Actually, looking at the numbers, the genre was on a downslope. It wasn't any 1 game that did it, IMO, but bad sales across the board. If I had to pick 1, it wouldn't be FS2 because Interplay made some of their decisions based on the sales figures from another game.

Well, I'm back to playing the original Pharaoh, and it beats Children of the Nile hands down, regardless of the Graphics.

Let's get some pics, shall we? Regardless of graphics, you'll notice I often post pics in the Descent and EVE section... Let's get some of that going for other games.

Hunter wrote:Let's get some pics, shall we? Regardless of graphics, you'll notice I often post pics in the Descent and EVE section... Let's get some of that going for other games.

Any other games?

If I can get MoM going on XP I'll give you a screenshot...

MoM == teh gr8est!!!!1111

MoM?

Yep. Although if you start posting pics from Strong Badia, I'm gonna swat you.

If you're talking about variety in games to a Descenter, you're preaching to the choir. At least there have been other space sims than the Freespace series, albeit none that are as fun to play. We Descent fans have never seen another game featuring six degrees of freedom. It's almost astonishing, when you think about it. It's been six years or so since D3, and in that time, no one has thought to make a game that features this type of gameplay? Yet the FPS of the week just keeps getting dished out. I think the president of Nintendo addressed the whole "variety in games" issue in a recent speech; he seemed to have the opinion that not enough has been done recently in the way of truly innovative games. I fully agree with that sentiment.

As an aside, that whole thing with the WC community makes absolutely no sense to me. Granted, I've never played any of the WC games, other than a short bit of the first one that I downloaded from Home of the Underdogs. What I don't understand, though, is why they blame FS2 for the death of a genre. From what I've heard about the WC series, I think I'd infinitely prefer the FS series over them. They feature gameplay innovations that weren't seen in previous space sims, i.e. beam cannons. What, did the WC community think an exact clone of any of their games would have done better in the market of that time? I've seen the statistics; FS2 was by no means the start of the decline of space sims. It may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, but it by no means deserves anywhere near exclusive blame. Tell those WC fanboys to keep killing their talking cats and leave Freespace alone; at least we have a real enemy.

Surely Descent is only unique in terms of '6 degrees of freedom' in that it has corridors?
....

In general you can't blame 1 title for the failure of a genre; that's just idiotic scapegoatery, especially when said title is universally acclaimed as the best of its genre.

And I think there's not been many (IIRC there has been the odd one here and there) Descent-style games made in the last few years simply because there's not a massive amount more to be done.... when you have the player in a voiceless avatar within a set of corridors, I don't think there's much more that can be added by way of new features.

Top Gun wrote:If you're talking about variety in games to a Descenter, you're preaching to the choir. At least there have been other space sims than the Freespace series, albeit none that are as fun to play. We Descent fans have never seen another game featuring six degrees of freedom.

You had forsaken, though if memory serves that was pre D3 and essentially the same game anyway.

Forsaken : D3 :: D3 : Core Decision

Descent has fabolous lasting value, the multiplayer is the best I've played - And believe me, I've played a LOT of games in both single and multiplayer. I have never played anything quite like it and I doubt I ever will. I sure hope I do though, because that'd be a shame. To each their own, however.

aldo wrote:MoM?

Master of Magic

The finest turn based empire builder of all time.

Forsaken? More like Forsucken, from what I've heard. That game has the general reputation of being pretty bad among members of the Descent community. I've never had the opportunity to play it myself, but from what I know of it, it's nowhere near the level of a Descent game.

Aldo, FS2's reviews were one thing I forgot to mention about the whole "FS2 killed WC" debate. As far as I know, FS2 received marks in the high 90s pretty much across the board; every old review I've read was positively gushing. To the best of my knowledge, the WC games didn't reach that level.

Regarding the presence of other 6DOF games, there really isn't anything else out there, with the possible exception of Forsaken, that has Descent's style of gameplay. Corridor-based isn't really much of a factor, since D3 featured outdoor environments as well. The exact mechanic I'm talking about is a full six degrees of motion, with the ability to hover and place, completely unaffected by gravity. There really isn't anything else like that out there. As for "having done it all" with the Descent series, how can you then justify the absolute flood of groundpounder games out there that are almost exactly like one another? There's absolutely no innovation in that genre; pretty much anything that came after Quake has been close to a carbon copy with different environments/weapons. There may have been a few tweaks along the way, but the core gameplay is still exactly the same. Against all of those games, we 6DOF fans have the 3 Descent games. Kinda one-sided, isn't it? And, even if you're confining Descent to a 6DOF corridor shooter, there's still a lot of gameplay mechanics that have never been tried out, as the Core Decision team is currently working on.

P.S. Ever hear of the game NTrap? It was a planned 6DOF game with a fantastic physics engine and the ability to construct and lay "traps" for other players. It also represented the best hope in the Descent community for a Descent mod. Sadly, that project fell through. Right now, what little hope we have left is pegged on the people at HighOctane Software who are working on Core Decision.

Just feel very, very fortunate that the Freespace community has FS2's source code and such an active, vibrant modding community; Descent's modding and level-building community is all but dead. We're a group in dire need of new blood.

Note: I am a WC fan. I have played it for years. I do not blame FS2 for the death of the genre and when I mentioned that, I was bringing the fact up. I was not saying that I believe that. I've tried to settle one of those flame wars down, before.