A superbly executed no-frills-shooter. Almost immaculate in its simplicity.

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.

Overload, as an heir of arcade games, inherits its qualities and its flaws. It’s a pure exponent of fun and has a visual component that creates magnificent frames, but doesn’t have enough content to support its great mechanics in long term, making an imbalance between its role as an experience and its role as a product.

Beautiful combat livens up Overload's tedious levels.

Overload comes out of that school of thought that, in the 90s, made the FPS great: a fast-paced, fast, punitive and very particular shooter in its movement system. A title that carries that philosophy to the present day, but carries with it a loyalty to the past that structurally feels the weight of time.

As a “spiritual successor” to Descent, Overload accomplishes what it sets out to do, bringing it twenty years into the future with new graphics, weapons, and gameplay. However, it seems to have skipped many of the lessons that game developers have learned along the way, failing to adjust the game for modern expectations as it succumbs to the repetitive level designs that so characterized past limitations.

Worth a look for nostalgics. But even connoisseurs of the original will quickly lose the desire to play due to the dusty game mechanics.