Descent 3 by Robn Kester Descent fans across the land have something special in store for them. The vertigo-inducing 3D shooter Descent 3, being ported to the Mac by Duane Johnson of Graphic Simulations, stands to score big and go deep when it hits Macs everywhere. This sequel to end all sequels contains a little bit of everything that gamers want and more. We are talking eye candy, gameplay, enemy AI, weapons, and devious levels that leave you spinning. That’s right folks, Descent 3 is going to kick some Mac gaming butt upon its release. The story starts with you adrift in your ship heading towards a sun. You are saved at the last minute by members of an organization who have been keeping their eye on the company you work for, the PTMC. They bring you up to speed on what has happened since you went adrift and set you up with a new ship. It seems that a nasty virus is infecting robots at a research facility, causing them to go mad, and they start taking over. It’s up to you, and only you to save the day. During each mission, you will encounter a handful of over 30 different enemy robots, all programmed to wipe you out with no regard. To accomplish this, the bots are armed with a new AI system that gives them amazing life. They might put up a good fight, run, hide around a corner, or trick you into an ambush. It all depends on how each situation plays out. There was one particular area where I was ambushed by 2 bots and while I was working on them, another snuck up on me and shot me in the back. Ouch. These bots don’t have feelings. Your arsenal is quite varied in D3. The approximately 20 weapons you will come across include Lasers, Napalm, Homing Missiles and more. As you find new weapons, you will find new challenges that let you test them. Don’t worry, there are plenty of goodies to stock your primary and secondary weapons with, as well as power ups, and other useful items like invulnerability and cloaking. Now that you have all this firepower, you need something to kill. And there is alot of that to be found in D3. There are over 30 different Robots spread throughout the game. These bots include Old Scratch whose claws can rip your ship to shreds, and Gunslinger, who would love to see you at high-noon for a little one-on-one gunfight. The environments themselves are just stunning. Each room looks and feels like it was designed with the little details in mind. You will find huge pipes with steam spraying out, pools of acid, stalactites, pyro barrels, plus rooms and rooms of twisting turning corridors. The environments are quite interactive as well. You can shoot and destroy many of the items around the different areas and rooms. Many of these items make excellent weapons if you set them off when a bot is near. This is also an excellent and necessary strategy move. The game physics are an excellent part of the whole eye candy effect. But they serve to make the gameplay much more realistic as well. After attacking a bot, they might short circuit and explode, or they may lose control and crash into something, including their own kind. This is particularly fun when you have just set them on fire with your trusty Napalm cannon. They bump into each other, light the others on fire and all end up digging up daisies. But be careful, this same thing could apply to you. To guide you on your journey into Descent, you are assisted by your Guide-bot. Its job is to do what you ask of it. It can find power ups, energy, enemy robots, or help you find the next goal for your mission. This is especially useful if you are stuck or lost and need a little help. The Guide-bot is quite clever, and aside from getting in your way during a fire fight on occasion, he ends up being a nice touch to the game. He does take damage if hit, but don’t worry, you can fix him up good as new with the help of your shields or send him out to find a power up for himself. Gameplay Before you dive right into a new game, you can take the training missions to hone your skills controlling the ship. To simplify things during training, only the controls you are learning currently are enabled. This keeps the overdose of controls to a minimum until you get the hang of things. This is a good place to get your key settings perfected before heading to the game itself. Upon starting a new game, you are treated to a very nicely done 3D animated movie and then sent off on your first mission. Standard mission completion depends from mission to mission. Usually your time is spent exploring the level’s intricacies and disposing of the robots-gone-mad, a task that can be quite daunting. A task that can be quite daunting. You must survive the level start to finish to save that level, but you are allowed restarts to help you along. This means you must keep your eye peeled for bad guys and watch your shields to boot. The enemy robots' intelligence is really what brings the title to life. The robots you will encounter during your missions are each hand-crafted to kick your butt. And they will do just that if you let them. Each of the over 30 robots is designed to have individual personalities, weapons and artificial intelligence. The bot AI is excellent to the point that the bots will do things that you wouldn’t have thought they would think of. They are capable of working as teams, running away if needed, hiding around a corner or in the shadows, or calling for backup when you are too much for them. As you fly around a corner, you might be surprised by a Gyro bot, who is really just baiting you until his buddies arrive. Or, you might find yourself surrounded by several kinds of bots, all hell bent on your destruction. Some of the bots can be particularly nasty in that regard as well. For example, the bot called Tubbs is a big security guard who is called for when you are lurking where you shouldn’t be. If you try to access a security door with the wrong card, this beast will sometimes appear to remind you that you are in the wrong place. His firepower and armor make him a tough one to beat as well. Multiplayer The Descent series has always offered serious gameplay as a big part of the Descent experience and Descent 3 is no different. D3 has several methods for playing against others including the Internet via TCP/IP network play. To find games on the Internet, D3 Mac will support GameRanger, Heat.net, and Parallax Online (PXO). With a 56k modem, Internet play is excellent and the lag time isn’t a problem if you have a good connection. DSL or cable modem would be perfect, of course. And with them both becoming more prevalent as the need for bandwidth increases, the inevitable result means more speed for faster lag-free games. The different modes of multiplayer action give players a good choice of game styles to choose from. Among these are Anarchy, Hyper-Anarchy, Team Anarchy, Robo Anarchy, Hoard, CTF (Capture The Flag), Monster Ball and Entropy. In each mode, the final objective is to score as many points as you can before time is up. Anarchy is basically a deathmatch game. Each player is pitted against the others. When you score a kill you get a point, when you die, you lose a point. I’m sure most of you are familiar with this style of frantic gameplay. It’s a favorite for many. Hyper-Anarchy is a little variation on Anarchy where a single hyperorb is spawned randomly in the level. The player who has the hyperorb gets bonus points for each kill and whoever kills that person gets a bonus themselves as well as control of the hyperorb if they pick it up. Team Anarchy is a deathmatch team play game. Each player picks a team and defends those teammates while trying for the opposite teams players. Robo Anarchy is deathmatch with Robots added into the mix for fun. If you are killed by a robot, it counts as a suicide. In Hoard gameplay, the gameplay is based on Anarchy, but instead of getting points for kills, you are awarded points for picking up hoard orbs and carrying them to a base. Next up is Capture The Flag. This old favorite features team based play in which the teams must get the other teams flag and return them to their base to score. If you are touched by an opposing teammate, you will drop or spew the flag and your power ups for nearby players to grab. Watch you back so others don’t sneak up on you. Monster Ball isn’t a Transylvania High School dance theme. It’s a cool mode for multiplayer where two teams attempt to propel a large ball into their goals. This can be accomplished by pushing the ball or actually shooting at it. Sometimes the latter tends to be the best method since you are not blocked visually by the ball if you are not right up on it. The final multiplayer mode is Entropy. This is the most complicated game mode available but offers up a complex and challenging gameplay as its reward. In this mode, the object is for your team to control the level. To do this, you have 3 mini-bases: refueling centers, repair centers and virus producers. You must protect them from the other team while trying to take over their bases. The first two items are self-explanatory for the most part, each recharges your shield or energy. However, the virus producers are the key to the game itself. These mini-bases produce virus power ups. Five of these power ups allow you to convert an enemy base into your own. You just collect five and go sit still on an enemy base for five seconds and it will be converted to yours. As soon as you convert the enemies refuel, repair and virus mini-bases to your own, you will control the level. Then you move on to the next level and do it all over again. This kind of play will be popular amongst those who have death matched themselves into oblivion and are looking for something new to try. Graphics Descent 3’s graphics are stunning. The new engine is quite powerful and capable of all the latest visual tricks to create a very realistic look to the game itself. As you watch in awe, you will see robots explode as parts fly smoking around you. You will fly into rooms that you find yourself looking around just to see the details after you have cleared the bots away. Everything looks good. Everything. The game’s new Fusion engine allows gamers to visit indoor or outdoor settings seamlessly. You’ll fly out of a doorway and find yourself floating above hills and mountains, dodging the enemy bots at every turn. The remarkable sense of continuity that this engine affords allows gamers to be fully emersed in the game while seamlessly switching from indoor to outdoor scenery. While most of the game takes place in the bowels of the planets themselves, the outdoor scenes offer a nice change of pace to let the disoriented gamer get their bearings before diving back into the fray as well as adding to the bigger picture of where you are located to get the idea that it is a real place. The interface is nice and carries the games feel well. There are quite a few options to choose from and they are organized well so that the gamer can easily get to them. D3 Mac will come with full support for OpenGL and 3dfx's Glide. According to Duane, the programmer working on the Mac port, OpenGL was a nightmare to implement compared to Glide. But it seems all the hard work on OpenGL will pay off. Johnson told us that he found a bug in the OpenGL version of Descent 3 for the PC that prevented the game from doing correct depth rendering. Johnson says, "I have discovered the error of their ways & fixed the engine for the Mac version." The cutscenes for Descent 3 Mac are also being redone in QuickTime to give them a cleaner and sharper look. Sound If you’ve got a big sound system, this title is for you. The explosions and gunfire are huge, rumbling everything around you just like in the game itself. Every little sound just adds to the complete audio experience. The music is a mix of electronic beats with keyboards flowing in and out keeping you on edge a little as the energy pumps through you with styles that vary from lower tempo dark moody pieces to higher energy acid techno style grooves. No matter the sound, it fits the quick paced action just right. Johnson is looking into adding 3D sound support that will be available in a new version of SoundSprockets. But according to Johnson, he's been having a hard time getting Apple to seed him with a beta of the new SoundSprockets. Control The ship handles well and with relative ease, once you get your control settings just right. I found that using the mouse to mouse-aim and key controls like I do for most FPS titles, I was able to get right into the action with little problem. A joystick with the right buttons and controls would also be an excellent choice. General movement and turning of the ship is smooth and swift. The controls can actually be overly touchy if you have sensitivity set too high, but overall it handles very well considering the amount of controls you have at hand, so to speak. As any Descent fan knows, getting your controls set right is crucial to being successful in this game. When you are under attack by multiple bots, there is no time to try to find the right keys to get things done. While there are quite a few controls for pitch, roll, sliding in multiple directions, firing weapons, and controlling the Guide-bot, it’s not so much that you can’t get the hang of it eventually. Weapons Your selection of weapons is more diverse than a pawnshop’s back room armory. For primary weapons, you have multiple lasers including the primary Laser Cannon and the Super Laser. The Vauss Cannon rains a spray of bullets on your enemies that leaves them reeling. The Mass Driver is a snipers dream with a telescoping site to get in close without actually being there. There is also a Napalm Cannon that allows you to BBQ anything and everything in site. It’s always fun to play with fire I say. The EMD Gun hits your enemies with an arc of electro-magnetic energy reminding them who’s boss. Or, you can use the Microwave Cannon to fire a round of super-heated energy right where it counts. This will leave the bots hurting for sure. The Plasma Cannon is another lovely weapon you will have a chance to try. It fires a rapid-fire spray of plasma particles confusing and damaging your opponent with every hit. Of course the Fusion Cannon is back this time around. Called the "ultimate over-kill assault weapon", this little beauty gives the baddies a mouthful of fusion they won’t soon forget. And finally, there is the Omega Cannon. This returning favorite is essential a shield power vacuum, draining your unlucky victims own shields and giving it to you adding insult to injury. And for your secondary weapons, the menu is just as mouthwatering. Concussion, Frag, Homing, and Guided Missiles are your appetizer. Each offers its own unique little flavor to the game. You also have Impact Mortars which allow you to blast anything you can fire it at. The Mortar is affected by gravity so you can drop it down a mine shaft or lunge it into a room and watch it reduce the enemy bots to rubble. Also available are Napalm Rockets, which give you a similar effect as the Napalm Cannon in a self-propelled package. Nice for a hit and run BBQ. There are also Smart Missiles, whose contents are intelligent plasma projects that find the nearest baddie and make his day upon explosion. Think of this puppy as an intelligent Frag Missile. The Cyclone Missile, when fired, finds the opponent and lets loose a mini-spray of six missiles, destroying whatever they hit. It’s nighty-night Robots when you fire a Mega Missile. This sweet puppy is packed full of lots and lots of explosive goodness that will make even the toughest robots cry for their mommies. And last but not least is the monster weapon of them all... the Black Shark Missile. This brand-new top-secret weapon launches a swift missile towards your target. Then the missile releases its payload – essentially creating a Blackhole that nothing can escape from. That’s gotta ruin someone’s day. Summary A title like Descent 3 will be a welcome addition to the Mac game market. Not only does D3 offer up a real beauty of a game, there’s also powerful gameplay underneath. Intelligent robots put up a real fight as you twist and turn through a maze of corridors. And then you climb out into the open air seamlessly thanks to the Fusion Engine. While the PC version is available now, the reviews have been through the roof for the most part – proving that the title has the power to stand out in the crowded PC gaming market. And more importantly, this means that the Mac is destined for a great ride when Descent 3 arrives. Vertigo was never so sweet.