Descent

About the game

Descent took the first-person shooter off its feet. Piloting a small fighter through infested mining tunnels on Earth's moon and beyond, you move with six full degrees of freedom — pitch, yaw, roll and strafing in any direction — through corridors that corkscrew, fold back on themselves and open into vast reactor chambers. "Up" stops meaning anything about thirty seconds in, and the game builds its identity on that disorientation.

Each mission is a sabotage run: fight through robot defenders, blow the reactor, then race the shockwave back out through passages you half-remember, guided by a wireframe automap that becomes a survival tool rather than a convenience. Rescuing hostages and rationing shield and energy pickups give the loop its texture, while hulking boss robots guard the deepest levels.

Descent shipped with fully polygonal enemies and environments when most shooters were still faking depth, and its multiplayer — cooperative and anarchic deathmatch alike — earned a devoted long-tail community. It remains the benchmark everyone reaches for when describing full-freedom movement done right.

Technical notes

True polygonal engine with portal-connected tunnel geometry — no fixed floor plane, robots as articulated 3D models. Documented here in its DOS and Mac releases; joystick strongly recommended, motion sickness optional.