Ok, so there was that one time in the second Pirates movie. There's a three-way swordfight between Jack Davenport, Orlando Bloom, and Johnny Depp (not nearly as sexy as it sounds) inside a rotating water wheel. That scene, with the genius marriage of spinning backgrounds and shaky-cam, is the closest I've ever come to winning first place in the cookie-toss, but that's it. Mirror's Edge? Back to the Future ride? The infamous county fair Pukenator? Nada.
So I do not state it lightly when I say Descent makes me nauseous.
Even now, there isn't really a game out there quite like Descent. It predates Quake as a fully-3D first-person shooter, and has much more in common with shooters than the space sims it appears to emulate. Consider it a quaint love child of Doom and X-wing that makes you vomit every few minutes...in a good way. The gameplay is more akin to the previously mentioned FPS, with its claustrophobic level designs and color-coded locked door progression. The twist literally comes with the controls. The player has complete control over the x-,y-, and z-axes of their ship, turning a simple firefight into a gyroscopic hellscape.
I don't mean to make the controls sound like a gimmick, because nothing could be further from the truth. So much of what makes Descent fun and unique is maneuvering yourself in a truly 3D environment. Enemies attack from every direction, forcing you to twist and turn yourself to the point where simple terms like 'up' or 'down' mean absolutely nothing. The labyrinthine level design thrives from this disorientation, making a maze out of even simple layouts.
It's hard not to agree that Descent is a PC classic. Too bad I'm playing it on the PlayStation...
Remember my complaint with Crash Bandicoot's lack of analog support? I take it all back. Descent on the PS1 controls like a practical joke. The 3D maneuverability in Descent is pretty easy to conceptualize on a keyboard-mouse setup, so let's do a little exercise. Set yourself in a typical WASD hand position, like you were playing a shooter. Think, if you were playing a game where you could fly in any direction; up, down, rotate, whatever, how you would make that happen. Got a feel for it? Now, transpose that on to this:
It goes about as well as you'd expect.
However, for what gets lost in the transition to PlayStation, Descent does gain a few perks. The music quality in the PS1 version is much higher. The music itself isn't terrible. Mostly forgettable. I will say, though, it does get high marks for not having Rob Zombie. To be honest, it will be a miracle if I don't make it through this box of games without hearing 'Dragula' once.
Another addition to the PS1 port is full-motion cutscenes. Behold the ravages of age:
Oh, how far we've come.
When I spend time with Descent on the PS1, it's hard to keep from being frustrated. There's a good game right in front of me wanting to be played, but that damn controller keeps getting in the way of the fun. I hesitate to call it unplayable, but it is so nerve-wracking I could never play it for more than 20 minutes at a time. When I finally gave up on it, I didn't know what I was more sick of, the motion or the controls. Either way, I wasn't having fun.
Next time, we dive headfirst into PlayStation's most lauded shark-sim, Treasures of the Deep.
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