Descent 2 Reviews

An absolute classic, although 6 degrees of freedom (and more bobbing than the first Descent) makes for 6 degrees of nausea sometimes. This game can be confusing, disorienting and wildly spike in difficulty, but my goodness it was fun in the 90's and it's a blast still. It was worth pulling my joystick out of its storage box for this but it plays decently well on keyboard and mouse or keyboard-only, although the controls take some getting used to (kind of a mix of 90's FPS like DOOM and a flight simulator). As the Material Defender (which might be the most gloriously dystopian name in video game history), you go through mines blowing up reactors or boss robots, first collecting 3 keys, with the help of the great messiah, the Guide Bot. And the great Satan, the Thief bot, is a huge pain. Having established that the game is an awesome 90's classic, the Steam release is... an overpriced DOSBox-emulated version. I mean, it plays the game as it was pretty much at release, which is fine by me, but $10 for a game that old with no QoL improvements is steep. There are better fan-made remasters that are better ideas, but if you just want to play it as-is and absolutely want it in your Steam library, then go ahead and buy! I wasn't disappointed. But if you want more, guides on Steam and elsewhere will get you many, many more levels beyond the 30 (24 + 6 secret levels) single-player levels in the base campaign and a better multiplayer experience.