Thanks @krayzkrok
I waited and it’s now available on GOG as well.
BONUS: They’re having their Summer Sale over there (ends June 18), so if you spend over $20, you get “Sunless Sea” and “Rime” for free. I already had Sunless Sea, but not Rime, so it worked out well for me.
Man, this looks like it plays just like Descent of old, which I originally played on the Mac. Blast from the past (but much prettier, and with voice acting!).
It does. It’s Descent through and through, from the tight controls to the cunning bots to the great level design. So good.
I found the reactor in Phoebe finally. Holy shit. 3 auto-bot generators that are invulnerable? Is this even possible? This seems impossible on Ace.
The combination of the bots that fire the vulcan cannon type weapon at me, and the bots that fire missiles at me, this really seems impossible.
I too died around there, trying to find the things to bring down the shields.
I did it! Woooo! That was thrilling.
It required me to get a bit lucky though. More robots generated that fire the slow moving fire, and it’s a little easier to switch back and forth between killing them and destroying the generator.
Congrats!
Yeah, I can see the power-up behind the grill, but I couldn’t find any way to get to it, even using the map. The only place I haven’t looked for an entrance where there should be one is near the auto-bot generators, and there’s no way I can live long enough there to look for an entrance if I’m not constantly killing the bots that generate. So in the end I ignored the powerup.
Surprisingly, I found all 7 skill points on this level, as well as both super-skill points. That’s despite only finding half the secrets on the level.
The fifth level (Phoebe Complex) introduces a robot type that I’ve never seen in the Descent games before. I’ve seen this type of enemy in other games, but of course the Descent AI gives a unique twist to this. It’s quite different when an enemy is good at dodging incoming fire. Very cool.
Also, this level has a boss. I don’t remember fighting many bosses in Descent. One I do remember at the end of the Descent shareware levels was really tough. I hope this one isn’t that hard. :)
The game has my recommendation. The levels are complex without being overwhelming, the combat is fluid and fun and there is a decent-ish enemy variety (although the game needs to pass the first third to see it) and the AI is better than it may seem at first. Discovering secrets in the levels like an old school game is a blast, and of course the feeling of being in a place where there is not up or down, which is the secret sauce for this type of games, is great. The difficulty progression is also adequate, around level 7-8 as krayzkrok has said the game starts being ‘serious’, needing a decent but not overwhelming skill.
The game also has an adequate duration, around a 8.5 hours campaign, not counting the endless skirmish nor multiplayer.
My only con is that that difficulty has another spike in what I think is the second-to-last level the second alien level, where things start to being too difficult, and you have to abuse too much the quicksave. At that point I wanted to lower the difficulty and finish already… but I couldn’t, there is no way to change the difficulty of a current game. :(
I tried! But it seems the level list only have the 9-10 first ones?
I made pretty good progress on Ace on the 7th level (I think, the second Phoebe level, whatever that one is). My favorite bit was finding this door, which led to a room with three closed doors, and an open door, and behind that open door was a red switch. When I shot the red switch, all 3 closed doors opened, two of them unleashing enemies. When I killed them, the third door had a whole area. When I went through the door, the area went into lockdown and I had to kill a whole bunch of bots in order to open the door back up. That part was pretty intense.
I had to stop to feed my son though. Hopefully I’ll have some time to continue tonight.
P.S. One thing I’ve noticed on Ace difficulty is you really have to use your missiles well, and use the right missiles at the right times. Otherwise you just can’t get through some areas. Luckily there’s lots of missile ammo on every level, so I’ve only run out of certain missiles temporarily, never for long. And if I’m using the wrong missiles for the job, I can have a really tough time in certain areas, and get through, but with lots of damage done to me.
Yep, perhaps the most key hint for this game is: use your damn missiles! The first levels I was saving them for the hard enemies or big set pieces, but really, there is enough missile ammo in every level (supposing you explore well) to spend one for every enemy of said level. And not only they do damage, the knock off effect they have give you one more second where you can fire them without being fired upon.
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.