Prepare to descend in Sublevel Zero

Classic ‘6 degrees of freedom’ shooter Descent gets a slick, retro-modern, spiritual successor in Sublevel Zero.

I’m pretty much sold on Sublevel Zero just from that trailer. Not on my radar at all till now, the game’s cool retro look and flashy special effects have me interested in what looks to be a kind of revival of the old Descent gameplay mechanic. The first game of the FPS breed to actually give players total freedom of movement around the environment, Descent was an instant hit way back in the 90s, but there wasn’t much of a ‘clone’ industry for it, like the one that popped up to copy Doom and Duke Nukem 3D.

Since then, there’s been precious little in the way of the game type as well, so I’m pretty happy to see something like Sublevel Zero from Mastertronic show up. The new elements, like permadeath and procedural levels, sound like nice additions to the formula too, so fingers are most definitely crossed.

Fortunately there isn’t too much longer to find out whether Sublevel Zero lives up to its looks, as the game is set to hit the PC (Windows and Linux), and the Mac on October 8th. Time to dust off those flight sticks folks.