Andreas Gaschka

Descent II was developed by Parallax Software and published by Interplay in 1996. It's a highly praised and excellent sequel to the original Descent from 1995. One of the biggest changes was the inclusion of a "guide bot" which helped the player find their way around in the labyrinth like mines. Once again, the main difference compared to other shooters was the six-degrees-of-freedom aspect which allowed the player to roam and rotate freely in any direction. You can pick up power-ups (weapons, ammo, and shields), rescue hostages by taking them onboard, while the main objective is to find the reactor in each level and destroy it (hello Star Wars!), which then initiates the self-destruct counter. Each time, you have to escape to avoid getting killed in the massive self-destruct explosion. Five levels of difficulty give the game a high level of replayability, though I never managed level 4 (Ace) or 5 (Insane). An interesting quote from a GameSpot review from 1996: "If you don't like Descent at least a little bit, make no mistake, there is something wrong with you." Descent II also narrowly lost to Quake for CNET's Best Action Game 1996 Award. 90s were peak for FPS games.