While I have incredibly fond memories of playing the first Descent game, it would not enter my home alone, When I picked it up, it was in a boxed set of both Descent, Descent II, an expansion pack for each, a level editor, and a few teaser pictures for the up coming and much anticipated Descent 3. Sadly we would wait several more years before we would hear about this third game again, and the expansions are a lot harder to get today then back then, but I was still excited to continue my revisit on this franchise. And it did NOT disappoint! Come on in!
Story: It's over. You've done it. With the end of Descent, you have fulfilled you mercenary contract with the PTMC. So what if they required you to fly off to some asteroid base in the middle of the belt to dock and collect you paycheck. You were still going to collect that check... or so you thought.
Unfortunately for you, the megacorp isn't done with you yet... and you probably should have read the fine print in your contract. There was a clause that let them keep you on the clock for an additional 72 hours, and they have additional mines they wish for you to clear before your time is up. To reach them, they outfitted your Pyro-GX with an experimental warp-drive and sent you on you way. If you want to be paid and to avoid being sued, I guess you're off to do more work as their material defender once again.
And that is about all the story you will get in this second installment until the very end. Much like the first game, the story was never really the point so much as an excuse to get into the mines and start blowing away robots. This time around you will get absolutely zero story between any given mission, replacing the previous orders updates of the first Descent game with a cutscene of the Pyro-GX flying into the next location, leaving the only development at all in the ending cutscene.
If you came to this game for story, you came to the wrong place.... completely.
4/10
Graphics: Like is expected of sequels back in the day, Descent 2 takes a lot of it's graphical lead from Descent, reusing many assets that gave the first game it's look and feel... but not as much as other games of the time might. The weapons you used before are all back exactly as you saw them along with may of the graphical effects you would have seen on the walls. Add to this that it clearly is using the same 3D engine the first game did and you get a very familiar vibe as soon as "Prepare for Descent" disappears the first time. But these details and that feel are about where the game looking the same ends.
The first thing you are going to notice are the enemies, as you will not see a single old familiar face from the previous game. And while they can still look primitive by today's standards, the polygon count has been increased as many of these mechanical monstrosities start to take on more animalistic traits. They remain as static as ever, in their own animations, but it's kinda tough to notice in the heat of battle when you are squaring off with things that will bounce energy shots off of walls to hit you better, or generate homing shots if you do too much damage with the wrong weapons. Add to this additional detail in the model not possible beofre like individual cannons placed in their hull, or spikes that suggest more organic influences and you have some amazing looking bots to blow up.
And the mines they inhabit also took an upgrade or three with much bigger and more complex map designs, showing off some new features in the engine like use of the dynamic lighting to treat lights in the wall as a source: both for how lit up some rooms are as well as the ability to kill the lights by breaking them. The world itself still looks like it's made of blocks twisted and stretched to into place still, but there is a charm to this simplicity, even as it's used to create the most elaborate rooms and locations I've seen in this engine to date.
But while this all does indeed look great, it is not what wowed the gamers playing back in the day. Descent II took full advantage of the CD-ROM medium it came on, resulting in those dynamic escapes from the exploding mines to no longer be in-engine, but fully 3D rendered animations, letting the scene vary by map every time. And the intelligence about each location before you start the mines there are now replaced by a scene of your Pyro-GX warping into orbit and flying into the new batch of mines waiting to be blown up.
By today's standard, the game is a retro beauty. By the standards of it's day, it was simply amazing to behold.
8/10
Sound: This is not going to be an easy catagory to put Descent II into, and the reasonf or this is the soundtrack. If you play the base game as it is installed through GOG you could play with the audio-cd music, which is simply awesome, letting you tear through robots to the metal sounds of bands like Type O Negative.
And while I will get into the difficulties of doing this later, the game be default will a much more generic midi soundtrack when playing through the Rebirth engine I used. It still sounds good and as a techno-midi still carries the tone of what's going on, it simply can't hold a candle to the absolute glory that is the CD-based soundtrack.
As for the rest of the game, this is where it takes a lot more from it's predecessor, with all the desired effects. Lasers fire with a satisfying if expected pew sound, explosions are deep and basey, and all the weapons you will fire or be fired at with just sound their part perfectly, making up the real star of the show.
I mean there is some voice acting, but it is very very limited. Outside the computer voice telling you when the mine has entered self-destruct mode, you basically only get Dravis giving Vertigo-One (your official callsign) very business-like details of what is about to happen without any real room for negotiation and Vertigo-One generally replying in anger.. or disbelief... Both parts are played VERY well, but there just isn't much to hear from them, so while it sounds good, it just isn't enough to really make it a highlight.
8/10
Gameplay: Much like the previous game, you will play Descent II from the cockpit of your Pyro-GX, but it will not fly like you might expect a given space fighter to. Instead of screaming forward through the battlegrounds at top speed, you will find yourself basically hovering in space and moving like most first person shooters, just without gravity getting in the way and the ability to move up and down at will. It's basically like dogfighting in hovercrafts instead of fighters, and the sequel to the game to pioneer it keeps the same energy and play the first game had, tweaking it more with what you are up against then the formula itself. We need to start by talking about the mines.
These mines are massive, tangled mazes that will leave most players wondering which end is up from time to time as they fly through each one, always with the same main mission in mind: find each keycard in turn, blow up the reactor at the heart of the mine, and escape before the self-destruct sequence can complete and you lose your ship. Occasionally it's a boss instead of a reactor, but the pattern still remains the same. It's a basic formular that has been used for FPS gaming since Wolfenstein 3D at the very latest (well besides the escape at the end), but it servers Descent II exceptionally well, keeping things familiar but spicing it up with the maps themselves.
And those maps can get spicy. As noted you will find they are a lot more complex this time around, often to such a degree it can be difficult to even use the map option to see where you actually are or need to go amid the clutter of lines in the way. And you will give yourself a headache trying... but there is another way in the form of GuideBot.
New to this game, the Guidebot is a little mechanical menace you will find cages somewhere in each mine. If you spring him free, he will then make it his life's mission to guide you to each key in turn before getting you to the reactor and the emergency exit. And while he is certainly a convenience, he is not a perfect solution. The Guidebot has a very simple pathing process and if there is something in the way he thinks shouldn't be, he will fuss over it waiting for you to open it. This could both be a door you have access to and he doesn't or various obstacles like walls or forcefields you might be able to open but he can't.. so you simply will not be able to follow him blindly. Further more, he has limited health himself, and it is possible for him to be killed before the mission is over, so be careful how you fight around him: he sure wont be careful to keep out of the way.
But there is another new kind of robot that is far more infamous and hated who will try to follow you everywhere you go: the thief bot. This little asshole is going to be the bane of your existence. He is fast, cowardly, and will generally keep clear of you when you fire a few rounds his way. However, if he does sneak up to you, he isn't going to just hurt you. He's going to steal one of your weapons and run off, probably laughing like a maniac in whatever binary language these robots have. You will want to kill this guy as quickly as you can before he becomes the single most enraging robot in the game.
And with the new cast of baddies, you will also be offered both more and more powerful versions of weapons the previous game offered you. Most infamously, your lasers will now max out at level 6 instead of 4, and you will quickly find a boosted version of the chaingun (called the vulcan cannon) in the form of a chain gun that fires eats a small number of vulcan round for each round it shoots, but that round is a small explosive. This is called the gauss cannon and is just one example of how much better you will be equipped to handle the new array of threats.
The only other real change here to mention though is the boss encounters. The previous game only had two: one at the end of the shareware levels and the very last mission of the game. This time, you will face off with a 6 new bosses (one every 4 levels) to finish off the current location of mines, giving it a much more cyclical flow this time around. And these bosses can be tough, especially the final one, who will likely push how you fight and think about fighting to make it through.
8/10
Bugs: Unfortunately I can not say this was a bug-free experience. Since I was using the DXX-Rebirth engine to play, your experience may be different then mine, but I did have to deal with an handful of game freezes that required me to force the game to shutdown and restart it. And if you play with the base DOSBoxed version that ships on digital storefronts, you may need to tweak how DOSBox works since the game will likely run way too fast, rending your air bob un-navigatable and all weapon fire so stupidly fast as to be unusable.
Digital Rights Management: Where this is a game that comes setup to use DOSBox it is DRM free, as is DXX-Rebirth, the custom engine I used to play.
Source: PC Gaming Wiki
Score: When Descent II came out, most people expected the sequel to be more like an expansion today: more of the original game, maybe with a few new weapons and enemies to add into the mix. And while this is true to an extent, this is one of the first games to try to be a little bit different from it's predecessor, completely replacing the cast you will fight and enhancing the engine to do more with the levels you will fight your way through. It is still more of the same, but not quite as literally as what came before.
Most people would think of this as the better game, and I can see the point that there are a few specific enemies the first game relied on a lot that aggravated players and were missing here. However I would also argue that those few frustrations were replaced with new ones for me. Both games have their own small headaches, but overall they are both fantastic and I am thrilled to have come back to play them for Extra Life years later. This is still a classic and a game more people should spend some time with.
Score:
System Requirements:
- Intel 486DX/50
- 8 MB RAM
- VGA Graphical Support
- MS-DOS 5.0
- 710 MB Hard Drive space
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (5700X) 3.4 Ghz
- 32 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB VRAM)
- Windows 11 (64 Bit)
- DXX-Rebirth
Source: gog.com
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