DescentBB

I'm sure the topic of "favorite levels" has been brought up plenty of times, but I'm curious as to what everyone's least favorite levels are? Or, if there aren't any levels you dislike as a whole, are there any specific attributes of some levels that you don't like?

For me personally, I'm not a huge fan of sections that force you spend an excessive amount of time luring in order to safely handle them. D1 L8 is a great example of this. The exit and blue door areas are packed with roaming robots, and the best way to deal with them is just to lure them from a safe location. While this isn't too difficult with proper patience, it's very time consuming and boring. Really sucks away my momentum. D1 L20 is similar since you need to do a lot of luring before fully exploring the blue and yellow areas. Trying to take on those missile platformers in such an enclosed space is suicide. It's a shame, too, because there are other aspects of those two levels that I really love.

D1 L5 is another one that I don't usually like playing through much, but for a different reason. Its design is just so boring to me, and flying through a bunch of long tunnels gets old quick if you need to backtrack for something. One of least fun levels in my book.

I agree entirely with level 5 with the addition of the music that it has (on the PlayStation version) so that means 19 too.

Hmmm... I never really thought much about my least favorite levels. But let's think about this a bit:

D1:
- Level 4: Not hard, but needlessly tedious because of the arbitrarily long distance to the energy center, lots of backtracking that doesn't add to the experience (on the contrary, actually)
- Level 16: Something about the color scheme just makes me depressed, dunno. Gameplay-wise it's an OK level

No serious gripes about the levels of Descent, though. They're all fun because on Insane everything is sufficiently difficult, and the difficulty actually makes me like the levels rather than hate them. The hardest levels in Descent are actually among my favs, I'm a masochist like that.

Same goes for D2, I could only name levels I like being around in the least, but I don't really have one.

I don't really have least favourites... even when I hate a level I love to hate it.
Well apart from Revenge O' Drillers anyway.

If I had to pick one that was most annoying for me it would be D1 level 20 or D2 level 24, both because of all the dang bombers with all their dang bombs. And I don't really like D2 24's design with the curving tunnels too narrow for you to move vertically -- that just isn't Descent. Descent Maximum did that level much better.
I can see what you mean about D1 level 5 but it's a pretty short level -- it never really lasts long enough to annoy me. Also if TruelyEppik is talking about the PSX track I think he is, that's one of my favourites.

It just gets on my nerves but I don't hate it.
And because I always want to explore every bit of the mine and destroy all the bots, level 5 is the most boring one to do that. (I don't feel complete if miss anything lol.)

What do I hate?
The default level 1 track from Descent 2. The other defaults are fine. Kill that one. Please.

LightWolf wrote: ↑Fri May 04, 2018 8:18 pm What do I hate?
The default level 1 track from Descent 2. The other defaults are fine. Kill that one. Please.

Yeah, that one! It's a good track, but it gets super tedious through overexposure. As do all the 4 tracks from D2, honestly.

Things I hate:

Too long
Confusing map
No way to open certain door or find a key or reactor
No enough time to reach exit
Guide Missiles required
D2 puzzles

Most modern add-on levels has at least one o' those (those which work)

Tunnel shooter levels are no good, as well as any levels that waste player's time (shooting gallery rooms, excessive backtracking, stupid matcens, tons of bomb shitters, etc). But I don't think there are any of those in stock D1 and D2 campaigns. Most of those are extremely well designed compared to say, LotV, or most single levels on DMDB.

Descent 2 L22. This level felt like more like a leftover from D1, with how dickish it can be and how basic the geometry is.

Though the Guided Missiles are a neat idea, I found them to be detrimental because of the influence they have over the levels, such as the fire-a-GM-through-a-grate secrets which were largely savescum country because you would end up ramming the missile into the grate anyways and had to reload because you'd end up wasting all your missiles and be left unable to try your hand at them, and then there's things like this levels' intro where there's two Boarsheads overlooking the entrance crossroad who will instagib you if you even peek and if you don't know beforehand they're there. But apparently because you're given a guided missile pack at the start, this was considered acceptable since you can reliably deal with the Boarsheads from a safe position. Just because you can does not excuse the trial 'n error traps involved.

Though for this level it cannot be said that you can use your guided missiles reliably. Those Omega bombers move around way too quickly and unpredictably to the point where your guided missiles might often end up colliding with an Omega rather than the intended Boarshead. And since you only get four at the start with two having to spend on each Boarshead, missing one means restarting the level. I don't know whether 'maneuvering guided missiles through crowds of unpredictable enemies' is a point of this level, because if you use Guided Missiles to gib the Spiders in the blue door area it's hard to not accidentally bump into a Spawn. Annoyingly, the enemy AI can psychically tell where you are if they notice your guided missile, so if you send one into the blue door area populated by Spawns, some of them might at random try to chase you down. Even more annoyingly, if you blew open the Guidebot grate to get to the super laser secret, he will constantly be shooting flares near your ear, and some of them might even hit you and interrupt your guided missile view. If you command him to go away and then blow up a Spider with a guided missile, the D2X-Rebirth sourceport crashes for some reason.

I like the guided missiles in parts like these where they're not mandatory to use for your survival and not obviously signposted to be used here--you can use the guided missiles to take out the Spiders to make your life a lot easier, but this decision stems from using the tools at your disposal creatively, if you wanted you could fight the Spiders in these tight quarters, but that's tricky to do there.

Anyways, only the initial part of the level is hard. Once you get to the ridiculously oversized room filled with only two easily sniped Lou Guards in each lane, you can get the Gauss Rifle and the level becomes a cakewalk after that. That room is not only stupidly large and devoid of any detail, making it unnecessarily annoying to traverse through, but combat-wise this room poses no challenge at all, especially once you grab the Gauss Rifle.

The path to the Afterburner has a booby trap which triggers two Spiders hidden in the walls, but the cube which triggers this isn't even blocking your path and can be easily side-stepped. The items in the aforementioned hidden walls (a Mega Missile and Converter) aren't even necessary for the level, and not worth the trouble of triggering.

The rooms leading to the yellow key is also staggeringly empty, featuring only two easily dispatched Lou Guards, three Spawns, and a BS Spider trap which is easily dealt with using a Smart Mine (bless them). There's way too much space and not enough inside. The yellow door area isn't particularly difficult to deal with, however, after grabbing the red key you're most likely pining to instantly get the hell away from the red spawn matcens, only to be met by a suddenly opened trap under the passage leading towards the yellow area entrance which harbors two Lou Guards who are most likely to nuke you. So you die and try again and shoot two smart missiles at each of the opened alcoves after entering the yellow are and before the red key. If a trap is ultra-lethal when you're not aware of it but elementary to deal with once you are, then it's just a waste of your time.

To make matters worse, the path through the level is overly reliant on backtracking with little to no shortcuts available. Getting the blue key has you turn 180 degrees to go back towards the blue door, getting the yellow key has you turn 180 degrees, go back through the way you entered, go back through the oversized Lou Guard room (and take a detour through the passage with the Plasma Cannon rather than go back up which will trigger a Lou Guard trap), go back through the blue room, just so you can get to the yellow door near the start of the level. And after getting the red key, you need to go aaaaaall the way back to the oversized room so you can get to the red room and blow up the reactor. There's no additional enemy spawns during the backtracking to make things more involving.

The intro of this level is rather annoying, the blue room even more so as you do not immediately have the Vulcan or a Spreadfire to deal with the Spawns, the backtracking here is egregious, the geometry is incredibly basic, this level commits the sin of putting secrets inside the Guidebot's jail (I don't ever want to set that guy free because he keeps buggering me with his flares), and the later half of this level is a total easy crapshoot once you've memorized the traps. A rather annoying short level involving a lot of frustration with controlling Guided Missiles.

I've never liked the Puuma Sphere levels that much. L21 is ridiculously difficult, ESPECIALLY when cold starting it, because you're supposed to try and hit Spawns with your small laser shots, the Boarsheads are placed way too close to comfort giving you barely any room to dodge their smart missiles or their homing globs, and missile-enemies like the Spiders are especially no fun on these kind of levels because this level is rather restrictive so you'll be suffering from a lot of backblasts of missiles exploding on the wall right behind you. L23 on the other hand is incredibly easy because of the plentiful Gauss Rifle ammo and can be beaten in a few attempts, though it showcases that Boarsheads are best used in wide open areas where you have ample room to dodge their smart missiles and the homing globs creeping at you from behind. It's why I believe Boarsheads should have been introduced much earlier in the game, since only L23 shows they can be used this way.

L24 is its own mixed bag, too many bombers who are most likely to kill themselves by accidentally ramming into you in the cylindrical paths, and too much waiting for the energy globs of the smart mines to disappear.

L21 and 22 are hardest in the original game campaign IMO, dickish is the right term for the beginning of both. Still, both are doable on Insane skill no death no save 100% kills, which means they are not THAT bad. In my Rebirth version (0.58.1) sending away the guidebot works well so he does not bug you at all, and those guided missiles through the grate don't require save scumming if you are accurate. Traps are OK for me unless they cause unavoidable damage - and unless the level completely relies on cheap traps, which is not the case here. L24, yes, probably half of my failed attempts were due to those bombers, but the whole concept of the level is cool.

Worth pointing out I still think D2 level 24 is the best of the endgame levels in official Descent (besides Maximum) even despite the issues I have with it. Interesting final levels were never the series' strong point.

Any levels that take more than 30 hours of attempting to beat on insane, cold start, full rescue, over 100+ hp at exit.

That's the point where I drop the 100+ hp requirement and just play to survive it. So far in D1, Munition's R&D 2 and from D2 TEW level 25 was those I had to do that.

OOOOOOOOH there is TEW level 25.
I woulda mentioned it but my subconscious has blocked the memory.

I always hated playing through D1 Lvl 9. It's all a bunch of disconnected hallways and swarms of annoying bots. Plus it's one away from one of my personal favorites in lvl 9 so I am usually just trying to speed through this one.

Annoying level, best music in game.

Why?

Gotta be memorable.

Just try Vertigo level 8 on cold start on Ace or Insane, you'll get the idea what is "annoying level". Catwalks where you get a lot of random damage, cleverly placed MAX robots where you cannot approach them safely, no afterburner or Gauss cannon, thief bot is everywhere and if it steals your Vulcan you can restart immediately. And that final room, you cannot return to the energy center so it's pure luck whether you will have enough energy to beat it. This one is worse than D1 L21 IMO. I was trying to beat it yesterday, obviously with more tries and a bit more learning of the final room it can be done.

Yeah I hate that one. Isn't it also where the red hulk makes his cameo? Though not as difficult as in D1 of course.
Vertigo map 17 is pretty brutal too. 18 isn't really as hard but it still scares me.

That's true, red hulk strikes back there, Calmarius even said that there are dozens of them in this level, in fact, only 3 (one is completely harmless however). Well "the fear has big eyes" like our proverb says... 17 is relatively tame, you get a lot of weapons quickly (Omega, Vulcan, smart mines to deal with the thief etc... Energy center is near). 18 is ofc harder, but you still get all the stuff including Gauss right in the beginning. If you know where the enemies are and have a sound plan for dealing with them, those late levels are not so bad. When in this L8, you have nothing, even basic missiles are very scarce, and the level works completely random way, each run is different, enemies are in different positions etc... So the Mike Tyson's phrase "everyone has a plan until he gets a punch in the face", describes this level pretty well

Some other hard levels are last one and the one that has 3 sniper ngs right in the beginning and you only have red lasers (I always forget the number, probably 11 or 15?). But I don't compare to those, both break down if you manage to get through the beginning, and that one with sniper ngs is just bad design IMO. But I am going to play and record the entire Vertigo on cold start, let's see if smth will match L8 difficulty.

Update : managed to beat it in 15 or so more attempts, and no I don't want to try to do it 100+ HP, like I do with more predictable levels, because it's a stupid lottery...

D1: Levels 5 and 18. Corridor shooter snoozefest...

D2: Maybe a Baloris Prime level, don't know. Theme fatigue is an issue for me a LOT in D2 but that isn't really anything against the quality of the levels.

Vertigo: Of the first six levels, Level 6, too much shooting gallery.

Lost Levels: Level 24, the idea and music is good but it gets very repetitive. Execution needed work. Can't actually choose a least among non boss levels...

Obsidian: Level 3, symmetrical with a nasty switchunt prior to the boss.

TEW: Yeah Level 25 is infuriatingly hard...yet it's still a good level objectively. I'd have to go with Level 18 or 21 instead - lots of running around with not much to do in both, plus design repetition.

Vignettes: Can't decide really - all levels well done and serve their purpose(s)...

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D3 level 13. Searching for the flying stormtroopers was too slow and boring, it's also probably the only level in the series where the full map is a negative power up.

Maybe D3 level 14 not because of the level, but because of its broken record music.

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Tell Guidebot to "find robot". Eventually stormtroopers will be most of what's left anyway.

typematrix wrote: ↑Wed Mar 20, 2019 4:14 pm aslo the bit where (secondary objective) you aree supposed to get into the ships engines behind the thrusters is very hard i had to skip it last time i played although i remember being able to do it back in the day. not sure why thats there.

Even if you do shut them down there is a bug which makes it so that it says you haven't completed the objective.

,..,

If the matcens are online then you've missed another objective IIRC.
The method has always worked for me anyway.

Alter-Fox wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2019 11:03 am If the matcens are online then you've missed another objective IIRC.
The method has always worked for me anyway.

That switch is really annoying to hit. Why is it even in that tunnel anyway?

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Can't argue with that. That mission's always seemed to me like padding out the game's running time more than actual gameplay.

...,.

Xfing wrote: ↑Thu May 03, 2018 1:38 am Hmmm... I never really thought much about my least favorite levels. But let's think about this a bit:

D1:
- Level 4: Not hard, but needlessly tedious because of the arbitrarily long distance to the energy center, lots of backtracking that doesn't add to the experience (on the contrary, actually)

I would have to agree on this level as it is a pretty big missed opportunity if you really think about it. This level introduces two new bots, the medium lifter and the cloaked version, and is also the first level to make matcens a more significant part of the challenge. With these things being introduced it shouldn't be so boring lol. Not much to explore here that's not along the mission course already. Getting the red key in this level is way too easy. The only tricky part can be the reactor room, and this is probably the level's best moment. I play hotshot idk if things change any higher.

I come in here finding y'all bad mouthing my level 25! lol Nah, it's fine. It truly is an infuriating level. If I had to redo it over, I have a better idea in mind.

I think I would have to nominate most of Levels of the World. There's a lot of material there that just isn't good, isn't well-designed, and isn't really fun. It does hold some historical interest since there are a few names that are recognizable due to their later work, and it also shows what early third-party level design was usually like - but it's not something I have interest in playing for its own merits.

Sirius wrote: ↑Thu May 14, 2020 11:54 pmI think I would have to nominate most of Levels of the World.

True. Out of the whole lot I saved only 9 of them to replay.

In D1, I'm not a fan of level 18, mostly for the same reasons people don't like level 4. The goals are a bit too spaced out, needless backtracking, uninteresting geometry. It's still a good level, just at the bottom of my list.

I agree about uninteresting geometry in L18 (for me it is something like much harder L5), but I don't agree about backtracking. Optimal route is complex, so you have to learn it, but then it is fine to play.

Marvin wrote: ↑Fri May 15, 2020 11:01 amOptimal route is complex, so you have to learn it...

Ha! I knew it. Right before I posted I thought "Marvin has this thing beat without too much backtracking, I should reconsider that point." I guess my complaint is, as a higher numbered level it doesn't seem as interesting as its peers. There is the large room of trapezoids which feels a little lazy in the design, then some long tunnels, and some small rooms, then more long tunnels, and then that trapezoid room again, then more long tunnels... So it "feels" like backtracking because there are few "wow" moments. However, the Blue Section is really great and is the reason I can't complain too much about Level 18.

I agree about that. Those tunnels are not interesting. But there is one interesting thing/mystery in the level. Do you know one of matcens at start is impossible to activate? Or am I just blind to something? I tried to find a way to activate it many years ago, but failed. I don't have editor, so I tried just by playing it.