Descent II
| Descent II | |
|---|---|
| Developers | Parallax Software Interplay Productions (Mac) R-Comp Interactive (Risc OS) |
| Publishers | Interplay Productions Mac Play (Mac) R-Comp Interactive (Risc OS) |
| Directors |
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| Producer | Rusty Buchert |
| Designers |
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| Programmers |
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| Artists |
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| Writer | Ryan Garcia |
| Composers |
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| Platforms | |
| Release | MS-DOS Mac OS
RISC OS
|
| Genre | First-person shooter |
| Modes | Single-player, multiplayer |
Descent II is a 1996 first-person shooter game developed by Parallax Software and first published for MS-DOS by Interplay Productions. A version for the PlayStation was released under the title Descent Maximum. It is the second installment in the Descent video game series and the sequel to Descent. Like its predecessor, the player controls a spaceship from the pilot's perspective and must navigate extrasolar underground mines to locate and destroy their reactors and escape being caught in their self-destructions, while engaging and surviving infected robots, which will attempt to destroy the ship. Unlike other first-person shooters, its six-degrees-of-freedom scheme allows the player to move and rotate in any three-dimensional space and direction.
Descent II started as a project intended to expand the original using a compact disc's storage, and later became a standalone product, using an upgraded version of its predecessor's graphics engine. The game received very positive reviews from video game critics, who widely lauded the multiplayer mode and the inclusion of the Guide-Bot, a scouting robot that guides the player to their objectives. The PlayStation version's reception was rather mixed, with critics often disagreeing in their evaluations of its frame rate. A sequel, Descent 3, was released in 1999.