What is Descent II?

Hold on to your stomach, you’re in for another roller coaster ride in Descent n. After surviving the challenge of the first Descent, you cruise victoriously in Vertigo-1 through an asteroid belt and dock with a large PTMC space station. Ready to reap your just rewards, you’re blindsided when the powers that be exploit a tiny loophole in your contract and send you to the Zeta Aquilae system for an additional 72 hours of underground mayhem.

Fortunately, this time you’re not alone. Joining you on your journey is a friendly, programmable Guide-Bot that can seek out keycards, hostages, powerups, robots, the reactor, and the level exit. By default, the Guide-Bot seeks out your next goal on the way toward completing the level and, if you fall behind, it will turn around and come back for you. This is a great help to newcomers, who can easily become disoriented while twisting and turning in the claustrophobic 3D tunnels. You can also enable up to three views at once with cameras behind you, in the Guide-Bot, in your missiles, or — in network games — in markers dropped behind you that help you keep an eye out for foes.

Sequels to 3D shoot-’em-up games usually deliver huge leaps in technological innovation. Descent II is no different, adding an environment full of animated effects, like water and lava in which to cruise and destroy marauding bands of robot spacecraft. Gameplay is further enhanced by ten minutes of hard rocking CD audio by Skinny Puppy’s “Ogre” and “Type O Negative,” which add a pulsing beat as you cruise through 30 new hostile alien mines to save trapped humans, blow up the shaft, and escape. (If you don’t like the bundled music, you can, thankfully, substitute your favorite audio CD. “Sticky Fingers” by the Rolling Stones makes for an interesting soundtrack.)

What? All of this isn’t enough for you? Well, check out Descent II’s wealth of gameplay options. There are 22 varieties of weapons (10 of which are new), and 11 different powerups that provide anything from shield boosters to a new afterburner that can temporarily double your top speed. A headlight powerup makes it easier to navigate the darker comers of the mines, but it also draws enemy fire. It’s a good thing you can turn it off — if you can recall which key to push. Learning all of the available keypresses and remembering them under fire is, perhaps, your biggest challenge. The game is topped off with 30 new robot foes, the most notable of which is a Thief-Bot that can steal your weapons, ammo, powerups, and even cheat code-enabled attributes, such as invulnerabihty!

Network play is where Descent II shines. Up to eight players can join and leave games already in progress across an Ethernet network that is running the IPX protocol. AppleTalk games allow up to three players in a deathmatch or two players for cooperative play. Net games can be open, closed, or restricted, allowing invitation only access.

With a game this flexible, what could possibly be bad? For one thing, optimal gameplay is available only with a Power Mac with 24MB of RAM. Players with less RAM may have to settle for less detail, fewer sound effects, and other compromises. Also, to prevent freezes and lockups that can lead to corrupted pilot files, you must turn off all unnecessary system extensions. Despite Descent II’s ability to directly control many popular Mac joysticks (such as those from ThrustMaster and Gravis), you must manually tweak the default settings to enable simple things such as button control of forward and reverse movement. Finally, the interface falls short of being Mac-like, forcing you to navigate DOS-style menus to customize and launch gameplay.

These are minor quibbles with an otherwise fantastic entry into the realm of 3D action games. The arcade-like quality of Descent n is unmatched on the Mac. Descent II is the ultimate cross between a flight sim and a Doom-type shoot-’em-up game.

Kramer, Dave. (October 1996). Descent II. MacAddict. (pg. 54).

Download Descent II for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.5 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

Mac Minimum System Requirements:

• PowerPC processor
• System 7.5
• 16 MB of RAM
• 30 MB of free hard drive space
• 256-color display
• 2x CD-ROM drive

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver