Descent 4

[Caydr]

Anyone here play Descent? Anyone? .... Well it was a great game. And apparently Interplay is sort of kinda back on its feet now, and has told Gamespot recently that they intend to continue development for their old IPs, including Descent, assuming they can find funding:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6182846.ht ... lt;title;0

Seems selling Fallout was the right move. Interplay used to be such a great company I wanted to work for them as my dream job. Then they botched the marketing for Descent 3 and Freespace 2, lost everything, and generally mucked things up.

[RogerN]

Give it to me now! Another Descent sequel is LONG overdue...

Unfortunately, I don't have much hope that it'll happen. There's not a huge market for Descent-style games. Also, even though Interplay owns the IP, if the original developers don't work on it then there's no telling what kind of crap we could end up with. The original Descent developers split into two separate entities, if I remember correctly.

[Caydr]

Can't be worse than Descent 3.

[LOrDo]

I read a while back that they were actually working on Descent 4: Invasion before they pooped themselves to death. I would definatly love a sequel. I always wondered why no one ever made another descent style game after it ended.

[Caydr]

More people will buy Quake 11 than Descent 4, that's guaranteed... so why bother? It's not about art and innovation anymore.

[El Idiot]

why bother? It's not about art and innovation anymore.

Same page:
This just in...
"EA blew it."
-- EA CEO John Riccitiello
How EA's business practices are destroying innovation in gaming.
I loved Descent, but something of the same caliber just can't exist in today's market, there's no money in 'innovation' anymore. People buy buggy/rushed 'cookie-cutter' games just as much, and it's cheaper/faster to mass produce.
I've noticed a lot of my favorite games of all time (for their quality) came from small independent studios, mostly before 2000. It's turned me into a bit of a retro-gamer, the belief in the decline of video gaming.

[hunterw]

ea fucks up pretty much every game it publishes by raping the design studios with ridiculous deadlines. when the game is released and people buy it they work on sequels instead of patches to their horribly buggy, prematurely released game.

in summary, fuck ea, everyone who knows anything about video games knows ea sucks cock

[Snipawolf]

Well, CoD4, Crysis, and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic have all been pretty nice for modern games. Haven't played many other games recently that caught my eye.

The problem is that more people will buy a game because more people will NOTICE the game. Today, it seems to be more about marketing than game play or the amount of fun in a game...

Edit: Actually, Dark Messiah isn't so modern, though I did play it just recently.

[El Idiot]

I believe EA is making System Shock 3 as well. I'm not even going to try the demo, I already know it will suck.
Too bad they F-ed up Bioshock. Some people from the original SS2 team worked on it, but it turned into the usual streamlined garbage.
because more people will NOTICE the game
I hate people that are swayed by fancy ads. I practically live on sleeper hits and Indies.
EDIT:
COD4 was fairly good. At least it didn't have guns that spewed bullets at impossible angles. Or at least at as impossible of angles.

[SwiftSpear]

Bioshock wasn't bad. It wasn't excellent, and it sort of shot System Shock fans in the face... but it was an all around decent game. I'd at least put it on par with Doom3.

[El Idiot]

Bioshock could have been kicka** if they just patched up the original formula, rather than stripping it down.
Some SS2 fans got together to remake SS2 in the Doom 3 engine, but EA shut it down quite awhile ago...

Back on the subject of Space Sim remakes: I would love to see a redo of HardWar. Great LAN parties on that, endless backstabbing. All it needed was the financial/business system fleshed out a bit more. That and a few more ships/weapons.
Can't remember what company made it.

[zwzsg]

It's a pity there wasn't any descent clone (decent ones, stuff like Pyrotechnica doesn't count). I loved being able to move unrestrained from gravity or up-down consideration, pressing 4 keys at once to move sideway and up while spinning etc...

[KDR_11k]

Forsaken and Terracide were Descent clones but I'm not sure they don't suck.

[Caydr]

Forsaken was PS-only if I'm not mistaken, which added +3 to its roll to suck.

I bought it actually, back when I had a PS. I tried, I really tried. I must've played it for 30 hours or more. It's just too hard to go from mouse to control stick for a game like that. I don't think I ever made it past the third or fourth level. I stumbled around trying to strafe like in Descent but no dice, for some reason it's just not the same. I think the main problem was just too many buttons.

PS, I'm sure you get used to it, but having four triggers, four face buttons, a d-pad, and two sticks which also double for buttons, plus start/select, it's crazy. How are you supposed to hang on to the thing when if you grip it too hard you start mashing buttons?

[SwiftSpear]

Forsaken was PS-only if I'm not mistaken, which added +3 to its roll to suck.

I bought it actually, back when I had a PS. I tried, I really tried. I must've played it for 30 hours or more. It's just too hard to go from mouse to control stick for a game like that. I don't think I ever made it past the third or fourth level. I stumbled around trying to strafe like in Descent but no dice, for some reason it's just not the same. I think the main problem was just too many buttons.

PS, I'm sure you get used to it, but having four triggers, four face buttons, a d-pad, and two sticks which also double for buttons, plus start/select, it's crazy. How are you supposed to hang on to the thing when if you grip it too hard you start mashing buttons?

Are you serious? There are wings that your bottom two fingers can hold on to perfectly well... if your capable of controlling your fingers independently of each other

[KDR_11k]

I have Forsaken for the PC (got it with some mag for free) and I think there was a N64 version too.

[rattle]

Ditto... and I never liked it.

[Pxtl]

I have Forsaken for the PC (got it with some mag for free) and I think there was a N64 version too.

The PC version was pretty fun. The console versions were unplayable on TV resolutions. The game had a decent Descent-clone underneath it's icky veneer of Acclaim-ish tacky "EXTREEEEEME"-ness.

I loved Descent, but got very bored of all three of them pretty fast - D1 because of getting lost, D2 because the levels were horrifically long and all looked the same (problems I would've noticed if the GuideBot were there in Descent 1) and D3 just because I didn't have time to spend all day trying to shoot those unhittable police bots.

I'd much rather see a Quake3/UT-style outing for Descent - a game focussed on developing it's multi player possibilities rather than getting lost in endless mazes. But that's just me.

[Complicated]

Last day of High school, someone in my year asked me to make Descent 4.

[Caydr]

Ah, haha, you think I care about single player Descent, I should've made myself clear. The game's single player was average to good, made epic by the unique no-gravity environment, but still wasn't groundbreaking otherwise. It relied on the 3-axis movement for all its thrills.

I don't give a crap about single player Descent though. It's probably the only game I would say the multiplayer is all that matters. It's my own personal "Halo 2", only not made of fail.

Descent 2 multiplayer is unlike anything I've played to this day. I wish I was exaggerating that, but as far as excitement, weapon balance, variety of levels (map editor rules), generally everything added together to be a completely unique experience. It makes Unreal Tournament (the original, not the relatively crap sequels) look completely tame.