Descent II
| Descent II | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Parallax Software Interplay Productions (Mac OS) R-Comp Interactive (Risc OS) |
| Publisher(s) | Interplay Productions Mac Play (Mac OS) R-Comp Interactive (Risc OS) |
| Director(s) |
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| Producer(s) | Rusty Buchert |
| Designer(s) |
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| Programmer(s) |
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| Artist(s) |
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| Writer(s) | Ryan Garcia |
| Composer(s) |
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| Platform(s) | |
| Release | MS-DOS Mac OS
RISC OS
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| Genre(s) | First-person shooter, shoot 'em up |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
Descent II is a 1996 first-person shooter game developed by Parallax Software and first published for 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. 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. 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.