In this article I’ll write about the zero-gravity shooter, a not very well known or popular sub-genre of the first-person shooter.
Defining the Genre
The zero-gravity shooter is an iffy genre to define, I must admit. There are a lot of shooters which are technically zero or little gravity, but the issue is that a lot of these take the form of arcade-styled dog fighting games. I thought for quite some time as to what a good definition could be. While Wikipedia has a somewhat incomplete list of zero-g shooters, it does not offer a definition. Why should we consider Descent a zero-g shooter but not Wing Commander? I decided that the best approach was to start with Doom as a starting point. What defined Doom’s gameplay? For me, the maze-like nature of the levels are an important part of Doom. I cannot conceive of a version of Doom that does not include the magnificent level design of the series. Doom, at its most basic level, is about navigating mazes (while killing demons). My definition of the zero-g shooters can be understood as being like Doom, but with much less gravity and much more aiming (and typically less demons). Maze-like level design and the absence of gravity are vital for my understanding of what this genre is.
The History (from 1989-1996)
The zero-g shooter is a thing of a past decade, under-appreciated by the gaming community for its initially intimidating learning-curve. This genre is old – the first game in this sub-genre predates iD’s first-person shooters. Interphase was released in 1989, two years before Catacombs 3D and Hovertank 3D, and three years before Wolfenstein 3D. Interphase is an important title – it’s a 3D FPS that predates iD’s own landmark releases.
In 1994, Looking Glass Studio developed System Shock, which was published by Origin Systems. System Shock, which would spawn a sequel and serve as an inspiration to the Bioshock series, featured “cyberspace” sections in which the player could navigate a wireframe representation of the computer network. The wireframe representation of the computer network somewhat resembles the art style of Pyrotechnica, released a year later.
Despite how sprite-y he looks, that little guy is made of polygons
It was not until 1995, when Interplay published Parallax Software’s Descent, that the genre once again received any attention. The full version of Descent came two years after Doom and a year after Doom II. While iD’s shooters have been labeled “2.5D” in retrospect, Descent is undoubtedly a 3D experience. Before the advent of dedicated video cards, Descent was allowing PC gamers to play a game in which the enemies and the world were 3D! It would take a year for iD to release Quake, and this game required players to have a 1MB video card to play.
1995 also saw the release of Pyrotechnica and Radix: Beyond the Void, a fairly psychedelic looking shooter. Unlike the very positive reception to Descent, Pyrotechnica faced a cooler audience. Moby Games only has four reviews for it, two of them are not so positive (two of them are much more positive). The game’s environment is not as visually stimulating as Descent’s, though it appears this was a stylistic choice and not the result of developers trying to negotiate with the technology of the time. However, the response looking back is that his game was a poor man’s Descent, albeit one that tried to stand out due to the interesting art style – which tends to create hard to navigate levels.
Descent 2's enemies look a lot better
Radix: Beyond the Void was a much more conventional cross between Doom and Descent. The game almost feels like one is playing Doom with no-clip mode on and mouse-look (as anachronistic as that statement is). The game featured sections of the environment that could be destroyed, to various degrees. The game’s environments are much easier to navigate that Pyrotechnica’s LSD-fueled world, but resulted in a game that didn’t feel as unique – even the briefing screens recall Descent’s briefing screens. The 2.5D environments of this game make this the true poor man’s Descent, though.
Parallax released the sequel to Descent a year after the original was released. The sequel looks much better than its predecessor; it is actually hard to believe Descent II is running on the same engine that Descent used a year before. Support for hardware acceleration was added, which greatly improves both the quality of the visuals and the performance. The game had dynamic lighting – shoot out the lights and the area darkens, you can use flares and headlights to improve visibility.
