Depth Dwellers

Depth Dwellers is a 1994 first-person shooter developed and published by TriSoft for MS-DOS exclusively. It has players traveling through the mines and battling the demon named Ri.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) There is no options menu. Instead, you must press F10 to get help.
 * 2) False advertising: The back of the cover says it's an exciting 3D virtual reality action game with advanced third-dimensional technology, outstanding music and graphics. When you play the game, however, this is the exact opposite.
 * 3) The sound effects are ridiculous. In the words of LGR, "It's like someone using their mouth and altering the pitch." The gun is the worst offender because it makes the most absurd firing blast ever.
 * 4) Speaking of the gun, their designs are pretty stupid. One gun looks like a bolt.
 * 5) * Some weapons are useless such as a grenade launcher that shoots over people and kills you if you're not careful.
 * 6) The save slot system is limited because there are only four slots in this game to save over.
 * 7) The music never changes. It's just the same short annoying tune looped over and over. It can get wildly repetitive due to this.
 * 8) The level design is labyrinthian and not in a positive way. You will wander around aimlessly in the same looking and playing areas only with different textures.
 * 9) * In one level, it starts off with a bunch of enemies shooting at you. Is that how you start a level?
 * 10) The plot is boring. Basically, you must get the plans from the mines to help a planet named Ora.
 * 11) Having a duck and jump button is redundant because there is nothing to jump on or duck under in this game.
 * 12) There is also a sucky stereographic 3D mode which serves no purpose other than to make the screen harder to see and in purple if you're not wearing anaglyph glasses.
 * 13) The ending for each episode (save for the final one) is terrible. It's just a black background with red text titled "You are awsome !!". Not only that, but someone shouts "Yeah" loud, making you jump unexpectedly. The ending for the final episode is just a hand holding wine in a toast and a screen saying you got a medal from the Council of the Depth Dwellers.
 * 14) By the time Doom was released, it was already outdated due to it being a ray-casting first-person shooter. In fact, the whole game feels like a poor man's Wolfenstein 3D, which plays lightyears better than Depth Dwellers.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Some animations can be cool like when you shoot a slave, it bursts in half.
 * 2) The flamethrower is the only weapon deemed tolerable because it deals absurd damage to the enemies.

Reception
Depth Dwellers was met with mixed reception from critics and gamers alike. PC Zone gave it 4 out of 5 stars, claiming the game was a mix between Doom and Blake Stone, having its own charm, yet leaving pretty much to be desired. LGR on the other hand condemned it because of the dull music, boring level design, awful sound design, and more, going so far as to rate it #13 on his top 17 worst PC games he has ever played and blame it and the US Government, which created NASA, for the economic crisis of 2007-2009. Speaking of which...

Trivia

 * 1) The game's developer TriSoft is a husband and wife team formed by Bradley N. Bell, who worked at NASA for LinCom designing virtual reality simulations for astronauts, and Elizabeth A. Piegari.

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