Descent2 - Retro 3D space tunnel exploration game

May 27, '04 01:02:00AM

Contributed by: robg

Descent2 iconThe macosxhints Rating:
8 of 10
[Score: 8 out of 10]

A little retro flashback this week (late again, sorry; I'll try to get back to Mondays for Picks starting next week!). One of the first "3D" games that I recall playing many many moons ago has now been released as freeware for OS X -- Descent2. Near as I can tell, Descent2 was released for the PC in February of 1996, and I think the Mac version followed sometime soon thereafter. The basic premise is that you're piloting a ship around inside a series of mineshafts, looking for a reactor, which you then have to trigger and get back out of the mine system. What made Descent interesting was the assortment of weapons and enemies. What made it sickening (literally, to some) was the complete freedom of movement -- your ship could be right side up or upside down, and you had to be comfortable flying it in any sort of orientation.

The OS X version owes its existence to the Descent2 project, D2X. From that point, it was ported to OS X by a couple of people. The version that I ran and linked here is from 'mcotis at yahoo dot com,' but I don't know anything more than that.

If you haven't played Descent2, I'm not sure it's worth the trouble to download and play. You'll be greeted with some nicely-updated versions of 1996's best graphics, and you'll be severely disappointed if you've been playing Halo and Unreal Tournament! On the other hand, if you played the original, this is a near-perfect OS X implementation with only a couple minor bugs. Since the program uses the original data files, this isn't an interpretation of Descent2, this is Descent2. You can even listen to iTunes while you play -- just create a playlist called D2X, and Descent2 will choose and play songs at random from that playlist as you search and destroy.

I doubt I'll be playing it all the way through again, but boy, does this bring back some memories of my gaming years past!

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