I believe it is safe to say that Descent 3 is the greatest game ever made. The only flaw is that the game is only as good as the computer it is played on. Descent and the original Descent were excellent games. The best thing about them was that you could run them decently on a computer with much less power than the minimun requirements stated on the box. Of course if you bettered those requirements the game became much better because resolution increased along with speed and screen size. Descent 3 will not run on a crummy computer. It barely runs on the minimum requirements.

That is exactly what the README file says. How many people have computers like that? If they do have computers like that they will have to turn down the display options very low to get a smooth game. Too bad for all of those people, at least they don't know what they're missing. What they don't know can't hurt them.

In the first two Descents every level was the same. Fly in, blow up reactor, and get to the exit before you die. There would be one movie at the beginning and one movie at the end of the whole game. Well this game has changed that and little else. You still go into a level fly around and blow away robots with a lot of the same old weapons. The new weapons like the EMD and Microvave cannons are only good in specific situations. The best new weapons are the Frag Missile, Napalm Cannon, and Napalm Rocket. The Frag missile explodes against a wall and hits enemies with a thousand sparks. The Napalm cannon and rocket set things on fire which is really cool. I also like the guidebot's power ups, but he doesn't have as much life as he used to. He gets hurt way too often which means you have to give him your shields for repairs. In addition his guiding ability is no better than before. He still slams into objects and tries to go through them. You have to ram the bot to dislodge it. He also goes in entrances your ship doesn't fit through. Once I completely lost him, and he was responding to every message I sent him except for "return to ship". Other than that the guidebot is great. He takes you from place to place, and without it you would be eternally lost. Especially when you have to beat the clock.

It may sound like I'm complaining about this game, but I'm really not. I love this game. I especially like the fact you have to figure out things rather than just go from place to place staying alive. The story is great, Reflective surfaces are excellent. I trick people into shooting at my mirror image while I come down behind them and let loose some fusion. If they live I give'm a quick concussion.

Let me put it this way the game has no level editor (yet), must run on a powerful computer, has a confused guidebot, and got rid of the helix cannon yet it is still the best game ever made? How? The fusion engine is the answer. I hope there will be many more games coming soon that use this engine. It would be a real shame to have only Descent 3 be the only game, well actually it wouldn't as long as new bad guys and levels kept coming. Imagine playing descent2 but then a ray of light comes shining through the cieling. You fly up and out of the mine without and single speck of lag to be found. All of a sudden you are outside. Your ship can only fly a certain height, but it doesn't matter. The rain is falling, you can hear it and see it hitting your windshield. Your Sound Blaster Live! was worth something. The environmental audio is astounding. The visual effects are outstanding. Could you possibly ask for more? You could, but whatever it is Interplay will tell you it's coming soon. And that's good because why would you want them to have postponed the game's release date for a level editor and a special mutiplayer only version of the game. If I rated games with a rating system like a magazine Descent 3 would get the best possible score along with editor's choice awards for the month and the year.

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