen.

Ohhhhh where are you reading this?