Big bittech.net article about great games of the past

[Diedel]

The article is about games of the past that were so good that all they'd need were updated gfx and prolly sound, no changes or additions, to make them enjoyable just as much as they were when we first played them, and guess what? Descent made it into their list!

Find the article here.

[Richard Cranium]

Those who have played it, however, will probably understand why - the entire balance of the game was wrecked by the third version.

They just don't under stand that D3 was all about the multi player.

[Diedel]

Those who have played it, however, will probably understand why - the entire balance of the game was wrecked by the third version.

They just don't under stand that D3 was all about the multi player.

You just don't understand that D3 was all about multiplayer. Or where would you need game balance most direly?

[Top Wop]

Alot of people looked at D3 for the singleplayer, and thats where it failed because it indeed was quite weak. Multiplayer-only games were never quite successful to begin with.

[Top Gun]

\"Weak\" for some, maybe, but to me it was the best of the 3. Far better than finding those same damned keys level after level.

[Duper]

well, remember that D3 came out during a paradyme shift in gaming and the way single player \"action\" was viewed. Also, technology was cusping on some major changes and D3 pushed EVERYONES' systems to the limit along with Q3 which went gold a short time after.

I for one enjoy D3's single player. It was a nice break from the monotony of just finding keys etc. They were (as I recall) trying to reach a bit into the RPG realm and make you more a part of the story. the Weakest point in the game -I thought- were the screen cuts. o_0 yea.. they did them in house... they should Not have. They had the budget, they should have farmed them out. They spent the money on the voice talents, that's for sure.

Where \"balance\" is concerned... in today's gaming, that's rather a mute topic. There really is no balance as our community conciders it in current games. It's about getting the biggest gun the fastest. If you want to get technical (imo) Balance is nothing more than making sure that all the players (Or both teams) have equal access to the same weapons.... but we've been down this road before.

[Krom]

The biggest problem with the balance in D3 single player is because of the more accurate collisions used most enemies are small enough that they can freely fly between your shots. So for one, the enemies were two fast, for two the enemies were too small, and for three, the enemies could absorb too much damage. And all of these problems were further compounded in the higher skill levels. It was a major problem with the design of the single player game that at best most enemies could only be hit by half of a shot from primary weapons fire. At the insane skill level it wasn't fun to fight the enemies like it had been in D1, it was just mind numbingly tedious. The AI's movements and attacks were all well done, but it isn't fun fighting them off since most of the time hitting them is comparable to threading a needle.

[Duper]

good point Krom. One reason I never play over hotshot. This became even worse in coop mode.

[Diedel]

I like D3's singleplayer, but not the multiplayer. There's a few uber weapons meaning quick and constant death for all but the most skilled players. Heck, it's boring if MD and Napalm missiles dominate every game, with the fusion thrown in once in a while.

[Firewheel]

I still don't get this \"motion sickness\" thing. I started playing Descent 1 when I was about six or seven years old, and I never so much as got dizzy.

Descent was the first real game I'd ever played, and years later, it's still my all-time favorite. D2 and D3 were both great, but the original had the perfect formula.

I hate to say it, but I mostly played D3 for the single player. I've never played D1 or D2 online too much, because back in its heyday you needed Kali or whatnot. I didn't want to shell out twenty or thirty bucks for something I wasn't even sure if I'd like - not to mention, my parents probably wouldn't have let me play online, anyway.

[ccb056]

Yeah, I never understood the motion sickness thing either (started playing when i was 9ish). My mom can't even watch it, she gets sick.

[Krom]

I'm fine playing it myself, but I get sick if I watch someone else playing. :-/

[Firewheel]

I didn't figure out how to bank until after I'd been playing a while, and it was fairly easy for me to stay \"right side up.\" That may have had something to do with it.

[Top Gun]

I'm fine playing it myself, but I get sick if I watch someone else playing. :-/

I've found myself getting dizzy when watching other people's demos, too. I think a lot of it has to do with the expectation of motion. When you're playing and suddenly pull the stick back hard, twist to the right, and slide left, your mind is conscious of having decided to move like that, and you can anticipate the resulting view on screen. When you're watching someone else play, you have no time at all to prepare for a sudden disorienting movement, and so your stomach is left behind by about three seconds.

[Kilarin]

Weak" for some, maybe, but to me it was the best of the 3. Far better than finding those same damned keys level after level.

I agree. D3 had the best Single Player play of the series because it allowed you to do something less formulaic. To have to use stealth on some levels, to have alternate goals. I love D3 single player!

What the artical missed is that if you are more interested in good gameplay than pretty eyecandy, there are quite a few EXCELLENT old time games available for free that don't NEED graphic updates because they never had any graphics to begin with!

For example: Old Style Interactive Fiction. Infocom and the original Colossal Cave. Oh yeah! Text only and GREAT. Games where the story was the main point, instead of thrown in as an after thought. You can download some of the old classics for free now, like
Zork I II and III and Colossal Cave Adventure AND a whole boatload of new games people have created with the many free IF engines can be found The IF Archive.

THEN we have the Grandaddy of all Role Playing Games. Rouge, NetHack, and all of it's descendants. The graphics are text (although you can now play with a very simple tile based gui), your hero is represented by @, a lower case "a" is probably a giant ant, and upper case "A" is a carnivorous ape, and trust me, you want to avoid the upper case "D" dragons as much as possible, unless you can tame one and make it into a pet. Yes,
you can do that. Don't let the primitive graphics fool you, NetHack has to be the most complex RPG's ever created. Touch or look at a cockatrice and you will turn to stone, but you can wear a blindfold as a defense. IF you can kill the deadly beast, pick it up and wield it as a weapon! But you better put on some gloves first. And be careful not to fall into a pit while carrying the deadly creature or it might fall on you and turn YOU into stone. The developers think of EVERYTHING. Got an interesting potion, dip your weapon into it and see what happens. Don't eat dead leprachauns, you might get teleportitis! (unless you have a ring of teleport control, then it's kinda nice!) You can download NetHack or my favorite variation, SLASHEM (It's nethack with more, uhm, nethack!) absolutely free.

[BUBBALOU]

If you want to get motion sickness from Descent, close one eye and watch someone else's demo

[Foil]

I think I've mentioned this before, but my wife has literally fallen over trying to watch me play. She has an inner-ear disorder that makes her dizzy some of the time anyway, but watching me play D3 or a watching movie with lots of camera motion can make it much worse.

For me, I can play D3 for hours and not get dizzy... but anytime I've physically been up in an aircraft, I get airsick. Go figure!

Oh, and I agree with Kilarin about the D3 singleplayer - it was a welcome break from the \"key/door->key/door->key/door\" levels.

[ccb056]

Ive been in one of those machines where it rotates you around in 3 directions at once, and could sit in it all day without getting sick.

[Apogee]

Eh, I think Descent 2 was the prime of the series. Best action, and the best balance. Finding the keys didn't get to monotonous when the levels were so varied (and the music kicked ass ). Descent 3 single player was sort of fun, but it completely destroyed the plot IMHO. It made very little sense and turned the game from a gritty, somewhat series action game into a corny sci-fi movie. I found myself not knowing what was going on a lot of the time, and some of the levels just plain didn't make any sense (We're going to steal a heavy assault craft to prove to the military we're NOT terrorists... right.)

I would have much preferred if the MD had stuck to blowing up mines, although perhaps with some new tricks and challenges... something more akin to Half-Life than D3.

[Kilarin]

Descent 3 single player was sort of fun, but it completely destroyed the plot IMHO.

Wow, thats exactly the opposite of the way I felt about it. D2 was fun to play, but D3 felt like much more of a story to me.

[De Rigueur]

The bots in D3 were a disappointment. Making them less machine-like and more 'organic' made them look silly. The shark and the flame-thrower bots were still challenging, though.

[Krom]

The bots in D3 were a disappointment. Making them less machine-like and more 'organic' made them look silly. The shark and the flame-thrower bots were still challenging, though.

Only because hitting them was like trying to carry sand in a sieve. The "sharc" was the worst of them though, it was so small, so fast, and so tough that it took forever to kill them. And it wasn't particularly fun, it was challenging but it was more frustrating then fun because they were too small and too fast.

In D1 especially in the higher skill levels it was plenty challenging, but some of the worst bots could still be done away with by one concussion missile or a homing missile around the bend. That game would have been a lot harder to survive and a lot less fun if the class 1 driller (vulcan) bots didn't go down from one hit from most weapons. In D1 you could get into a fight with a whole room full of bots even in insane skill and tear them apart in about the same time as you could finish them in tranee mode. They didn't absorb any more damage in insane mode then they did in tranee mode, the challenge was avoiding the massive amounts of accurate weapons fire they could spew.

The feeling you get from playing D3 on insane is totally different from playing D1 on insane. You don't feel any fear from encountering a few robots in a tunnel because there are no robots that will fire 12 concussion missiles at you in one burst and instantly kill you in a cramped tunnel where you can't escape. In D1 on insane skill, one small slip meant instant death against many robots or receiving tremendous damage even against the weakest robots, but you could kill most robots instantly or in a single pass. In D3 there is much more room, far fewer robots that can kill you in less then a second, and most robots can survive for a very long time against all but the strongest weapons. D3 single player can't hold a candle to the fun factor in D1, it just isn't there.

[AndyX]

yeah, D3 singleplayer has only been fun when i played it the first time.

[Foil]

I'll agree with Krom.

In D1 singleplayer, you could look forward to tearing through lots of bots (explosions galore!), and there was the tension of cramped quarters, with the sense that there was going to be a bot around almost every corner.

In D3 singleplayer, the bots were fewer and far between (they were almost a \"side thought\" to the puzzles in some places), and as Krom said, it was often just tedious to fight them, especially on Ace or Insane.

Oh, and one more thing that made the tension in D1 so palpable: the limited lives. Every bot you faced, every corner you ventured around, was \"life and death\". Especially on the higher difficulties, you had to treasure every shield, so you couldn't just \"fly in, guns blazing\", like you can in D3.

Of course, some of the \"claustrophobic tension\" does get old in D1 and D2, so my first time through D3 was refreshing in many ways, especially with the variety of mission scripts.

So, which is better? It depends on your style of play, and your mood.

Personally, I love some of the \"cross-over\" user-created levels. Like Reactor Gamma, which has the feel of D1/D2 in the number and type of bots, but which also has the eye candy and openness of D3. If you like singleplayer, I promise you'll enjoy that one.

[TIGERassault]

I think I've mentioned this before, but my wife has literally fallen over trying to watch me play. She has an inner-ear disorder that makes her dizzy some of the time anyway, but watching me play D3 or a watching movie with lots of camera motion can make it much worse.

Wow, if you ever get fed up of your partner, all you have to do is play Super Castlevania IV and you're a free man!

Ok, so that joke might have been a bit too much.

[Lobber]

When I first played Descent, I was playing on someone else's machine, and only played for about five minutes, got motion sick, hated the game, and wrote it off.

It was a couple years later when I was reintroduced to Descent and D2 that I once again played the game, but had no motion sickness. Weird, huh?

[Sirius]

Yeah, I actually agree with the author - the game balance was wrecked, both in single and multiplayer. The latter is really what killed its lasting appeal though.