Descent ][ Long story short, this is (in my opinion) the single most skilled and incredible shooter ever created, despite being nearly 15 years old. For those of you who aren't interested in my stories and reasonings, skip to the gameplay section below. This is a "rebirth" of my old thread which received no attention at all, but I am making it this time more appealing with more vids, hoping to get some new members! Introduction Forge Hub is a fairly new community of relatively young gamers, and is a great one nonetheless. But sometime I enjoy diving into an age-old community with some seriously hard-core, old-skool, die-hard video games players. Whilst some of us were still in diapers in 1995 at the release of the 1st Descent game, the community spawned from Descent were frantically playing 10 - 20 games a night (Descent games last way longer than Halo games), over Dial-Up with IPX emulation. To this day a select few still linger on the online gaming programme (similar to steam but for seriously old games) called Kali, waiting for a pal to get on (the Descent community is fairly close-knit), so they can duke it out over one of Descent's endless number of virtual arenas. I recently (read: a year and a half ago) had the joy of accidentally falling into the Descent community. I had known Descent as a child, and I recall playing Single Player with my Dad at the age of 5; the first video game I ever played. Now tonight you'll barely see me around here anymore, because I'm sitting on Kali, desperately waiting for one of my pals Wlverine, Ashes, Tankie, Kalriq, Rethink, Warlord, etc to pop on so we can tear each other's ships to shreds. Reasoning Why? Why play a game from 1995 in the modern day, when so many new, exciting games like CODMOD2 (props to Charlie for giving me this term), AC2, Borderlands, etc are being released? Answer: Descent is, in my mind an unparalleled experience in terms of gameplay. If MLG existed in 1995, this would be their flagship game, not Halo 3. The IDL (Invitational Descent Ladder) basically was a pioneer of competitive, skillful gameplay. Duels are intense games involving complex use of the mind, shooting skill and ship maneuvering, in a way very few other games can ever possibly hope to emulate. Larger or team games can be just as skillful, but they can also just be pure fun if you wanna sit back and blow some **** up! In addition to this, the Descent community is a very small, close knit community. Nearly everyone knows everyone, and it's all extremely friendly and a blast. This is something which is very rare in today's mass marketed games. My biggest reason for loving Descent is the unique nature of playstyles. In my mind, individual players of Halo at the top skill levels are all very difficult to distinguish between, its difficult to be distinguished for reasons other than shooting skill. If in a 4 player FFA in Halo everyone used the same name (for example), and were roughly the same skill; you would not ever know who's who. Ever. This is not the case in Descent. In Descent how you fly and fight with your ship really gives you a character. The ones that spring to mind are Wlverine and Rethink. Never has there been 2 such completely contradictory yet equally effective playstyles. Wlverine plays the hit and runner; he takes shots at you when you least expect it then disappears, tail tucked between legs, getting the hell away from you. Lurking around, opening fire the moment he sees you, disappearing straight after, after tossing Plasma shots and Smart/Flash missiles at you. Then there's Rethink. The hunter. Mercury Missiles and Gauss. Oh god. The moment he sees you he is on you and tearing your shields down in seconds. You turn to run and are pumped full of lead. You manage to get away, only to have him cut you off with his afterburner and kill you painfully and quickly. Yet they both still kick my asses equally! The Game Descent is an art. There is no doubt about that. Yes, I would argue that Halo 3 is skillful, but Descent is 10X so. Out of all the games I have ever played to this day, none require as much skill and intelligent thinking as Descent (duels anyway). Descent is a 6DOF game. This means Six Degrees of Freedom. It is a style of gameplay unmatched in any modern game to this day. 6 degrees means you are allowed free movement in all 6 directions: Left, right, forwards, backwards, up, down. Conventional "Groundpounders" allow 4 degrees of freedom. Add this extra axis into gameplay and you have a totally different story. Descent's gameplay is excellent in 2 catagories: Duels and 3+ player games. Duels are the culmination of skill, requiring the art of style, knowledge of your opponent and his moves and style, predicting skill, ability to be unpredictable, and a good aim. Because of the non "hitscan" nature of the weaponry in Descent (it is energy and missile based) you can predict your opponent with weapon fire, and its very satisfying for them to run into your predicted shots. 3+ player games require a different skill set. These are undoubtedly far more mindless, require the ability to steal kills, interrupt fights, and have an excellent fight of flight reflex. These are lots of fun, especially in teams. Here I will show some gameplay videos of D1/D2 in action (I prefer D2). These are all mine and demonstrate gameplay from a (relatively) high skilled perspective. I can beat most players but there are some who put me to absolute shame. There's a montage, a slightly unbalanced game of doubles, a large scale FFA, a smaller scale FFA and a balanced game of doubles for your viewing pleasure. YouTube- Descent 2 Multiplayer Montage Part 1 YouTube- Descent 2 Multiplayer - Kegparty Big Game YouTube- Descent 1 Team Anarchy - The Manes L2 YouTube- Descent 1 Anarchy - Fin1A YouTube- Descent ][ Team Anarchy - Kegparty It's quite difficult to describe how fun yet skillfull Descent is, so check it out for yourself! PMs or email @ nitrotomato@hotmail.com if you want to find out how to get your hands on a copy of Descent, along with the IPX emulator Kali which allows online pay. Sure, Descent has pretty awful dated graphics, but its gameplay and skill levels are in my mind unmatched by ANY FPS ever released. I know for a fact I will never be able to put this game down again until it has drawn its very last breath, which I hope will never happen. I hope you've enjoyed my 2nd attempt to get some fresh faces into our community!