Even after originally playing the game about 10 years ago, I believe there is still only one computer game robot/character/whatever that is able to arouse personal feelings of intense revenge in me: the Thief-Bot. The Thief-Bot is an evil creation from the masochistic minds of the folks at Interplay: he's incredibly fast, incredibly sneaky, and extremely difficult to kill in Descent 2. He enrages you and revs up your adrenal glands by stealing your ship's weapons and upgrades; only the most determined player will ever rescue those back.

Here is a picture of this evil robot (source: the Descent Network):


As karx11erx, the main developer of the D2X-XL project, apparently said in some now-defunct forum:

Geez, how I hate the thief. It's the only bot arousing personal feelings in me. Whenever it starts to appear, I start to pursue it, and when I finally kill it, I have a feeling of personal satisfaction not quite appropriate in a computer game ... :roll: :twisted:

I was reminded of the thief-bot today when playing D2X-XL. It seems that if you stick/search around long enough, you can find the thief-bot hiding somewhere even in the first level of Descent 2. Just the sound he makes when moving is enough to incite feelings of rage. But, oh, when you kill him -- the sound he makes is perfect, and "personal satisfaction not quite appropriate in a computer game" sums up the feeling quite nicely.


Descent 2 is on my list of all-time best games, and despite how I feel about the thief-bot, the fact that he can cause those feelings in me speaks to how well the game was created. The atmosphere of the mines, the freedom of movement, the ability to interact with the environment (i.e.: shooting out lights), the secrets, the sounds -- everything just combines to make a perfect game. Modern first-person shooters like Unreal Tournament, even ones with fancy graphics, have nothing on Descent 2.