First: I'm playing Descent 1 using the Rebirth port.

Second: Spoiler ahead, if you care at all.

Third: Playing on Hotshot difficulty.



So, I reached the point where the vulcan cannon enemies are introduced. (First Mercury level I believe?)
Why is the game now suddenly excruciatingly painful? I was having a fair time playing through the game, and all of a sudden this enemy gets introduced that has a hitscan weapon, is usually placed to aim instantly at you when you get in view, and so inevitably always deals damage to you no matter how quickly you react so I just end up dying repeatedly.
Why? How? Did Rebirth create that? Do people just enjoy suffering and think this is fine? Did my game get corrupted? Please send help. I was really enjoying the game up until now.

Those enemies are in the regular dos game too, rebirth is just graphical as far as I know.

Just have to peak around corners a bit more, perhaps not be as run and gun as the first few levels. Also, you have access to the vulcan cannon too, so that could help.

Rookie is actually the "normal" difficultly mode, so you are playing on sort of the medium-hard mode.

I mean, I've been playing this game for years and even I find anything other than Rookie difficulty hard! So you aren't alone, it can be a pretty brutal game.

Ah, fair enough. That difficulty spike just felt crazy with that specific enemy. Anyway, thank you.

Well, it didn't help there was a mandatory but hidden invulnerability orb in this level.
Also, homing missiles? Jesus Christ. This level is just one big F you.

I put this game down once they introduced those enemies. Descent is hard enough just finding your way through the levels and then to have to cope with this hitscan crap. The devs could have easliy fixed it by having to recharge your shield since you're in a spacefighter with some sort of energy generating source.
Also real Vulcans have a spoolup time which could have given you some time to react.

In the second game you can transfer energy from weapons to shields, so that did help with the difficulty in the next game.

Hah-hah! Have fun, I barely managed to finish Descent 1 on default difficulty. And I still can't beat one of the latest levels of Descent 2 for two years. And I thought that Far Cry 1 on hardest difficulty is hard, it's a sunny walk in comparison :)

Update: After the hellish level introducing vulcan ambushers and heat-seeking missiles, turns out the game couldn't get much worse (except spawners, especially when they also spawn heat-seeking missile bots) and wasn't that bad.

Plus you do get used to dying at some points and retrieving your stuff. It's not very rewarding but it works and it adds a layer of planning because you do permanently lose rescued hostages so you gotta make sure you don't die between picking up hostages and exiting the level.

So hey, I got a lot further into the game now.

I beat the game on Hotshot. There we go.