Descent 3 (Mac)

Other products by Graphic Simulations

Product Details

• Our recommended age: 12 - 20 years
• Manufacturer recommended age: 0 months and up
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00002CFA1
• Item Weight: 1 pounds
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #23,945 in Video Games (See Bestsellers in Video Games)

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Product Description

Amazon.com Review
The first word in omnidirectional first-person shooters--Interplay's Descent franchise--entered its third iteration for the Mac in late 1999. For those who loved the first two games, praise God and pass the ammunition: Descent 3 delivers more of the same, not new but certainly improved, meeting and exceeding the already formidable quality of its predecessors.

As with the previous titles, Descent 3 puts you at the controls of a heavily armed, highly maneuverable little spacecraft. Your mission is to duck and dive through subterranean mazes, blasting robotic foes into scrap, all the while fighting vertigo as you spin, thrust, and fire in every conceivable direction. Rich, flawless graphics rendering and realistic sound effects make D3 more convincing than ever. Although the controls can be a little overwhelming for the uninitiated (and might even be complex enough to make a keyboard preferable to a joystick), the upside is superior handling that lets you park on a dime.

Keeping with the same-but-better theme in D3, you get more weapons than ever (20 weapons in primary and secondary slots, including the evil-glee-inducing Mass Driver and Napalm Cannon); an improved Guide Bot to track down whatever you desire (power-ups, enemies, or the next piece in a problem-solving puzzle); way-better robot AIs (letting your enemies hit and run, ambush, work in teams, and feint); indoor/outdoor action (Descent 3's new Fusion Engine uses a flight-sim engine to seamlessly splice in wide-open outdoor environments); and more variations on multiplayer play (over a LAN or the Net). --Paul Hughes

Pros:

• Same addictive action of Descent and D2--one of the best shows in town for the Mac
• Deadlier weaponry and smarter robots to use it on
• Better rendering than ever, plus outside environments

Cons:

• No significant improvements on game play from previous titles
• Yawn-inducing back-story

Amazon.com Product Description
This third installment of the Descent adventure continues the saga by utilizing advanced technology. The game, powered by a new Fusion engine, offers players a whole new level of freedom, allowing multiplay over the Internet and even across computing platforms.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars actual game is great, but but it's extremely buggy, March 16, 2000

By	Susan J. Jensen (North Carolina) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Descent 3 is such a great game! sweet graphics, an engrossing plot, really fun to use weapons, and cool new robots. But then it started crashing. And crashing. And crashing more and more in every possible way you could imagine, from in the middle of a level, to when I was trying to quit, to loading a saved game. I email graphic simulations repeatedly and never got a reply from them. Finally, I called them up and got things working ok(I actually got an email back from GraphSim a couple days ago, about 3 weeks after my first email). Now that I know what to do to make the game run without crashing, it's an awesome game, but I definitely had to do some fine-tuning to get it working right.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wow!, June 11, 2001

By A Customer

This is a really cool game. When I found it at a college bookstore ..., I hadn't heard of it and didn't expect much. As soon as I installed it, I knew I was wrong. Although the plot of the single player mode is lame (oh come on, robots with viruses?), its still fun. The environments are very realistic and, after a while, call me crazy, but when I got shot after a time, it almost hurt... :). Multiplayer is even better for this game. Because much of the game is indoors, player pop out of random coridoors and surprise you with your friendly neighborhood mega. Also, the fact that it takes place indoors also makes it really fun while playing against other humans. They are smart, unlike the robots in single player mode, and many times, when a player is concentrating on a dogfight with another player, they are surprise from a nice Mass Driver round in the tail. Well, what are you waiting for? Buy it!

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE BEST MULTIPLAYER OUT OF THE BOX!, December 20, 2000

By	Chris Davies (New Zealand) - See all my reviews

D3 rocks the online world! No game currently available (Dec 2000) has better netcode. The fully Client/Server architecture (Not Permissible C/S!) plays extremely well even when lagged at up to 500ms. "Peer to Peer" multiplayer mode will provide acceptable gameplay at up to 650ms.

Online play is brutally tough. Even with a million robot kills under your belt, you will die many many times when you first venture online to play.

You will need a good joy-stick with an 8-way "HAT" switch - a mouse is a poor controller for D3 (making it much tougher than it already is). D3 requires "Deep Skills" to play online successfully - in other words, you won't get good in 2 weeks. I've been playing online for over a year and now consider myself to be a "good" pilot...

There is an excellent and helpful on-line community. A chat interface comes with Descent 3. You'll often have more than 50 people to talk to in the various chat rooms... to organise a game or ask questions etc.

There are a LOT of web sites to help the online newbie...

The people who stay for more than a week all become addicted! There's nothing quite like it out there - dedication, practice and skills are rewarded with the adulation of your peers and a high kill-ratio. So, put down that tired old "Ground Pounder" and experience the joys of the "Six Degrees of Freedom" that D3 provides.