Retro Games Beaten

I personally liked Descent! I don't finish games that I don't like. I just don't recommend it to anyone else. XD



Not for those red bots with guided missiles, though. For them I had to keep a sharp corner between them and myself to trick their missiles into striking the wall. Otherwise they'd unavoidably lock onto me and eat upwards of 30 HP a pop.



I got as far as checking for graphics options in the menus and just didn't see any. Descent seemed to lack a lot of creature comforts like this, weirdly enough. I was expecting it to work like Doom where I could just hit the escape key and bring up a master menu for saving, changing controls, graphics, etc. But those menus were all individually bound to F1, F2, etc. I had to look those up online. The online forum posts I was able to find talking about changing graphics settings seemed to discuss opening an .ini file or something in notepad and changing a value somewhere. I said, "Nope." and just played it all at 240p.

Also: it's very interesting you got this running on a 166 MHz Pentium at 640x480. Originally I tried playing this on a 200 MHz Pentium at 320x240 but the frame rate jumped off a cliff when it too many enemies crowded the screen.



Yes there is definitely a current-day fandom for Descent. I even seem to remember some kind of Descent revival a year or two ago. The advertising pitch was something like, "Hey kids, don't you miss Descent? Then buy our game!"



Yeah I could see Descent playing slightly better with some kind of dual joystick setup, maybe like the controller for Virtual On if the sticks were analog.  I wonder if you could play it that way on a modern PC using an XBOX 360 controller over USB or something.

Also: $150 for a flight stick!! 90's PC gamers weren't fooling around! According to completed listings on eBay it can be had for around fifty bucks now, though.

2c) Warcraft II: Beyond The Dark Portal (human campaign)
26) The Operative: No One Lives Forever
27) Star Wars Rogue Squadron 3D
28a) Warcraft III (Human Campaign)
29) Descent
30) Quake Mission Pack No. 1 Scourge of Armagon



Quake: Scourge of Armagon’s first few stages didn’t light my world on fire, likely because of the sci-fi settings such as a space station and a mine reminding me too much of Quake II. Maybe overdone metallic corridors and futuristic infrastructure also have something to do with why I’m so ambivalent for most FPS games from the late 2000’s and onwards. I’m not sure. Anyway, not long afterward, Armagon did away with its sci-fi setting and returned to Quake 1’s spooky castles full of homicidal monsters and death traps. I love those castles. They’re like the lair of a malevolent genius reanimating homunculi from sewn-together body parts and lightning bolts.

Once I got into the flow of things I loved Armagon’s choreography of carnage, but things became even more interesting once I began to instigate fights between various monsters. I knew you could do this in ordinary Quake, but in Armagon I began pitting them against each other on purpose because I needed to save ammo. Soon, though, I just couldn’t resist starting brawls between monsters, even when I had enough ammo and making them kill each other was riskier than simply dispatching them myself. There was something cathartic about it, like triggering a combo in Dr. Robotnic’s Mean Bean Machine, but way more devious.

Armagon kept making me think about playing it even when I wasn’t. While playing, I kept getting slaughtered again and again, but some magical quality inspired me to keep trying rather than pissing me off. I never got frustrated, tired, or caught myself wishing it would end. If anything I was having thoughts of starting over from scratch and replaying it more proficiently using my newfound familiarity with all the stage layouts. For me, this puts Armagon in a league similar to Star Wars Episode One Racing or Mechwarrior 2 - rare examples of games that make me want to play them over again after I’ve already beaten them in a time when my miles-long backlog provides me with virtually infinite variety. I would even say that Armagon is superior to the base Quake game required to play it. It doesn’t exactly do anything to turn the formula on its head, but it polishes and sharpens it into a razor-sharp masterclass in stage design from the “find 3 colored keys to unlock 3 colored doors” era. This is a must-play for anyone who likes Quake or MS-DOS era FPS games.

Last I checked they're like $3 each on Steam. I only overpaid for my physical versions because I'm a weirdo.

Gotcha. Well I just found The Offering bundle on GOG, which includes this expansion. I think I'll throw this into my October play folder, seems the right time of year.



Man you oughta play this stat if you've not yet:


www.gog.com/game/return_to_castle_wolfenstein

You might like these too:

www.gog.com/game/heretic_hexen_collection
www.gog.com/game/witchaven_witchaven_ii_blood_vengeance



Dude, if you've never played Q2, definitely give it a try. I loved the PC version (granted I beat it when it released, not sure how well it has aged). The game's only $5 on GOG:

www.gog.com/game/quake_ii_quad_damage