We can hem and haw about the state of RTS and Flight Sim games, but for 6DoF shooters, there's nothing (bar Overload). I can't help but wonder if it's due to some of the appalling game design choices in Descent.

I loved Descent back in the day, I thought it was some kind of Quake with more up/down and joystick support. My other friends disliked it. Having just now finished D1 and D2 on Hotshots (including restarting D2 halfway through after a HDD died), I would rather contract super-gonorrhea than play that again. There are a chunk of questionable game design decisions they made, but up there are: respawning enemies, the life system, respawning invisible enemies (thanks D1), more homing missiles than literally any 90s FPS game I can think of, doors that close on you in seconds, thief-bots that move faster than missiles, bosses immune to half your weapons and D1 gauss hitscan enemies.

If I could go back in time to 1995, this is what I would ask for:
- Give the thief 1/4 health
- Flares last 4 times as long
- Red mines 4x damage
- Something to make the Fusion Cannon less terrible. Anything.
- Doors stay open 3x as long
- if the game engine can't do translucent textures, then make the transparent areas wider on those waterfall textures
- Implement more than one size of door. Maybe one that isn't the smallest possible.
- A keybind to make the guide-bot halt, so it's not always running into your own mines, or otherwise throwing a fit.

For anyone else attempting to play through D1/D2, I learnt the hard way that:
- You can sometimes drop a Smart-Mine down, move back, then shoot your own mine to have it hit something that's partially out of your own sight.
- There are 5 Earthshaker missiles on the final D2 mission. One is hidden behind a pretty bad secret. 10 Smart-Missiles will maybe do about as much damage as one Earthshaker if you're short.

edit- guide-bot, not the thief

I would also add, the whole blow the reactor up/run like hell, while the camera is shaking a TERRIBLE - TERRIBLE idea!!

(FOPKJEWA Warp to exit, blows reactor, although you get no points)!!!

In the latest version of D2X-XL, there is an an option of suppressing the thief entirely!! Although I do get a perverse pleasure when I blow the little bastard up, with my Vulcan canon!!

Yes the reactor escape shakey-cam was another great one. I like the idea of having to find the exit on a time limit at the end of the game, Deeprock Galactic does a similar thing. But towards the end of the countdown it's so violent (at least in the original engine) it just throws your camera from floor to ceiling.

Sometimes I'd just sit at the end of a corridor to shoot the Thief with the Vulcan as the easiest way to get rid of it. That couldn't have been what the game designers intended, but your other option is trying to ignore it.

IDK I'm playing through Descent 1 w/ Rebirth on Rookie and I just kind of view it as being basically an arcade game. Don't get me wrong even on Rookie it has tons of BS situations and cancerous enemy placements (Wow how cool you put a vulcan bot spawner right next to the exit hatch!) but it generally does reward smart play as long as you can handle the controls and know the tricks.

I'm at mission 20 now and I thought it would be WAY worse after playing some of the earlier missions and based on some of the forum posts. The difficulty seems wildly inconsistent by level rather than a proper curve. Could be my difficulty level though.

I dunno, I don't think there was much of a genre to kill. I think one problem is just that the technology (especially controllers) weren't ready when it was new. The way Descent controls and moves, vs what it asks you to do is not exactly in the mindset of many players today.

You try navigating a level when getting flipped upside down is as easy as turning the lawn mower of a ship with the way it feels to steer.
It doesn't feel natural. Descent is closer to a HOTAS type game than you know, regular people controls. The map is useless, is what I mean to say.