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I'm glad you guys are all showing an interest in this game. It seems that while D1 and D2 saw a lot of pay, D3 and mercenary weren't so lucky as it looks like the game only moved 40,000 units in the first three months. My own copy was bundled with Mercenary that I picked up out of a bargain bin in the early 2000's, so I feel like the game kinda... went out with a flop, rather than a bang. But isn't that one of the reasons why we LP? To bring out old games that probably would never see the light of day again, to breathe one more breath of fresh air into something and say "this game existed! Look! Remember!" Well, it's Descent 3's turn. And I'm not planning on stopping until it is all done.
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Jan 4, 2021 04:04
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As I recall Parallax split into Outrage and Volition with an understanding that both studios would create every other Descent title going forward. Outrage got the first watch with Descent 3 and Volition started pre-production on Descent 4 sometime after. In the interim Interplay fell down and went boom taking the rights to Descent with it and Volition went on to evolve Descent 4 into what we know as Red Faction. Before Interplay imploded Volition produced Freespace and prefixing the "Descent" title to it was some Interplay marketing wonk's idea - Volition didn't want to do that. Either way Freespace 1 and 2 were commercial successes, Red Faction did okay, and after all that Volition would go on to get collectively drunk and produce the Saints Row series. Outrage went on to start development on a game called "Rubu Tribe" but wouldn't survive to see it to completion. I wasn't aware that Descent 3 performed so poorly in terms of retail sales. It's a shame  I mean yeah it changes a lot of stuff about the game but at the core it's still Descent. A lot of the changes were really needed: The get keys and blow the mine gameplay loop was old and tired and needed some fresh air. Even so I remember a lot of Descent "purists" at the time making GBS threads all over 3 because it dared to try modernizing the franchise.Also as an aside the Descent 3 box art is inspired. It just nails the whole thing in a very simple image: 
Fabulousity fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Jan 4, 2021 |
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Jan 4, 2021 04:22
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I picked up Overload last night for like $15 on Steam (including all DLC). Engine-wise, it's Descent 1&2 with better textures and lighting. It still uses cubes to build everything, but they added in a way to use static meshes as "decals". It looks like you can port Descent 1 & 2 maps back into this engine through DLE, and I've seen some stuff where it looks like people are doing just that.
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Jan 5, 2021 03:57
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mastersord posted:I picked up Overload last night for like $15 on Steam (including all DLC). Engine-wise, it's Descent 1&2 with better textures and lighting. It still uses cubes to build everything, but they added in a way to use static meshes as "decals". It looks like you can port Descent 1 & 2 maps back into this engine through DLE, and I've seen some stuff where it looks like people are doing just that. Let's talk Overload when I get to it. For now, it's Retribution, then Mercenary. But yes, Overload is pretty much Descent 4 by any other name. The actual Descent 4, Descent: Underground, has been vapourware since 2017.
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Jan 5, 2021 07:18
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I liked Descent 3 at the time, so curious to hear more about why you and many others in the Descent community seem not to regard it very fondly. Though for sure there are some questionable sections of the game later on (thinking of the beginning of Level 4 in particular). And some other levels which come off as being fairly silly in the context of the game's attempts to be more story oriented.
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Jan 5, 2021 08:45
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   And here we get to see for the first of many times, what makes this game so not great.
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Jan 11, 2021 01:32
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"Vauss" sounds like the awful off-brand vulcan or gauss cannon you'd get from the dollar store.
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Jan 12, 2021 11:00
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Crazy Achmed posted:"Vauss" sounds like the awful off-brand vulcan or gauss cannon you'd get from the dollar store. The D3 Vauss is clearly a design overreaction to all the players who said they completed D2 using nothing but the gauss cannon. True, it was overpowered, but D3 swings it back way too far (although it's interesting that they picked up that a big strength of the D2 gauss was being able to stunlock enemies). D3's interior design is weird. We're flying around in a supposed air and spacecraft but in human-scale environments where a computer monitor is the size of our ship and a human figure seems bigger than our entire craft. It's as if we're action-figure sized, or piloting a small drone covered in guns.
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Jan 12, 2021 15:10
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Loxbourne posted:The D3 Vauss is clearly a design overreaction to all the players who said they completed D2 using nothing but the gauss cannon. True, it was overpowered, but D3 swings it back way too far (although it's interesting that they picked up that a big strength of the D2 gauss was being able to stunlock enemies).
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Jan 12, 2021 16:42
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The headlight seems to be inferior to the one in D2 as well. It only seems to paint light on the surface it's pointing at and ones adjacent to it, but if there's a rock spike or something far in the foreground, it gets left in darkness. Very jarring. Is it possible that the quasi-dynamic lighting in D2 was actually superior to D3? Or is this a consequence of the more complex level geometry, and the same issue would have happened in the old games too?
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Jan 12, 2021 18:11
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One thing I do like about this game is some of the little touches. Robots/turrets having flames and electricity arcs on them as they're near death or about to explode is a neat visual although obviously at higher difficulties you have no time to appreciate it. EDIT: Also I'm still bemused by the Automap looking like a PIP-Boy 2000 variant complete with a flickering meaningless light. Angry_Ed fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Jan 13, 2021 |
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Jan 13, 2021 20:42
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I like how they put napalm barrels all over the second level but for the most part they're ineffectual. You got some on a robot once but otherwise you and all other robots were never in any danger. Later on we get the napalm missile which is an outstanding area denial weapon, or just a straight up kill shot if you can plant it on another player's face.Loxbourne posted:The D3 Vauss is clearly a design overreaction to all the players who said they completed D2 using nothing but the gauss cannon. True, it was overpowered, but D3 swings it back way too far (although it's interesting that they picked up that a big strength of the D2 gauss was being able to stunlock enemies). I agree and had forgotten how freaking strange scale is in this game. As I recall it gets even weirder in the Mercenary levels, particularly one set in Seoul. The vauss cannon is garbage made even worse by the Pyro GL's hard points. As the game goes on the player does get access to different ships with different hard point layouts. The Pyro GX only returns in the Mercenary expansion but is not available for the first D3 campaign even if it's installed. I think you also made a veiled reference to another weapon which was one of my favorites but the physics behind it are incredibly weird: The impact mortar. CATCH DA FOOTBALL! *BOOM* Fabulousity fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Jan 14, 2021 |
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Jan 14, 2021 04:04
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 IT LIVES! IT DIES! berryjon fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Jan 18, 2021 |
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Jan 18, 2021 01:35
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I still have no clue how big everything in Descent 3 is supposed to be. There was a pocket-sized Orbot in the intro, but then in the actual levels you have Pyro-sized workstations, door switches, prison cells, trash cans, etc.
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Jan 18, 2021 01:53
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Uncut Commentary link appears to be pointing back to level 2 video. It should be this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI_pgpU4-qM
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Jan 18, 2021 03:58
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Fix'd!
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Jan 18, 2021 04:14
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Hwurmp posted:I still have no clue how big everything in Descent 3 is supposed to be. There was a pocket-sized Orbot in the intro, but then in the actual levels you have Pyro-sized workstations, door switches, prison cells, trash cans, etc. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Jan 18, 2021 |
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Jan 18, 2021 15:16
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Yeah, this game definitely has some great ideas but lacklustre execution. Daddy thief bot looking swole there, although the targeting monocle is kind of OTT aesthetically. I can't decide whether they were trying intentionally to be goofy, or whether someone there on the art team was just very  .How are you meant to fight that thing, though? Just pure attrition, or is there some sort of wat to bait it to charge at you and then you dodge while firing or something?
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Jan 19, 2021 08:13
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Crazy Achmed posted:How are you meant to fight that thing, though? Just pure attrition, or is there some sort of wat to bait it to charge at you and then you dodge while firing or something? Also, gently caress the gimmick for Secret Level 2. It's not fun in two dimensions, and it sure as hell isn't fun in three.
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Jan 19, 2021 16:37
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Angry_Ed posted:EDIT: Also I'm still bemused by the Automap looking like a PIP-Boy 2000 variant complete with a flickering meaningless light. I was reflecting on this when I saw the secret doors activate and open up the same way as Vault doors in the early Fallouts...and then I remembered Descent was an Interplay game, so it's possible the same art team were involved.
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Jan 19, 2021 17:42
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 TRAAAAIIIIINNNNNNNSSSSS!!!!!
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Jan 25, 2021 01:32
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Oh my god I must've blocked that level from my memory  In retrospect if designed today a better approach would be letting the player disable the trains with the trade off being the tunnels flood with police robots. It's funny how just two years later Deus Ex would flesh out the multiple tactics/paths approach much better.
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Jan 25, 2021 03:36
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I think this is where I stopped playing Descent 3 because gently caress trains. I wonder if the Pyromania mod would make this more bearable (apparently it's a mod that puts the Pyro-GX back in and it's like twice as fast as the GL)
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Jan 25, 2021 03:52
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The moral of the story: if you do have to make a sewer level, please put some landmarks in it. Turbines, pipelines, reservoirs, waterfalls, computer stations, big blocky machines that do nothing but release steam and make industrial noises... do something to make it not just a bunch of tunnels.
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Jan 25, 2021 05:10
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Now this one, this one was in the demo. And it's where I quit.
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Jan 25, 2021 18:19
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  Yes, the cutscene is a different video than the level. It's technical issues.
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Jan 31, 2021 14:16
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The sense of scale just continues to bother me. Sewer grates where the spacing is so large they'd accomplish nothing, every pipe is oversized, etc, but suddenly we can do fine work and there's human size doors and walkways to show how you got to your ship. It's very much in the style of the period, but it bothers me.
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Jan 31, 2021 20:19
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So the PTMC sends 30 Phoenix Interceptors to attack, but the actual fight is just you and some haywire robots. I feel like this level could've been cut in half, time-wise, and made it just you fighting some AI controlled player ships again. I feel like it'd get across the concept of multiplayer deathmatch across better than the fight at the end of Level 4.
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Jan 31, 2021 21:27
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That missions seems like it would have been a good time to show off the gunboys and use some proximity mines.
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Jan 31, 2021 21:45
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Montegoraon posted:That missions seems like it would have been a good time to show off the gunboys and use some proximity mines. They are so hard to use that I legit forget they exist most of the time. I'd have to check, but I'm pretty sure there's no "DROP BOMB" hotkey any more.
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Feb 1, 2021 01:47
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The spacing IS weird, but the prison level kinda makes your ship out as just a floating seat surrounded by plates and guns if you look at the scale of the prisoners. It might make more sense if you were piloting a drone instead.
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Feb 1, 2021 02:10
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throws his hands up in disgust You know what? This level is bad enough that it's time to break out the cheat codes. I don't care. Almost done Descent 3's recording.
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Feb 3, 2021 00:25
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Can't wait to see the level that broke berryjon.  Especially since TRAINS didn't do it.
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Feb 3, 2021 11:27
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Commander Keene posted:Can't wait to see the level that broke berryjon. Level 13, hunting down the 31 enemy bots with no way to find them. I used the 'kill all bots' cheat to finish the level. Level 14, the flag to begin the last fight was thrown, but the flag that caused the countdown until the end of the level was not. I'm cutting over 15 minutes from that before I break out the Skip Level cheat.
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Feb 3, 2021 16:45
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berryjon posted:Level 13, hunting down the 31 enemy bots with no way to find them. I used the 'kill all bots' cheat to finish the level. Did the guide bot's Find Robot command not work? Does it just search randomly until it finds one, instead of automatically knowing where the nearest enemy is?
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Feb 3, 2021 19:34
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Montegoraon posted:Did the guide bot's Find Robot command not work? Does it just search randomly until it finds one, instead of automatically knowing where the nearest enemy is? That command just finds the nearest one, not an objective one. With enemies that spawn through spawners or just arbitrarily appear. There is a command, but it explicitly does not work.
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Feb 4, 2021 00:00
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Haha look at this thinky piece that rolled out on Kotaku today: Every Game Should Have a Train Level
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Feb 4, 2021 00:28
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To be fair, if we were doing something more interesting than playing Frogger with one-hit-kill ultra-fast subway trains, it would probably have been much more enjoyable.
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Feb 4, 2021 08:50
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 BOSS FIGHT! And it's bad. berryjon fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Feb 7, 2021 |
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Feb 7, 2021 14:20
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Just, wow. I think I say this after every video now, but I'm really glad I didn't spend time on this game.
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Feb 7, 2021 19:17
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