Do you find your mind wandering while playing Doom II or Heretic? Do you long for a 3-D, six-axis motion, ultraviolent game experience? Before you get too cocky, plug in Descent. All true gamers have a healthy masochistic streak; Descent will put even the finest through their paces.
Its 30 levels can reduce even the steadiest to a weak-kneed, babbling fool. This is one game that lives up to its massive hype.
The story line, if you care, isn't entirely original. In a nutshell, you play an independent contractor hired by the Post-Terran Mining Corporation to take care of a little problem: some power-hungry aliens have invaded the company's sublunar mining network. In case you haven't guessed, the action centers around large-scale annihilation of anything and everything in the mine shafts. Your PiroGX craft flies willy-nilly through the underground passages, and you try not to vomit. Between the dry heaves, it's a good idea to fire off as many rounds as possible before mining robots - hacked by the aliens - lay you to waste.
Descent is an immersive experience. It sucks you in and totally screws with your senses. Traveling upward, downward, backward, forward, and sideways at inhuman speeds, you quickly abandon your balance and sense of well-being. But soon, moving upside down feels as good as right side up - liberation is at hand. Flying by the seat of your pants, snagging weapons and ammo, you frantically try to figure out where the hell you are.
On a reasonably fast 486 PC or better, performance is excellent. I didn't cough up anything, but I fell off my chair several times in one particularly involved session. Up to eight players can play on one of four different network modes (anarchy with robots for me, please), and modem and IHHD Net play is supported with fluid results. Descent is one of the best PC games to bore its way into my brain in years.
To download the seven-level shareware version, check ftp.wustl.edu or ftp.netcom.com. Two top-notch Web sites devoted to Descent are at http://doomgate.cs.buffalo.edu/descent/ and http://www.eskimo.com/~stickman/descent/deshome.html. One Web author has thoughtfully supplied the queasy gamer with tips for overcoming post-Descent nausea. Fun always has its price.
Descent: US$39.95. Interplay Productions: (800) 969 4263, +1 (714) 553 6678, fax +1 (714) 252 2820, e-mail orderdesk@interplay.com, via the Web http://www.interplay.com.
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