Rare are the games that I actually speak to. Once in a blue moon, a tough kill in GTA Online will get a “yesss!” I’ll also drop expletives when Diablo IV makes me wait for servers. That said, the permadeath antics in Aliens: Dark Descent were a constant conversation starter for me.
This survival-horror RTS and I had frequent chats, for a variety of reasons. “Oh, game over, man. We’re in some real pretty shit now.”
That got uttered when my sentry guns clicked dry as the ‘Hive Aggressiveness’ meter peaked. Seconds later, ‘Major Onslaught Incoming’ painted on screen, and the motion tracker lit up like some sort of firefly orgy.
As I somehow managed to lay down suppressive fire with incinerator units, that mood changed. While we were limping a retreat to the safety of our APC’s turret — one comatose Sarge being carried, and three terrified grunts down to pistols and harsh language — I became jubilant.
“Let’s GO, marines! We are LEAV-ING!”
Aliens: Dark Descent Review
Even on its lowest difficulties, Aliens: Dark Descent expertly captures the masterfully crafted, 2 hr and 17 m clusterfuck setting of Aliens (1986). And yes, I’m just as surprised as you are about this fact. Firstly, because Tindalos Interactive is an outfit greener than Lt. William “two combat drops” Gorman. Secondly, it’s become well ingrained in me that Aliens games are mostly average to bad. Mostly.
To be fair though, what’s here is about as derivative an Aliens tale as one could write. One big, ugly planet with an atmospheric processor. A crapload of colonists who need rescuing from xenomorphs (and possibly their virginities). Some Weyland Yutani turbo-sociopaths who want specimens. And you, a detachment of marines who are all talk and tech, but are undertrained, fallible under pressure, and stupidly outnumbered.
Tindalos does try to weave its own interesting narrative twists. Like a body-modding, xeno-cult working in cahoots with the bugs. Plus, there’s a commanding officer bearing a mysterious condition and a personal link to this backwoods planet. But yeah – the script is kinda uneven, the cutscene models feel about a gen old, and texture pop mars a lot of those story moments anyway.
Ultimately, the narrative provided is scrappy yet satisfying, but the gameplay itself is almost always on target. Primarily, it feels somewhere between a real-time, shallower XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and, for you crusty gamers out there, Cannon Fodder. With waypoint clicks, you’re controlling a complex unit of 4-5 individuals who move (more or less) as a single entity.
Your jarheads will auto-target and ventilate threats in a 360-degree radius quite well on their own. But that’s only if you’re single-tap walking to a waypoint — double-tap running will lower your weapons and get you tackled or face-hugged in no time.
And, like I said earlier if your guys ‘n’ gals get smoked, impregnated, or snatched and successfully dragged away — one of the most bunghole puckering moments in this game — they’re gone for good. Adios, muchachos. That’s hours of studious perk accumulation, combat experience, and state of the bad-ass art equipment lost, forever. Every mission will put you on the edge of your command chair. You’ll air insert into a number of sprawling, multi-level, shake ‘n’ bake colonies. Then, if obstructions don’t prevent it, Uber yourself to set outdoor map points in a bug-shredding APC.
That said, the claustrophobic, labyrinthine interiors of these facilities and hives will be your natural habitat. The stygian gloom will barely be pierced by the impressive headlamp lighting system. Incomplete tac-maps and flaky motion trackers will then offer very little heads-up on what are, essentially, infinite enemy spawners. Initially, stealth is paramount. The less said from that personal friend of yours, the M41A pulse rifle, the better.
Worse, there are different enemy archetypes to tiptoe around. Drones will investigate the unavoidable sounds you’ll make while scrounging for precious ammo, meds and the tech points needed to weld doors or hack into new points of ingress. There are also runners who ping about, like the psychotic ghost from Pac-Man, looking to spot you and raise the aforementioned Hive Aggressiveness meter.
When that thing triggers a Massive Onslaught phase, you’d best position your backs to the wall and point everything at a foolproof killzone. At the best of times, the auto-shoot AI of your low-level grunts is barely enough to down a xeno in any distance beyond “free acid shower”. Firing while moving backwards, and micromanaging the cooldowns of your special Command actions are a must.
Yanking R2 will slow time to a crawl and give you a number of Command options. Suppressive Fire will designate a view corridor in front of you and strip oncoming targets of their attack speed. Shotgun Blast lets you obliterate any jack-in-the-boxing xeno, if you expertly time the pump action delay and incredibly short-range cone. Flamethrowers are more or less the same deal, but they can utterly melt boss health and/or create 20 seconds’ worth of area denial.
Aliens: Dark Descent takes short excursions into no-weapons stealth missions (which grate) and stand-up fights against other gun-toting units. Both involve decent cover-hopping mechanics, though the latter goes better if you manually designate which mook to kill, specifically, with a “Kill The Bastard” button. Honestly, though, some of the tensest decisions in Aliens: Dark Descent happen in the high-stakes management moments happening during and in between missions. Marine stress and the debuffs that come with individuals who have unique limitations (pyrophobia, depression, bad luck, etc) can be as lethal as a drone’s pneumatic mouth. You’ll mitigate it by scarfing sedatives and picking at those mission objectives via short, hit-and-extract runs. Alternatively, just weld yourselves into a small base of operations for a de-stress.
Problem: heading back to base allows marines to get strung out and become completely unselectable for a number of in-game, XCOM-esque days. Considerable downtime needs to be spent fixing their physical and emotional scars, training them, and researching the weapons and tech needed to keep them alive. And, of course, the game director dangles a number of binary decision moments that come with an RNG chance to either shower you with riches or make this waking nightmare worse.
Oh, and speaking of worse – an extinction-level event will trigger and make your days very, very finite. When that kicks in, and you have multiple setbacks – like a “Stubborn” traited marine who picks his own awful, awful perks – the stress can hit you like a chest burster.
To call Aliens: Dark Descent thrilling is an understatement. I’m a min-maxer who can’t help but take the piss and push the limits of what’s wise or sensible, so for twenty-odd hours I was constantly seesawing between epic victory or utter ruin. And no matter the difficulty you choose, Tindalos is happy to offer you about a kilometre of rope to hang yourself with. Which, I suspect, may be misinterpreted as uneven balancing by some of my contemporaries.
However, as addictive an experience it is, Aliens: Dark Descent is about as troubled as your average USCM platoon. This game doesn’t have more bugs than the hives it depicts, but it certainly has some, and when the stakes are so high, the annoyance gets elevated. I lost marines who became stuck in welding animations or the occasional wall. I almost got checkpoint jailed in a few impossible fight scenarios, too.
Admittedly, those moments are very few and far between. For the overwhelming majority of my time, I was in the pipe, five by five – bug-hunting heaven. Happily grinding, unlocking smartguns, rocket launchers, heavy plasma rifles, dropship barrages, sharp sticks, you name it.
Likewise, I became super attached to my severely dysfunctional family of marines. Even though they shat me to tears with their small pool of voice lines.
Despite its rough edges, Aliens: Dark Descent has my thumbs up as the sleeper hit of 2023. It’s an addictive, unabashed love letter to one of the greatest action films of all time. Not only does it do the IP justice, it splices in some great XCOM DNA and cool narrative twists. The result is the most potent hybrid since the pred-alien.
Aliens: Dark Descent was reviewed on PC using digital code provided by the publisher.
