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Best Game Ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 13
Date: November 19, 1999
Author: Amazon User

I have played descent 1 and 2, unreal, unreal tournament, quake2, quake3a. this one blows them all away. First off, the descent series offers full 3d movement, allowing complex movement and intense dogfighting like situations. Secondly, the descent series has always had the best netcode, so multiplayer support is very solid and easy to use. if you like multiplayer action, you will love this game! it has many different types of multiplayer games, from a soccer type game(called monsterball), to a highly strategic game(called entropy). The graphics are incredible, the single player is very involving. the only draw back is the type of machine you need to use. I would suggest at least a 400mgz machine with eigher a voodoo3 or a tnt2 card, oh and a high quality joystick with an eight way hat switch.

Descent 3

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: December 06, 1999
Author: Amazon User

Descent 3 is Interplay's follow-up to the highly acclaimed Descent franchise. You are once again cast in the role of the Material Defender. This time, however, your mission is one of retribution as you battle virally-infected robots across 17 levels (15 normal plus 2 secret). You must prove that the head of the PTMC intentionally contaminated the company's robots with an alien virus. After your rescue in the stunning opening cutscene you learn that the PTMC went so far to modify the virus as well.

You will fly a total of three ships in this sequel, including the old PyroGL. Weapons run the gamut from the standard concussion missile to the all-powerful Black Shark. New energy weapons such as the Microwave Cannon add a new twist to decimating enemies and standbys such as the Fusion Cannon and Plasma Cannon make a return. The graphics are breath-taking and the sound is nothing short of immersive.

Descent 3 requires a 200MHz Pentium processor with a 4MB 3D accelerator card that supports Direct3D, Glide, or OpenGL. I recommend a Pentium II or III class machine to get the most enjoyment out the game. Certain details can be turned off to get an acceptible framerate on lower-end machines but it detracts from the overall experience.

If you're a Descent fan or a newbie Descent 3 is a nice to get acquainted with the wonderful world of PC gaming.

Three Times A Charm!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: April 05, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I have played Descent since it first appeared; and in a time when everyone else was content to produce first-person view games where your opponents were little more than second-rate scaled bitmaps, Descent gave the player an opportunity to combat real three dimensional foes in all three dimensions. Plus the foes-insane robots driven mad by an alien virus, moved like nothing else, and seemed intelligent. There was nothing else like it on the market, yet somehow it missed the vein, and people flocked to games like Doom & Doom II. When Descent II appeared in 1996, I thought for sure that the game would take off, but it didn't happen. However, it wasn't about to stop me from enjoying a terrific game. Now we have arrived to this place and once again Interplay has unleashed a new Descent, and one that takes full advantage of 3D cards and more powerful computers.

Descent III also features a new game engine, known as Fusion, that enables the player to move from the familiar mines of the Post Terran Mining Corporation out to the planet's surface and surrounding environments. I guess this is hard to do in this sort of game. Additionally, they have improved the AI, and it really shows in the way the robots behave, and there is a significant increase danger to your ship in combat. The robots are all new and feature more polygons and detailed texture mapping than every before. Additionally, 3D acceleration is probably the best I have ever seen in any game. Descent 3 uses more dynamic light effects than any game I have ever seen. In fact, it is so graphically intensive, it is one of the reasons why I upgraded my 200 mhz to an Athlon 700. The demo ran fine on my old system, but when I bought the full version, even when I turned off all of the special effects, it barely ran. I would recommend at least PII 300, as does Interplay.

D3 provides much of the same kind of game play as its other incarnations, it's just better. I have friends who cannot play the game because they get disoriented too easily when working in the three dimensions of the mines. However, if you're like me, you get a certain thrill from the constant direction changes as you blast away at nasty robots with impunity. D3 offers a new spread of weapons including Frag Missiles that burst apart in a shower of mini-projectiles; Impact Mortar, which create very large localized explosions and heaps of damage; the Vauss cannon, which is an updated variant of my favorite Gauss cannon. Gone are the Earth Shaker missiles, replaced now with the Black Shark, a singularity weapon which turns hunting `bots into a skeet shoot. Basically, there are enough weapons to make your average NRA lobbyist drool with envy.

Of course, none of this means a tinker's cuss if it's no fun to play, right? Well, get ready `cause you're going down...again!

The pace of the game is much faster than the original, thanks mostly due to the quicker response and aggressiveness of the robots. It is here you will see the improved AI in action, because the robots WILL come after you, will work in teams, they do not cluster together to make mass-kills easier, and at higher skill settings, they most certainly WILL take you apart. The rush is incredible when you're fighting like mad in the early levels just to stay alive! The napalm-equipped bots are ferocious and stick to you like their weapons do. The robot generator areas-the one's that replicate new attack bots, keeps churning them out as fast as you can shoot them down. The game can be relentless at times, which is what a player wants.

Now, as for the story, you play the Material Defender, PTMC's itinerant mercenary from the previous two games and who went MIA at the end of D2 thanks to a defective jump drive. After you are rescued by a rebel faction on Mars who wants to expose PTMC and their evil CEO Dravis, as being responsible for the alien virus spreading to PTMC's robots and facilities. It becomes all-out battle against PTMC who, like all rich corporations, have their own squadrons of Pyro GX fighters, and start coming after you! See, and you thought big companies just didn't care about the little people anymore.

The only place where D3 suffers is the in-game music. It's boring, lifeless and worse, it sounds like the music we listened to in computer games a decade ago. That is also not to say D2's Skinny Puppy or Type O Negative was any better, I guess because it was an industrial setting (a mine) they assumed that we'd want to hear industrial music. Wrong! (And I like industrial). I found myself turning the music off and reaching for a Star Wars soundtrack to plop in my CD player to accompany the game. Beyond that I have little to complain about. This is a top notch game as far as game play, visuals and sound effects are concerned. It's got a break neck pace at times, while at others it's slow-paced which can get really creepy until the first robot jumps you and you wet your undies in shock.

The Descent series have always been my favorite first person shooter (along with Jedi Knight), and D3 does not disappoint in any way. The visuals and FMV cut scenes are stunning and the sound is excellent. I highly recommend for anyone so equipped with Environment Audio on their sound card to use the full four speaker set up, because D3 was produced and recorded in Dolby Surround, and it just adds so much to the experience. You'll also need a death machine of a system to run it.

Superb PC Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: January 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Back in 1999, the third and most likely final chapter of the Descent series released. It was praised and lauded by game reviewers and magazines worldwide. However, due to Interplay's bungled marketing, the game never got the player recognition it deserved. Tragically, it meant the end for the series.

I think it speaks volumes about a game when I can look at it now, three years later, and see what I see. People are still building new levels for it, multiplayer is still fairly popular, and the community is still strong. The DescentBB and Planet Descent are great places to start, so look them up when you get the chance.

Anyhow, regarding the game itself. The hallmark of the Descent series is its gameplay that concerns all three axes of movement, unlike other FPS games like Quake or Unreal that largely limit your movement to the ground. In Descent, you can fly wherever you want to, stop and turn on a dime, and move freely. Descent 3 continues this with its new game engine, which actually consists of two engines - one for rendering indoor areas and the other for rendering outdoor areas with terrain.

Continuing where Descent 2 left off, the game reprises your role as the Material Defender, a mercenary hired by the Post-Terran Minerals Corporation sent to rid their intergalactic mining installations of worker robots gone amuck. As fate would have it, rather than pay you for your efforts, your boss at the PTMC named Dravis decided to sabotage your ship instead. Fortunately, before reaching certain doom by hurtling towards the sun, you are rescued by a team of researchers calling themselves Red Acropolis. It seems they know about Dravis' sabotage and that he was ultimately behind the rogue robot activity in the first place. As the only pilot with enough guts to tackle the situation, it is your duty to gather the evidence to incriminate Dravis.

Of course, this is just the intro movie. The rest of the single-player campaign features 15 gigantic levels. And I do emphasize gigantic - these behemoths are many times the size of the old Descent levels and yet still only load once at the beginning. Inhabiting them, naturally, are a varied assortment of robots arranged in various classes - security drones, miners, and even robots that sweep the floor. These are your obstacles on the way to completing your mission objectives. Unlike the first two games, which were built around gathering keys, destroying a Reactor, then escaping the mine, Descent 3 has objectives for each level that must be accomplished. These include escorting important ships, going on recon missions, and in an ironic nod to the old games, defending the Reactors from destruction.

To carry these out, you find all sorts of neat weapons. There are ten different primary weapons and ten secondary weapons. Primaries include your basic Laser Cannon, chaingun-like Vauss Cannon, railgun-like Mass Driver, searing Napalm Cannon, and shield sucking Omega Cannon. The secondaries are equally diverse and include such hits as the Napalm Missile that bursts into flame, the Frag Missile that bursts into a thousand shards, and the awesome gravity-altering Black Shark Missile that sucks your enemies into a black hole.

Multiplayer is fantastic. New multiplayer levels are always coming out and the action never grows old. Descent 3 comes with many gameplay modes for multiplayer. Anarchy is your traditional deathmatch, and as you might expect Team Anarchy is also present. Capture the Flag is also represented, and built more like other games in this regard as opposed to the bizarre interpretation of it in Descent 2. One of the more intriguing modes is Entropy, a team game where you must collect viruses and infect the bases of the opposing team.

Being that this game will be four years old this year, it is becoming very hard to find it. But, should you come across it, I would strongly recommend a purchase. This is one of the finest PC games ever designed. Just because players didn't acknowledge it back in 1999 doesn't mean you have to. A fantastic game, a fantastic community, and years of playability. Who could ask for anything more?

The Best of the Series - Without a Doubt

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: June 16, 2000
Author: Amazon User

With Descent 3 you are getting a high impact, heart pounding shoot-em up with great graphics, gameplay, and a thriving multiplayer community.

First to the graphics, which if your system can handle it are amazing. Hate to use that word, since it's so overused, but it truly is. A real high definition, true to life 3D environment which will keep you asking, "Why is the bathroom so far away?"

For the gameplay it's second to none. A quick tip if your buying this game, buy a nice joystick along with it, if you don't have one already. This game was made for a joystick, and without it, it takes away from the game significantly. More buttons the better.

Before I begin to talk about the multi-player option, the single player game consists of 15 large levels, with of course increasing difficulty. So to the AI has gotten smarter this time around, and will ocassionaly double-back on you for that surprise attack. Also to, there a lot better at deeking your shots which was something the last two Descents lacked.

But now onto the multi-player game, which this game was really made for. In multi-player which is easy to logon onto via Outrages own network PXO you can pick to play deathmatch, cooperative, capture the flag, and monsterball. This is just four of the nine varriations. A word to the wise however, good luck trying to play with a 56.6 modem, the lag will be tremendous. You must have cable, or ADSL for true multi-playing action.

But alas, all games seem to have a downside, and for this one it's the sound. Although the explosions, and laser fire sounds are realistic, the soundtrack however gets rather annoying. But, it's only a minor drawback.

So in summary this game is made for a true shoot-em up fan with a High-End computer, a fast Internet connection, and of course a nice Joystick.

Pro: Excelent Graphics, Great Gameplay, In-Depth Single Player Missions, Thriving Multi-Player Community.

Con: The Soundtrack is rather Poor.

Requirements: Pentium-200, 32 MB RAM, 4X CD-ROM, 3D Accelerator w/ 4MB, mouse, sound board, 3-D accelerator, Windows 95; Windows 98

Greatest Game Ever Made

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: January 28, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is by far the BEST darn game I have played. Great game play and some killer graphics that go way beyond anything you can find. The internet play is great and neraly lag free due to the optimized code. This game did the best job of going way beyond the first two games. The Material Defender just got upgraded, and it is worth every penny to buy this great game.

Excellent for fans; good for newbies.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: November 10, 1999
Author: Amazon User

D3 is a worthy successor to the first two in the series and certainly takes it to the next level. If you enjoyed the originals, you'll certainly enjoy D3. Newbies are in for a bit of a learning curve, but it's worth trying out

The BEST Multiplayer Game I have ever played

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: October 06, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game is really fun with multiplayer. It is so reallistic that it made my mom have motion sickness. I've only had this game for 1 or 2 months now, but I can tell that in all likelyness, I will never play a better game. Aftr raving about this game so much, you might think that there's nothing bad about this game. You are wrong. Though multiplayer may be fabulous, single player sucks really badly. The storyline is boring, the missions are too difficult and long, and the robots are idiots. But other than multiplayer, it is a great game.

Newer is not always better

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: January 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Before I bought this game, I followed the progress of its development via the World Wide Web. The only reason I was so excited to get it was because I expected it to be better than Descent II. I expected Descent 3 to have all of the D2 weapons and more. I remember being disappointed when I read the manual that weapons such as the Phoenix Cannon and Helix Cannon were excluded. On top of that, only a few primary weapons (out of ten total) are actually any good, which means the descriptions of the weapons in the pilot's manual are very misleading.

The system requirements were way too high. I remember buying a video card for this game, and I couldn't even play level 5 because it was too choppy. And nobody's computer was good enough to play certain multiplayer levels.

The single-player was overcomplicated. Instead of "get blue key, get yellow key, get red key, destroy the reactor or boss," you have to complete these specific objectives, and if you don't, you fail the mission and can't continue until you do. I enjoyed the missions, but that's because I like action games a lot. Outrage tried way too hard to make the single-player like a tactical action game. In a shooting game, complicated objectives just don't fly. It just doesn't seem action-packed.

The music, and almost all of the sounds were different. I liked the music, but that's because I like techno. The music and sounds were just so inconsistent with Descent I and II. It's a common misconception among Descent players that Descent 3 failed because of lack of marketing. But there was just too much competition from games like Half-Life; so D3 fell by the wayside. There was a great lack of Descent 3 players online, which continually declined. So most players became over-confident and over-competitive, worrying too much about their rank and statistics and heckling the weaker players, constantly reminding them of their lack of skill, day in and day out.

For three years I struggled with Descent 3 (Yes I said three years). I just couldn't get the concept of how to move with whatever controller I was using. Self-help Web sites for Descent didn't help, because this game is not Descent. And the changes Outrage made to the ship physics and controls didn't make it any easier. The single-player only lasted a month, and that's because I didn't play it all day. There were only 15 levels, and while they were much bigger (that's another thing, D3 has super-huge levels), each super-huge level took the same amount of time to complete as any D1/D2 level. The size of the levels made a lot of the weapons ineffective too.

Once I got the hang of the multiplayer, then it was O.K., which is why I gave this game the rating I gave it. I think the only reasons I played as long as I did were because I thought it was going to be like Descent II, and I wanted to become the best player. Both of those things never happened. For 3 years I only had a 33% efficiency. Never made it past the first rank, when the ranks still existed. I didn't even make the list on PXO. Not to mention that this game is full of bugs. Especially if you have a modern computer. I'd say playing Descent 3 multiplayer was one of the worst experiences of my life. I'd say, if you like action games and single-player games, pick it up, it's good for a few thrills...plus it's only like $1 now. But if you don't have the patience for being chain-killed in multiplayer, and can't stand playing the same levels over and over, then this game is not for you.

Blow's all away

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: December 29, 1999
Author: Amazon User

The game is the best end to the Descent saga.It combines the best 3-d graphics with real world enviroments,and if you read the trilogy of books you should be able to understand the game perfectly.The new weapons are merciless,and the 2 new ships provide different types of piloting skills/requirements.The addition of openspace combat combined with the in mine battle experience as opposed to the in mine in D1 and D2,gives you a better chance to explore the D3 universe.

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