Overload harks back to simpler times in gaming and executes its brief perfectly. Billed as a spiritual successor to Descent it delivers to those fans in spades. Those too young to remember it though may find themselves wondering what all the hype is about.
Successfully funded on Kickstarter and billed as the ‘ultimate six-degree-of-freedom shooter’ Overload, from developers Revival Productions, seeks to remind gamers of a genre I’d long since forgotten. Those of us who grew up gaming in the 90’s lived in a time where gaming development saw some pretty unique games many of which are looked back on with a certain fondness. One such was the omnidirectional space-shooter Descent. Launched in 1995 it was a wow moment in gaming allowing players to truly move around a 3D space in any direction they wished. Considering most were strafing their way around Doom suddenly being able to move around the level in all directions was something else. So can Overload deliver and more importantly is the cramped, space-style shooter as fun as I remember?
On first boot the similarities between Overload and Descent are plain to see, anyone unaware of the name change would swear it’s another Descent game. From the orbs that you collect to improve your armour and energy to the way enemies seem to come from nowhere if you were a huge Descent fan you’ll be riding a wave of nostalgia coupled with a huge smile to boot. The familiarity is probably helped by the fact that Matt Toschlog and Mike Kulas who co-founded the developers of Descent, Parallax Software, developed Overload. It gives everything Overload is trying to achieve authenticity and means that everything that made the original Descent games what they were would be present and correct in its modern resurrection.
The key to that resurrection is how the game feels when you move around. Descent was a pioneer of the six-degrees-of-freedom (6DOF) shooter and from what I remember (I was twelve at the time) it was so different than anything else. That feeling is still true today. Flying around the corridors of the mining stations you’re sent to secure for Juno Offworld, the company who owns these facilities, it doesn’t play like anything else out there. Don’t pay too much attention to that plot though, as it really is just something there to, seemingly, give you reasons to change the location you’re flying round. It’s told rather blandly and entirely audibly. If I’m honest, I truly didn’t care much for it and felt that Overload would’ve been better served by a generic order that all facilities need securing from the killer robots and nothing more. As it is, it tries to force intrigue, but with so little emotion and no characters to really care about it ends up being nothing more than background noise.
Realistically the aspect that makes Overload is its key asset and that’s how it feels to fly and I won’t dodge around it, it feels fantastic. Now I’ve never flown nor been in Zero-G but in my imagination it would be exactly how it is in Overload. Your ship has a glorious weight about it and when you flip around and coast you do so with such majesty. Even a half-baked pilot such as myself is made to feel like a flying ace just by how it all feels and looks when you’re flying. I was flicking myself round pillars, flipping myself over and rotating myself around all in the heat of battle and with a huge smile on my face. That’s the appeal of 6DOF and why Descent was such a ground-breaking game when it was released. Along with the cramped quarters, which forces you to be very spatially aware, flying and movement in Overload is a gift that keeps on giving all the way through the main game’s fifteen levels.
As you play through this campaign you’ll be able to upgrade your ship but not in the traditional way. We’re accustomed to acquiring XP and points for completing levels which, once we hit a certain threshold, are awarded points to improve ourselves. In Overload, these upgrade points are hidden around each level, encouraging you to explore and find secret areas along with the upgrade points. This wouldn’t be a bad thing but the levels are very same-y but I suppose there’s only so much you can do when mining moons and asteroids. The bonus to all this upgrading though is that you can go back through the game later with your upgraded ship albeit with things being made a little tougher on you.
Once you’re through the single-player story there’s still plenty to do. Firstly there’s the Challenge mode, essentially a Horde mode, you’re pitted against increasing waves of enemies with the odd boss thrown in for good measure. You earn points for kills and clearing waves and when upon your demise you’re given a score. There are twelve challenge levels and they’re good fun and each time I died I wanted to try again in an effort to up my previous scores. Overload also has multiplayer in the form of online and LAN play. If you choose to go online you can either go one-on-one, enter six player skirmish called Anarchy or, if you prefer team play, there’s the three-on-three Team Anarchy. Unfortunately the player base isn’t overly large at the moment and I was unable to find a match despite waiting for quite some time in the matchmaking queue. Hopefully more players will come onboard and increase online opportunities.
It’s probably apt that the developers chose to call themselves Revival Productions because it very much is a revival. Everything about the original Descent games have been revived perfectly with a visual upgrade which, whilst not full of stunning vistas, looks great at high settings with the light model looking particularly awesome. With support for VR as well baked in I can imagine it looks even more amazing if potentially very disorientating. That being said perhaps things were played a little too safe with there being very little new added to potentially suck in players who may not even know of the original Descent series. To those players there’s little here that makes it special. Sure it looks nice, plays well and has a particularly catchy soundtrack but I can imagine younger games wondering what all the fuss is about.
Overload is an ode to Descent and the fans who have longed for a true, modern successor. It delivers to those fans in spades as it reproduces the Descent experience fantastically well. There’s plenty to see and do even when you’ve completed the main game though the lack of a community to drive the multiplayer is a worry at this stage. Still, if you’re don’t care too much about online play and are a huge fan of Descent then Overload was made for you.
