Aliens: Dark Descent Review

Aliens: Dark Descent is a strategy game developed by Tindalos Interactive and set in the Alien universe. Showcasing an entirely original story, along with unique gameplay aspects, helps Dark Descent stand out in the Real-Time Strategy world.

Real-Time Strategy is never really my first choice when it comes to what genres I enjoy, but this title managed to deepen my love for them through a range of different, well-crafted systems. The base gameplay consists of commanding a squad of Colonial Marines through a variety of different missions across the planet of Lethe. This is where most of your time will be spent, sneaking through ruined settlements and facilities to avoid alerting the Xenomorphs. When this inevitably happens, however, combat is an interesting challenge; your marines will automatically shoot at any alerted target within range, but there is a multitude of unique and different skills which can help turn the tide of battles. Your characters also have unique classes, giving them access to more skills. This, combined with unique environmental challenges, leads to a very entertaining gameplay loop. It really clicked for me when I had access to a flamethrower, allowing me to surround myself with walls of flame, stopping the Xenos from getting in but allowing all my bullets out. Along with the Xenomorphs, however, there also exist humanoid enemies, from mysterious cultists to Weyland Yutani commanders, who all prove to be an engaging threat, requiring different strategies to defeat.

Missions play out in large, open-ended areas, with a set of objectives to complete before the player must extract. These missions all have interesting and unique challenges, from finding and saving hostages to breaking into the nest and killing a Queen. Many of these quests also have secondary objectives, which reward the player with anything from materials to help repair the Otago — the crash-landed ship being used as a home base — all the way to new members of the crew, from marines to physicians and engineers. It’s a fun system, rewarding you for putting yourself in riskier situations while not forcing you to tackle these more unique objectives, which require different ideas and strategies. Despite hearing some reports of bugs, I only had a couple of instances where I had any bugs cause active issues, such as marines getting stuck on terrain and voice lines playing at incorrect times.

Before and after each mission, you’ll find yourself in the Otago, which is where you’ll do all your planning and managerial work. There are multiple different locations on the ship: the Command Deck, which is where you begin missions and plan deployment options, such as which marines will be sent, along with their gear; the Workshop, which allows for unlocking new weapons; the Barracks, which is where you can upgrade marines, and the Memorial site, where you can see which of your characters have died, and when; the medical quarters will allow you to check the status of wounded marines and assign physicians to speed up recovery, and finally, the laboratory, where you can research new Xenotech using samples collected from Xenomorphs while out on missions.

The general atmosphere is also fantastic and perfectly replicates the feel of the Aliens movies and world. It doesn’t compromise on any elements, aside from some minor issues with facial animation and voice acting. All the different variants of the
Xenomorphs are here too and add a fun and, quite frankly, panic-inducing aspect to the combat, especially the dog variant, which is a nightmare to deal with. The game's music and visuals are very good, too, the music matches the tone well, and visually it’s fantastic, especially the Xenomorphs in the cutscenes; this is the greatest they’ve ever looked. The story is nothing special, but it’s perfectly adequate and is a strong enough driving force combined with the gameplay.