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!
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.
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.
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.
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!!!
Phew, I finally finished that last section of Skoll with that generator. I kept going in and getting my ass kicked while looking for a way to turn off the shielding for the auto-bot generators. I finally gave up on looking for the protection and started going in heavy on the generator itself. I have to admit, that was a really thrilling ending to that level.
I got 3 out of 15 secrets in that level. Wow. Again, just the scale of this, the sheer amount of secrets I’m missing is surprising to me.
Man, the next level is really something. I kind of wish I’d upgraded my ship’s energy so that headlights and flares didn’t cost me energy. There’s a lot of dark tunnels to navigate in this one, and I always get lost. Especially since I get up and down switched around all the time on this level.
I usually quit every time I die, since I’m never sure when to save in this level. Did I take too much damage? Should I save anyway? Nah, best not save with only 54 armor. 20 minutes later, I’m dead, and I don’t want to go through so much since the last save again, so I quit out. But then after I come back after a few hours, it’s good to do a fresh run again. And the level is confusing enough that I still can’t picture where I’m going.
I think I’m fine with making slower progress on Ace difficulty, for now. Can you change difficulty on the fly? Do you have to start the game over? Or can you just restart a level on a different difficulty?
It might be interesting to try the game on Hotshot.
One thing I don’t like on Ace difficulty is that the blue Armor power up only heals my armor about 7 points I think. Surely that’s better in Hotshot difficulty? 7 Armor seems really low for a power up.
On the other hand, if it was much higher, I guess I would be going around with near full health all the time. On Ace, the fact that the health power up heals so little means I’m almost constantly low on health, which adds to the excitement.
