Overload feedback from a hardcore Descent fan (spoilers all over)

[Buff Skeleton]

This game is awesome. Really, really good stuff! Once I heard it was out, I bought without hesitation, and I wasn't disappointed. This truly feels like a worthy successor, and the soundtrack is amazing.

I've got a lot of thoughts to share, both as a Descent veteran and as someone looking at Overload on its own merits. I do have some gripes, but most of them are minor. The overall experience is very, very good.

Disclaimer: I came here for the SP, as I never played Descent MP and don't really plan to play Overload MP either. I'm just more into solo, offline stuff, so that's what I'll focus on.

First off: the gameplay

Core gameplay

Overload feels exactly like Descent, just as I'd hoped. Ship movement is smooth, controls are responsive, and customization options are plenty. I was able to get my classic kb/m config from Descent working here without issues.

The gunplay is solid. Weapons for the most part feel like they all have a purpose, with strengths and weaknesses, and generally feel quite good. Though I will say I rarely used the Reflex, since it felt a bit weak to me, and I never got the hang of the Vortex.


Weapons

Mostly great. I love the Cyclone and Missile Pods, and used those heavily. I also liked the Falcon since it felt like it hit hard, as any dumbfire should. I also really liked the Crusher -- it's basically just a giant shotgun. The Flak is pretty cool too, though it doesn't have enough range to be useful most of the time, and its damage output seems just decent, not devastating.

I absolutely LOVE Creepers! They are effective in brawls AND for scouting out corners. They do what proximity bombs and smart mines never could: move. And that makes such a huge difference. I also like that you can rapidly launch them to cover your escape or just put serious pressure on big targets. Excellent weapon!

Some of the weapons seem weaker than they are, though. The thing going against weapons the most is the sound effects -- they seem much softer than those in other games. In Descent, everything felt like it had a real punch to it. Maybe it was because they had to reuse assets to deal with memory limitations, but it worked to the game's advantage, because even the basic lasers sounded like they really hurt.

That said, the secondaries are largely great in Overload. My biggest complaint there is the low ammo counts by default, which means you end up not using some of them (looking at you, Devastator) because you can't be sure when you'll need them. Small ammo counts encourage hoarding, which means you end up losing out on satisfying punches that you could have made had you only known there were reloads available. Further, when you DO use them, you spend lots of time combing back over the map trying to find reload powerups so you don't waste any shots.

The Hunter seems weird to me. It doesn't feel like it does a ton of damage, and while its homing ability is good, it isn't so good that you can't use upgraded missile pods to do the same thing. It also doesn't seem like it needs to fire two missiles at once, and that this was just done to make it different from the other missiles without actually adding much utility. Most of the time, both missiles hit the same target anyway, so why fire two? I didn't go for the upgrade that gives you three, since that seemed like it would only be a damage buff rather than a different functionality.

The Vortex is also strange. I saw mention that it's REALLY good in NG+, but what about normal games? By the time you get it, you're only facing enemies that it's not good against, so it feels pretty useless. Not a good first impression!

Other than that, though, I loved the weapons. They aren't as varied as, say, Descent 2, but they are largely satisfying and all feel like they have a different role. And I loved struggling to decide how to upgrade them. In almost all cases, both choices (when you had two) seemed equally good, but in different ways, so fine job on that! Speaking of which...


Upgrades

I like the upgrade system. This is probably the biggest departure from classic Descent, but it works. It easily could have been a huge pain in the ♥♥♥ or done poorly, but I think you guys pulled it off well. I only wish there had been more tiers of upgrades for some of the ship boosts, and maybe even the weapons.

Right now, it's possible to almost max out everything just with the stuff you find in a single run, and I didn't even find all the upgrade points. With additional tiers, you'd never be able to max everything, and thus you'd be able to explore more specialized builds, increasing replay value. Regardless, though, it's satisfying to watch your weapons and ship transform, and makes you feel like significant progress is being made after every mission.

The only thing about the upgrades that kinda causes issues is that you can focus on making one or two guns SO good that they become all you really need. I never used the Impulse again once I had a maxed out Cyclone and energy efficiency upgrades, for example. I never upgraded it either, but didn't see any reason to. The weapon didn't fill a niche that my other weapons couldn't handle just as well. Same deal with the Reflex.

I also wish I could have spent some of my upgrade points before the end of the game. I get it that you could only do so because you'd return to the Iberia after each mission, and once that was impossible, no more upgrades. But it meant that you could collect quite a bit of boosting power and be unable to use it for the hardest levels in the game. Not necessarily a bad thing, since at least they carry over to NG+, but it also seems like you don't get any more upgrade points in NG+ -- at least as far as I've seen. So once you're done, you're done, even if you have leftovers that go to waste. It might be nice if you could choose whether to spend a single point to max out your shields and energy and ammo before going into the next mission, which would give you a use for extras and also add more strategic options to your between-level spending.


Campaign difficulty

The most noticeable thing for me was the difficulty. I played Overload on Ace for the first time, expecting to get my ♥♥♥ kicked. Even now, when I play through Descent 1 or 2 on Ace (having beaten both many many times, including on Insane), I suffer heavily and die at least a few times, sometimes even in the earlier levels when heavy weaponry is scarce. Here, I didn't die even once until the last few levels of the game, though I did come close a couple times. But that was mainly due to unfamiliarity with the levels and surprise lockdowns.

The game is quite a bit easier than Descent, it seems, until you cross the portal where difficulty jumps way up. I enjoyed this difficulty spike, but some might be looking for a more steady, consistent increase in challenge. Difficulty ramp probably would have been more consistent if the rest of the levels were as difficult (relative to their position in the campaign) as the last three or four. That said, thematically, it makes sense that the alien levels would be harder, so if that was intentional, it sells the idea of extreme technological advancement pretty well.

I also really like the NG+ feature, something the original Descents sorely lacked. It's cool to see there was thought put into it, too -- instead of just starting you over on a higher difficulty with full guns vs. the same levels as before, the levels are changed a bit too -- late-game guns and enemies are present even in the beginning, which means you can expect NG+ to be quite a challenge (I haven't finished a run of this yet, but greatly enjoy it so far). Good stuff there.


Robots

I like the enemies in Overload, ESPECIALLY the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s near the end of the game (Spectralus' teleporting trick was really nasty, and encouraged strategic use of the Driller to keep them at bay). However, I wouldn't say any of them were particularly terrifying, and most of them had little in the way of personality.

In Descent, every single robot had a distinct set of behaviors, and most of them had significantly different shapes and designs, even considering the technical limitations of the day. In Overload, though, there are a lot of enemies that feel almost like reskins of each other rather than unique foes. While it's not too hard to distinguish them, even in battle, they just don't look or feel as diverse as the enemies in Descent 1 and 2 did.

I think a lot of it comes down to the look and feel: they pretty much all seem to have two "eyes," and are all symmetrical. I understand thematically why this is -- corporate iteration on existing designs, reusing parts, standardization, etc. -- but it detracts from their character. No robots with three+ "eyes", or the back-and-forth Cylon-style visor thing, or asymmetrical shapes, etc. They look more anthropomorphized than the robots of Descent, which to me makes them less intimidating.

They also all sound pretty similar, whereas the Descent bots made wildly varied noises. There was never any question what you were up against just by hearing them humming if you got their attention from around a corner. In Overload, they all seem to have the same general sort of low-pitch, groany sounds, save for the alien bots (which sound great). I'm also not a huge fan of the death sounds for the Overload bots, which make them seem like they're in pain -- it's just kinda silly. Robots don't feel pain! When they break up, I'd expect them to sound more like cascading mechanical failures, or make no sounds at all and just explode... not cry out. Alien AI/virus or not.


Bosses

The scariest robots in Descent were the ones that could seriously ruin your day, like the squealing Vulcan bots in D1, the quietly humming red homing missile launcher dudes, the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s with Mercury missiles, etc. Or the bosses, especially in D2, which were absolutely TERRIFYING. Bosses could obliterate you in seconds, and the sounds they made were truly alien and frightening, especially in light of how dangerous they were. And their lairs were often hostile environments to the player: large, open areas with minimal cover and low light conditions. When you fought a boss in Descent, you KNEW you were in some serious ♥♥♥♥ before you even met the thing. Even the very first boss in Descent 2 is no joke, packing a variety of devastating weapons and making creepy noises, plus teleportation to keep you on your toes.

In Overload, the first boss fight was so underwhelming in comparison that when I actually met the boss, I didn't realize that was it! It didn't seem much bigger than most of the other enemies, or as dangerous, and I ended up mostly killing it before my invulnerability wore off.

All that said, I can see why. Overload does away with the arcade-style extra lives and powerups-spew-out-everywhere-on-death mechanic from Descent, and just has you restart the level or load a save. More in tune with the tone of the story, but something I do miss from the classics. So, since death is more "final" in Overload, it makes sense that the bosses aren't so good at ripping you to pieces. Dying in Descent was a big deal, but it wasn't a game-stopper -- you'd just have to reach your big pile of crap and you'd be more or less back to where you were. That's why Descent could get away with making bosses so devastating, which really increased the impression they had on players. The Overload bosses are more forgiving, but as a result, less memorable. I can't even remember what the first boss looks like or what it was called.

Taurus was great, though -- and memorable -- but maybe not in the way you'd expect! When I first fought that boss, I didn't even realize I was entering its lair. I chucked some Creepers through a door to see if anything was waiting for me (I LOVE those things) on the other side. Well, something was -- Taurus itself! I ♥♥♥♥♥♥ it off enough that it CHASED ME OUT OF THE BOSS AREA and actually pursued me all over the whole map (something Overload bots are REALLY good at).

At first I thought this was intended, and it was seriously both hilarious and terrifying. Boss robot with a huge-♥♥♥ buzzsaw for a face chasing me absolutely everywhere, even into secret areas! Now that's something you don't wanna ♥♥♥♥ with. I eventually fled back to the now-unoccupied boss room, and when I went inside, THAT was when the door locked behind me and the boss bar and music change and all that stuff happened. lol. Meanwhile, Taurus was trapped outside, sneering at me through the grate. If it weren't for those bars, I'd have been stuck, unable to kill it! Good times.

As for the final boss, is it just me, or was the one with a ghostly outline shown in the briefings not actually in the game? The one Kantor was supposedly working on? The final boss robot in the alien levels didn't look like the previewed one, I don't think, but I could just be misremembering. The one in the outline looked like a giant Scorpion, which would have been pretty nasty. The actual bot you face just looks like a giant alien bot without anything particularly distinguishing about it, let alone devastating melee weapons.

[More below]

[Buff Skeleton]

Aaaand the second part because Steam made me split it:


Level design

Easily one of the most important parts of any Descent-style game, and Overload does it really well! I like how huge most of the maps are. They really feel Descent-sized, even Descent 2-sized sometimes. Some of the secrets are very well hidden, too -- I missed at least one in every single level on my first run, and I'm a THOROUGH explorer.

Enemy placement is good, if sometimes predictable. What really stands out are the robot fabricators, especially the shielded ones. They create a powerful area denial effect while they're active, forcing you to frantically zoom in, kill what's there, search for the force field generator, turn around and kill some more, keep searching, etc, until you are able to take it out (while under fire, usually), then take out the fabricator. Quite an adrenaline rush! And the lockdown rooms were a great "OH ♥♥♥♥" moment in many cases. They rarely clued you in before you were stuck, so they had the surprise factor really going for them. Some might have appreciated more clues, but I think they were done well.

There are also some cleverly-placed secrets that are easily seen, but not as easily unlocked, that I appreciated. Overload levels also do a good job of using bars to show you things before you can access them, just like Descent. Overload just doesn't often use them to limit movement while still allowing you to fire through them (like Level 15 from Descent: Destination Saturn, if anyone here remembers that -- that was a nightmare of a map! You can see a playthrough someone did here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upLYqiaReNY ), which is something I always liked about classic Descent. You usually just encounter fans that can't be shot through, even if they let you peek at stuff on the other side. And the bars that you CAN shoot through aren't really used as significant parts of the level design in most cases.

The alien levels were really cool, if disorienting sometimes. The teleporters and locked doors mechanic in the really big one made it hard to tell where you were supposed to be going. I only ended up finding the last core to activate by luck after sorta randomly flying around the map for about 10 minutes. I like non-linearity, but there need to be clues that activate as you progress to guide you in the right direction, or it can get overwhelming.

Further, the alien levels take a bit of a risk by giving you randomized powerups from those destroyable pod things. This means you can end up getting exactly what you need, or something redundant that doesn't help you (oh look, even more standard missile pod pickups when I already have 240! If only I had some armor to patch up the remaining 23 points on my poor, Inviculus-battered ship). And the one where you have all the doors that lock behind you was kinda annoying, since there was probably a ton of stuff I missed and couldn't get back to after the fact. Especially rough when you are low on shields and know for sure that there were shield powerups you left behind from earlier when you weren't low, plus potentially others in uncharted areas you no longer can access.

Beyond that though, those levels were cool as hell and really fascinating to look at and play through. They were what brought me from "hmm good game yeah" to "HOLY ♥♥♥♥ THIS IS CRAZY" as I neared the end.

One thing I really miss is destroyable lights. Darkened areas with shattered flood lamps made levels feel really battered after heavy firefights. Being more able to directly interact with the environment is a bit of a lost art in games, though I understand it's not easy to implement most of the time, so not having it gets a pass. But with all the exposed pipes and conduits and air ducts and the like, it would have been cool to be able to destroy more of the stuff around you instead of just the robots. Bonus points if you could start fires that damage robots by detonating gas lines, etc.

I guess it depends on how close you want to get to adding cliche explosive barrels and the like all over the place. However, stuff like that really does increase the connection the player has to the environment itself. Without it, the environment isn't much more than just a place where you blow up robots. I am very glad to see lava made a comeback, though, and especially the bonus damage from shooting it! That really comes in handy in the later levels.

One other thing that is missing from the levels is a sense of place for human access and habitation. I know most of the facilities were made by and for robots, but they all still have some kind of life support system and cryotubes, so I also expected to at least find some small, human-sized doors in some places, maybe control rooms with windows overlooking the main thoroughfares, etc. And at the very least, an entrance door like all the Descent 1 and 2 maps had. Teleporting into the bases takes away a bit from that sense of place you got before.

That said, it's not a big deal, and the levels do what's important well: serve the gameplay. So they may be abstract and less believable as real installations, but they are fun to fly through and fight in, which is obviously the one thing you really don't want to get wrong in a shooter like this. Overload got it right!

And if a level editor is coming, I expect we'll have even more puzzle-style levels with unique gameplay styles. One of the most memorable levels from D2 for me was the secret map with the reactor you blow up right at the start, and then have to spend the whole rest of the level flying through with the self-destruct countdown underway, extending it by blowing up more reactors. Fun as hell and crazy, even if totally nonsensical -- purely an arcade-style exploration of the gameplay mechanics rather than an attempt at making something serve the plot. But maps like that were loads of fun.


Secret levels

That brings me to my next section, which for me was the biggest disappointment with Overload: the secret maps. They aren't truly secret levels, just battle arenas. And they do two things I tend to not enjoy: throw in a time limit, and a killcount requirement, all while spamming you with so many enemies from all directions that there's no real strategy to these levels, just pure mindless whirlwind shooting and praying the RNG favors you. Not an inherently bad thing, but I don't like the way this was implemented here.

You don't have time to take a breath, and while there are plenty of powerups, they're all randomized, as is the start location, so you can't even plan out your next attempt if you fail the first time (and fail you will, oh man, especially on Ace and Insane).

Not having a quickload key (seriously?!) just makes this more irritating, since you can try again and again and again to beat a secret level only to keep failing over and over, and having to back out to the main menu just to reload a save and try again, since the base level shuts off the portal when you come back whether you succeeded or not. Uurrghgh.

Further, there's hardly any feedback confirming your success or failure. When I first finished a secret challenge, I was like, uhhh, did I win? Even if you die, you just get teleported abruptly back to the original level, without even getting a message telling you that you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up or accomplished the objective. There are upgrade point messages in the battle once you reach the half-way point and stuff like that, but there is so much else going on it's easy to miss those near the end.

And since dying (bad thing) slows the game down just like the half-way point bonus (good thing) does, it's hard to tell if you're slowing down because you won or because you lost. And the HUD disappears, too, making it even more ambiguous. It took me quite a while to realize that death looked the same as success as far as transitioning back to the base level goes, which makes me wonder now how many of these challenges I truly did win. I honestly don't know and can't tell.

On top of all that, these levels can leave you worse off coming out than when you went in! If you had maxed armor, energy, and ammo (because, say, you only found the secret portal near the end of the map), you can take so much damage and expend so much ammo just trying to stay alive that you return to the base map with 100 shield and energy and next to no ammo aside from whatever you managed to grab before being teleported back. Not much of a reward, there. Secret levels in D1/2 were often hard, but almost always set you up with more gear than you started with since they were full levels without limits.

Ultimately, these secret fights feel like pure RNG and button-mashing with no room for strategic thinking, and without enough ingame feedback to tell you what is going on. Which is a letdown compared to the secret levels of old that were truly full levels, intentionally designed and planned, not just deathmatch arenas full of random respawning enemies. If it weren't for the upgrade points, I'd not even bother with them. They just feel like a chore.

Story

Overload's story is surprisingly good once you get toward the end of the game, but the beginning is a bit mixed for me. It seems very generic when you start off. I wasn't sure whether or not Kantor was a cartoonishly evil villain or something more complex, and while it turned out there was a lot more depth to him than you'd expect, it took quite while for the story to grab me.

Having very, very short, to-the-point audio logs is probably better for integration with the gameplay, but it also means writing them is more difficult -- you have to convey enough significant information in a very short span to contribute to the plot. This makes it hard for them to sound natural. Many of them do pretty well at this, but some are pretty obviously just exposition for the sake of exposition.

Different characters doing the logs in each mission makes sense, but also means you don't really have much time to get to know anyone besides Kantor. It doesn't seem like any of the people who do voice logs end up in the cryo tubes either, which I think could have been kinda neat. For the most part, once you are done listening to X person in Y level, you never hear about them again.

There's also next to no environmental storytelling in the levels themselves. You can't see any signs of struggle, blood stains, anything. Even D1 had some of this, and many of the levels had distinct areas that felt like they served a specific purpose. Overload's levels just seem like generic, almost abstract environments. I like them, and think the level design is great, but it doesn't do anything for the story. Bit of a missed opportunity there.

But once you go through the alien portal, oh man, what a trip! I really enjoyed seeing Kantor's slow disconnect from the reality we know as humans and become a part of some incomprehensible super-collective AI entity. Really deep and dark stuff there, not what I expected to see in a game like this.

I liked the reveal about who I was all along, too... but because there weren't many clues about it beforehand, the revelation didn't feel all that impactful. It also wasn't clear what my role was in the larger story.

A narrative like this with many layers you have to keep peeling back to fully understand is cool, but it does mean that you can get through most of the game without really feeling invested in it because you don't fully grasp the scope of everything until the end. It doesn't start with a strong hook, IMO. The amnesia thing is cliche, as is the evil megacorp CEO, which is how things appeared to be going at the beginning. It turned out much better in the end, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people turned off the voice audio and text and just gave up on the story after a few missions, missing out on the rest, including the really interesting and sinister final transmissions from Kantor.

The ending also felt a bit rushed, especially in gameplay terms -- that final map was kind of a dud compared to the stuff that came just before it. It was also the only place I had to use the hologuide. And having some guy who just wakes up end up bailing you out kinda takes you out of the picture at the end. But I also felt like there was a lot of potential for a sequel, especially not knowing exactly what happened to Kantor, so I'm excited for that possibility! I hope a sequel does end up happening, because this game is a great platform for more story and gameplay content in this setting.

[Buff Skeleton]

And the last!

Quality of Life stuff

This is more or less just pointing out some of the stuff I liked or missed in Overload that doesn't affect the game much, but is nonetheless appreciated when present.

• No quickload, as mentioned. Boo! :[
  
• I really like the way damage registers on robots where you hit them. It's easy to tell how wounded something is by how glowy its hull plates are, something earlier titles never could do. Great effect, and it really even helps gameplay a bit!
  
• Can't get to the main menu from the upgrades screen (or when you die. The death animation seems to lock out all input). You have to load the next level first, which can be annoying if you realize you need a break. Fortunately the autosave covers this, but it does seem a bit odd to be unable to access the menu at any time you want like you could in Descent.
  
• Unlike Descent, I LOVE that doors open for you when you approach them! Not having to bump into every single door is super refreshing and makes the levels feel much more responsive and smoother to navigate. Even secret doors aren't stubborn about opening up most of the time.
  
• I like all the different HUD color options! It would be cool to have a RGB slider control for it, but there are enough choices as it is. One minor thing I just noticed: it seems the game was designed more for the green HUD. I first played with amber because I thought it looked cool, but now I'm seeing all these instances where there is amber text on the HUD, or an amber ship on the automap that stands out, etc. Whereas with the amber hud, EVERYTHING is amber, and there isn't color contrast like you get with the green hud. Just something that might be worth amending at some point.
  
• Before reaching Enceladus, I was curiosity-googling about it and learned about the huge plumes of stuff ejecting from the south pole. Then, lo and behold, we arrive at Enceladus, and bam, there they are! Such great attention to detail guys.
  
• I miss being able to drop actual markers. Having only a single marker that disappears when you reach it is annoying. Since powerups don't show up on the automap (also REALLY wish they would once discovered), then the best way to note where they are is to drop markers. But you can't do that since you only get one, and if you place it at your current location, it just instantly disappears. lol. Also, a single marker for navigating doesn't help you when you need to navigate twisting caverns to reach it. Sometimes you need waypoints. Admittedly, I haven't used the hologuide for much (especially since it consumes energy), but if the guide can be ordered to take you to your nav marker, that would be helpful.
  
• I liked having the Pause button in Descent. It froze the game without hiding it in the background, and put a box on screen that showed you some stats. Having something similar, which also shows you how many secrets you've found, would be really helpful when hunting down the last couple. As it is now, it's hard to keep track of them, and you can't even tell what the game considers a secret. You can at least view stats, but it's off the main menu and not super quick to get at.
  
• Alt+F2 and Alt+F3 for bringing up the Save and Load menus was wonderful in Descent. Miss this in Overload!
  
• I'm not 100% sure this isn't just coincidence, but it seems like if you fire a missile when you're full and right next to a powerup for that same missile type, the game gives you a second to get away from the powerup rather than instantly pick it up and waste ammo. Super nice feature if that's indeed what's going on. In Descent, if you fired a homing missile while in collision range of a homing missile pickup, and you were only 1 down from the max, then you'd instantly pick up the 4-pack and waste three missiles! That was annoying.
  
• Headlights look cool, and permanent sticky flares are pretty neat even if I don't use them often.
  
• I both appreciate and dislike having no collision damage with level geometry, regardless of speed. I tried ramming full-force into a wall with the boost and took no damage, so it seems like that just isn't a thing in Overload. It could be annoying sometimes in Descent, but it also felt more like your ship was a real thing and you couldn't just fly recklessly without taking some scrapes.
  
• I'm glad the music is just straight loops of good songs instead of dynamic stuff used in so many modern games. Another small detail from classic games that Overload got right.

Overall, very fun game that was obviously made by true fans of the classics. Wish I had gotten in on the kickstarter! I hope there's more to come, since this game seems like a great platform to build custom content once the level editor ships. I dunno how modding is or will be, but it seems like that could become a thing too. Good stuff!



Jesus christ I wrote way more than I expected to