Descent 3

Descent 3 is an old favorite of mine. I learned to mouse-aim in this game before I had played any FPSes with a mouse. Playing it again, those robots are still hard to hit. Oh and the Steam version does come with Descent 3: Mercenary expansion pack. For those unfamiliar with the game, when you start a new game, select "Descent 3: Retribution" for the original single-player campeign. (Note: The first time it automatically runs you through training) The game plays pretty well on modern Windows as long as you configure a few things correctly: 1. Launcher->Setup->Video tab: The DirectX renderer no longer works correctly; lots of messed up textures. The Steam version comes with the Glide emulation wrapper nGlide, so Glide mode seems to work the best. You can configure nGlide with the configuration tool in the Descent 3 directory. If you set nGlide to your native resolution and aspect ratio to 4:3, it can cut down the resolution changes in the game (it changes resolutions between gameplay and menus), but looks a little distorted. 2. If you have a modern SoundBlaster, you can restore 3D sound and EAX effects by using ALchemy, although you have to do so manually. See http://www.gog.com/forum/descent_series/enabling_5_1_sound_with_alchemy. After following instructions at link, go to Launcher->Setup->Audio and select "Creative EAX". 3. While you are in setup, on the Speed tab, set the Detail to Very High. On network tab, set LAN and your internet speed; most likely it will be T1 ~1.5Mbps. 4. Game Main Menu-Options->Video tab: You can turn up resolution. 1600x1200 is native on a 1920x1200 monitor. 5. Detail tab: You should be able to crank all settings to max. If you have performance issues in outside areas, turn down the terrain detail and/or render depth. 6. Sound: Set quality to high, and quantity up. 7. General and HUD tabs: set to taste, with one caveat: 8. MOUSELOOK DOES NOT WORK! Under Options->General->Sensitivity or Options->Config->Joy/Mouse->Adjust Settings DO NOT choose Mosue Control: "Mouselook". Stick with "Flight Sim". Mouselook was an acceleration mode that was designed to assist low sensitivity mouses when the game was made. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work as intended any more, but either way is much much too sensitive to be usable. Also, in online play, Mouselook is considered cheating anyway. 8a. What does work for FPS mosuers: (Re-)Inverting the Y-rotation or pitch Axis - go to Options->Config->Joy/Mouse and click the (?) button to the left of the pitch setting, then click Invert: "Yes". This will be unintuitively "non-inverted" according to modern FPS nomenclature. Now you can have mouselook-style control that works; adjust sensitivity as desired under Adjust Settings dialog. 9. Config: An odd control scheme that I find enjoyable to use is to play the game holding the left side of a gamepad in my left hand and the mouse in my right. I configure the controls in a typical console-FPS way: Assign left stick Y-Axis to Throttle, left stick X-Axis to Slide Horiz, D-pad X to Slide Vert, D-pad Y to Bank (or if implemented as POV hat, to Slide Up & Down, Bank Left & Right), left shoulder to Afterburner. Mouse X is Heading, Mouse Y is Pitch (inverted). Mouse buttons as default: LRC as Fire Primary, Secondary, Flare; Cycle Primary and Secondary with Wheel Up/Down. Extra mouse buttons can be used with items or countermeasures. You can also configure the right side of the gamepad to duplicate these controls, so you can move your right hand between gamepad and mouse. In this case right stick Y is also Pitch (inverted) and X is Heading. You can flesh out the buttons from there. 10. Once in-game, F1 toggles a handy keyboard guide. Use F3 to toggle cockpit (I prefer without). Use "+" key (near backspace, not num-pad +) to scale up rendering to full screen size. Phew, after all that work, enjoy a classic that still offers a challange.

Had to get this since I put so many hours into Descent 2 multiplayer back in the day. It still has the good ol descent feeling to it, but if you want to play multiplayer you can only play with people on your steam friend's list.

I am thuroughly impressed with this steam version of D3. I was playing my original installation just yesterday, and I did some testing with the steam version today, and I can say that this version is miraculously more stable than the original installation. Everything feels 100% the way it should be in game as well. I am also pleased that this comes with the Mercenary expansion, and is properly updated to Version 1.4. And finally, I did some testing with the multiplayer. I am acknowledging that someone else who gave a review said that he could only play with Steam friends. He is wrong. I have all of the tools necessary and ports open to run a game, and when I went to check Descent 3 Game Tracker, my game was there. I would like to add that just yesterday when I was trying to host a game, Windows Firewall was giving me problems and turning it off was the only solution. With this, I had no problems with the firewall. I also tried it out with the D3Server tool. No problems there. In short, I am very pleased with this stable version and I will be migrating all of my old and custom stuff to the Steam installation. That is the beauty of Descent, the fact that you can copy and paste its stuff everywhere and it'll run with it all.

-aspect 1.77 -width 1920 -height 1080 -nooutragelogo -framecap 999 -deadzone0 0.0 -playermessages -nosparkles -nomotionblur -usesmoothing -nopentium3 -nointro -z32bit -himem -novideo :)

I'm definitely liking this game so far. I bought and played the heck out of Descent 2, Descent: Freespace, and likewise games back in the day on my Windows 98. Sadly, I only had a demo for this game and never got to enjoy it to its full potential, until now. This game requires some tweaking with the controls and settings when you first get it, as any older game released on Steam usually does. However, I did not have to install any patches to get it functioning properly, which was nice. (I have not tried joystick support but the mouse is way more sensitive in this one than the first two) In case you were wondering this version released on Steam does include the "Mercenary" expansion pack as well as a few other tidbits to play around with so you won’t be missing any content or have to buy anything later. The rest is for you to discover, will you take the Descent? <god that was cheesy...

This game is a piece of crap. The lowest setting on the mouse sensitivity is still way way to sensitive and you are twissting and turning all over the place and can't aim at all. I used to own this game when it was a stand alone game and I loved it. Now that Steam offered it I thought it would be great but it is not. The policy on Steam says "They do not offer refunds" which means that even if you can't get it to work, you are ♥♥♥♥ out of luck and are stuck with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥, impossible to play piece of crap game that you will never be able to play. Do not buy this game, unless you are looking for ways to just throw away money on game s you don't really want or if you are going to gift it to someone that you really hate.

"All that's left is to go home, get my money, and sleep for the next two years..." 400Mhz AMD K6-II, 128MB ram, Aureal 3D, and a Voodoo 3 3000 pci card... The best game ever made. I played this far more than any other game that has since come out. On 56k we had 300ms ping and were proud of it! Had to guess their location before they got there. If only I could go back in time when servers were full and the game was new. Seems to run ok. This game has always continued to run well on Nvidia cards over the years. Most complaints will be from those using ATI... I mean AMD. Using Creative Alchemy I can reenable EAX in the game too. I was glad to see this game showing up here. I hope it gains popularity.

This is a really fun and enjoyable game, however, on Linux there is a serious bug which causes corrupted save files. I cannot beat the game because of this bug. Cannot recommend this in it's current state, hope to see a fix soon.

It's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Descent 3. Seriously. One of my favorite childhood games, and it still holds up today. Here's hoping we get some FreeSpace 1 and 2 on here!

What a disappointment. I had so much hope after 1 let me relive my nostalgia to a satisfying conclusion and 2 ended on a tough cliffhanger after a rough experience. But after about a hundred mostly-unsuccessful attempts to start this, I'm not sure what else to do. About half the people from online help forums say they can't get this game working, no matter what they do. The other half say the game works fine, no problems, just as long as you do five things ... and those five things are different for everyone. I spent hours trying everything I could find, from changing setup settings to trying patches to entering command lines to disabling my background themes. Doing so got me from error messages every time to simply crashing. The frustrating thing is that the game doesn't crash roughly 1 in every 10 times I start it ... but then it crashes opening the first level, or crashes exiting the map, or crashes changing a setting. I managed to play the training mission and that raised my hopes, and I've played partway through the first level several times but then it crashes somewhere and all progress is lost. And I've heard that many people experience crashes again on exiting levels. I guess playing this might work if I saved literally every minute? Descent 1 and 2 worked off the shelf with the help of DOSBox, but this game is a nightmare to run. Whether it works or not just seems completely random, and that doesn't help when testing things to make it work. Doubly disappointing is the fact that what I've seen of the game so far looks good. Sure, the experience is different. They might have rewritten the code from scratch when the company broke up because the ship feels completely different to fly. It's not bad, but it's different. And the map isn't just a mess of lines, and the headlamp doesn't eat through energy, and the guide bot can attach to your ship, and the ship goes "outside" now ... There's just so many interesting and good changes, so I don't mind a small difference in feel. Also they're doing a story now! There's a movie where the pilot learns the warp core malfunction was indeed caused by the shady corp, so now he wants to get his money and a little revenge. That's all I needed! Overall, if I could get this to work, I think I would recommend it. If I ever get it to not crash 9 out of 10 times rather than 1 out of 10, I might change my review to a positive. Who knows, maybe this game will work fine for you and you'll have a good time. But I just can't recommend something that doesn't work.