A collaborative single player campaign for Unreal 227 taking place in a mysterious cave system spanning 12 levels!

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Version 1.0 release!!! If you have any issues at all, post a message here or contact us across at UnrealSP.org - hope you all have as an enjoyable experience playing as we have had making this!

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USP TheDescent v1.0
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foo_jam2002
foo_jam2002 - - 857 comments

Thank you, i'm going to play this.

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Guest
Guest - - 689,523 comments

This was AWESOME from start to finish! This mod if filled with a lot of stuff to make you feel a lot of emotions. From silliness to moments of suspense, and sometimes I felt goosebumps running up my back.

I just wish to know the full story because I didn't seem to understand much, but I took a day off just to play this mod and it was a good day indeed! Thanks for your effort!

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the_vm
the_vm - - 109 comments

(1/2)
A little addendum to my review: simply put, stupendous!
I went in expecting only a few maps to distract myself for a short amount of time, but what I found was an entire journey that I went through in one sitting.

SPOILERS AHEAD!
This mod doesn't play well with DX11 render, it'll crash on reload and level transition so be advised. Otherwise the game was very stable for me and it never crashed. Although even on DX9 some parts were so unoptimized, it caused heavy lags for me (titan&spiders; bossfight, stone titan bossfight, giant meat generator when you look up at it). Might be the HD pack's fault, who knows, the original game had steady framerate for me at all times.

The beginning section probably undersells the entire thing with silly memes added for a cheeky giggle, and initially it even gave me wrong expectations and impression. Also I thought I'd have to sneak my way in, only to realize that enemies won't attack me, making me feel incredibly stupid.
After that, the first real level begins - a short trip to the caves accompanied by some skirmishes trivialized by the Quadshot - I had an impression someone in the team really wanted to feature this beast. In return, enemies are armed with Flak Cannons, have fun xoxo :)
The second level is when the gimmicks start to appear, and I never thought you could make a titan boss fight not yawn-inducing, good job. With infinitely spawning enemies, you are forced to make a run for it, which also somewhat counters the savescumming aspect - something I reckoned would be impossible. Overall this level gave me Serios Sam vibes, and for that I'd call it decent.
The third level has the most unusual gimmick, and by the time I figured it out I was at my last legs. I wish there was a stash of medkits after the first big fight in the closed room, but oh well. Also I'm not sure if I solved the "electro-wall" thing properly, I just jumped on the beam and then past the wall, it worked for me, but the ghost was luring me into the shack on the side so that confused me a bit. The level and lore featured in it is very immersive and really feels like a part of Napali's history. The environmental storytelling is also spot on in this (as is in the last level, but more on that later).
The fourth level I liked a lot, it gave me heavy Tomb Raider vibes. Also I was happy with the ability to smack monsters in the face with my fists, I always wanted to go medieval on them! The search party lore was good, and bossfight again - creative! But there are several glitches on this map - when you fall down into the water, you can avoid the "rock damage" (I assume) trigger when you swim to the side immediately, so you end up with 50 health instead of less. But when you get into the water again near the sunken rocks, the trigger will activate and you'll get damaged out of nowhere. Another small issue is the missing texture on the ceiling (the smudged part): Imgur.com
The bossfight also had some issues - mainly the adds were tanking my framerate to the point that I thought the game would crash, and the boss itself had way too much health (though to be fair I think I missed two of the rocks when I dropped them on him, oh well).
What else? The section where you get "caught" was nice, the demon-like thing was spooky and cool. Safe to say map 2 and map 3 officially gave me pupae and manta ptsd, haha. The "prison" part with breaking the energy generators was interesting, you retread the same places while fighting new threats, I always liked that kind of thing. The "flesh ship" as I call it was unnerving and cool, though there are again some glitches - the ghost figures reappear after you reload the game, which caused the female ghost walk straight into my face after I cleared the tube, probably unintentional but it gave me a little scare. The clearing itself is weird, first time it didn't even clear the meat parts properly, yet counted it as "complete" somehow. I also want to mention puzzles, none of them were really difficult, but honestly most of the time I had no idea what I was doing and somehow they solved themselves anyway.

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the_vm
the_vm - - 109 comments

(2/2)
Still, the best map for me was the lethargy one - arguably the best map in the whole thing too. Immediately it has your attention with an unusual sound cue, and the glowing eyes in the cave prepare you for some spooky stuff coming up later. The "egg" puzzle in the ship is clearly an Alien reference, I think. I thought that was cool, until I realized it was a puzzle and then I was like aww. The end part with the spooky house gave me indie horror corridor game vibe. But the whole thing spoke to me, it's like a representation of an artist's struggle, right? A similar theme is later repeated in one of the trials at the final map. One thing I really liked is how the mapmaker made all this stuff clearly to make an impression, even the spooky monster barely damages you, and if you fail any platforming stuff it'll just spit you out back in a safe spot.
And lastly, the last level features a weird, Stalker-like lab-type zone with water on walls and physics-defying corridors. I admit, the lab was quite a bit of a maze, and Skaarj noises coming from the walls before you teleport made me feel uneasy. I always had this feeling that I might've missed something, that some corner was left unexplored. The onlyfans joke was funny, but I didn't get the relevancy. I guess it's up to you how to interpret it, just like the ending. The book easter egg was cool, I'm glad you guys thought of that possibility, and the music is very nice too.
And the final part with white corridors, white fog and white aesthetic in general gave me very heavy melancholic Nier vibes. I liked how the trials progressively turned from simple chores and wholesome things to something cruel, wicked, and even dangerous. The log you find on the doctor reflects that perfectly. The slenderman bit was like a blast from the past, genuinely unnerving though.
During the final fight, I noticed the game would crash if I died, so that was weird. Maybe something was supposed to happen? The endings are open-ended, I think? Maybe there was supposed to be a cutscene or something that didn't play for me? Maybe the child we were sent to find was the friends we made alo-- Okay, scratch that.

Anyway, 10/10, great job, on par with the original if not better in some ways.
Thanks for reading.

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