4/5 ★ – jonesey46's review of Aliens: Dark Descent.

Real Time Strategies is a genre I’ve never been in to, in fact, Aliens: Dark Descent is the first one I’ve ever played. I’m so unfamiliar with the genre, I had to Google ‘RTS’ and do a little reading on what they are. Doing this, I learned that Aliens: Dark Descent isn’t a traditional RTS. While a traditional RTS would have you controlling several units at once with objectives much grander in scale, Aliens: Dark Descent has you controlling one unit of up to five marines, deployed into various zones on the planet Lethe. Lethe has been overrun by everyone’s favourite perfect organism, the Xenomorph - or rather, a fuck load of them. Your marines have a list of objectives to complete and you’re responsible for keeping them alive, sane, and preferably without Xeno parasites in their chest. Lethe’s various locations, comprised of small colony settlements, dock yards and power facilities invite a much closer experience, offering plenty of tactical strategies to scratch the RTS itch, whilst also matching the dread and horror of trying to stay alive, whilst being hunted by hordes of science fictions deadliest predators. That last part I mention truly is, for me, the standout success of this game. But first I want to talk about the franchise. Please, indulge me a little. Aliens: Dark Descent tells us exactly what side of the Alien franchise it sits on in its title. ‘Aliens’, the 1986 film directed by James Cameron is a direct sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 film ‘Alien’. Where Alien is a traditional monster horror film, Aliens is much more of an action flick. We go from one alien stalking down a small crew on a spaceship, to a group of soldiers mowing down hundreds of the things with assault rifles. The tone of each couldn’t be further from one and other, and yet, both films are massively successful and even celebrated for their respective differences. Since the release of Aliens, several people (or maybe more aptly, boardrooms) have tried to continue the Xenomorphs legacy with varying degrees of failure. It’s fascinating to me, that a franchise with as many duds as this one, has managed to stay in the cultural zeitgeist for this long and is still thriving. Maybe its H.R. Giger’s incredible design of the Xenomorph, or just the fact that we’re so starved of good science fiction, we desperately hang on to the old stuff. Granted, the fantastic, and highly successful Alien Romulus released this year and showed us all that good Alien films can still be made, if they let the right people do it. Every film from Alien 3 to Alien Covenant failed to reach the highs fans were seeking. The less said about Aliens vs. Predator the better. And then of course, we have the games. You’ll all know Aliens: Colonial Marines by reputation, but there’s been several over the years that have been more interested in cashing in on IP, rather than make something that would match the tone of those two original films. Well, it finally happened. Alien Isolation released ten years ago (fuck me) and gave us the perfect ‘Alien’ experience. And in 2023, Aliens: Dark Descent gave us the perfect ‘Aliens’ experience. The problem that any ‘Aliens’ game has faced in the past is, ‘how do you make this scary?’ If you’re controlling a marine, whether its first person in Colonial Marines or third person in Fireteam Elite, you have a gun. If you have a gun that can kill the deadliest threat known to you, then how can you be scared? The best horror games take power away from you, not put it in your hands. Aliens: Dark Descent gives your marines guns, but you aren’t controlling them, they’re responsible for themselves. All you can do is give orders and hope you made the right call. When the hordes descend on you, shit will hit the fan. Combat remains in real time so all you can do is move your marines into a position where they have eyes on all entrances, and hope for the best. Now, of course, that isn’t all there is to combat. You have various commands that you can give to your marines to increase their chances of survivability. You can order them to lay down suppressive fire, which slows down all enemies caught in sight. You can have them set up automatic turrets to add an extra gun to the fight. All their guns have an alternative fire, and you can tell them exactly where to fire it. You can also focus fire on one specific enemy if they’re putting your marines in immediate danger. The fact that all of this takes place in real time is where the stress primarily comes from, and your own stress isn’t the only thing you need to worry about. Anytime your marines are in combat, their stress increases, once it hits 100%, it progresses to the next level and a debuff is applied to the affected marine. There are three levels of stress and if you hit max, then your chances of making it out alive are slim to none. You can reduce stress levels by creating a safe place for you marines to rest. You do this by finding a room and blocking all exits, usually by welding the doors shut. Once this is done you can rest up and your marines will feel much better for it. The Aliens will become more aggressive the longer you spend on missions. When your marines first touchdown, their level of aggression is at its least, and as you enter combat, this level will increase until it reaches max, at which point, you guessed it – slim to none. There are actually two bells of awakening, erm, sorry… Two aggression mechanics and the other is more of a global level, rather than a mission specific one. Each deployment costs a day, and with each day that passes, the Planet Infestation level will increase. This increases Alien aggressiveness across the board and while you can decrease it, it costs a lot of resources to do so. The best thing you can do, is extract your marines early and often. Missions can be completed across as many deployments as you like, and this will heavily reduce the injuries and stress your marines suffer from. Yeah, the planet infestation level will go up with each deployment, but having healthy, and more importantly, alive marines is paramount to your survival. The problem with this though, is about halfway through the game, a death clock starts, meaning you only have a certain number of days to reach the end of the game. Now, I had plenty of time left over across both of my playthroughs, but I had to be more considerate about how many deployments I was using for each mission. It’s just another factor that manages to turn the pressure up on you, on top of everything else. When you’re not on missions, you’ll be on the crashed ship ‘The Otago’, your haven on the planet Lethe. It’s here you’ll plan out your missions, level up your marines, kit them out, unlock new upgrades, and treat the wounded. When you’re on the ship, you take the role of Deputy Administrator Maeko Hayes, who is the protagonist of the games central story. She’s the one who is giving orders, and ensuring the marines live to fight another day. I like Hayes but unfortunately, whilst the story has a very strong start, it failed to keep me engaged or interested. Some spoilers for the story ahead. The story begins with Hayes on Pioneer Station, A Weyland Yutani facility, and wouldn’t you know it? Someone’s stowed away a bunch of Xenomorphs. One gets out, wreaks havoc, and Hayes makes the difficult decision to activate the Cerberus Protocol, a quarantine protocol that will ensure none of the organisms make it planet side, little does she know, it’s already too late. This destroys several of the marines’ ships, including the Otago, and sends them crashing down to Lethe. Hayes hitches a ride with some marines down to Lethe and commandeers the Otago with the aim of repairing the ship and getting her and all her new friends the fuck out of dodge. This intro had me hooked, I could already see the conflict of Hayes being the one to push the button and her having to live with that whilst keeping it a secret from her new marine buddies. She instead, comes clean after the first mission and no conflict arises from this. The game then takes you on a journey of cultists, missing daughters, supernatural powers, and mad scientists. Uhm… What? I still gave the story a chance, but it kept losing me throughout and the ending was so underwhelming that it made the whole thing feel pointless. The voice acting is good for Hayes, and her compatriot Sergeant Harper, but that’s it. Not only is the voice acting for every other character and NPC not good, but the sound is also mixed terribly. You’ll be on a mission, your marines will be talking at a comfortable level, you’ll open fire on a cultist, and they’ll scream, louder than any other sound in the game “GREAT DESCENDANT, GRANT US YOUR STRENGTH”. This scared the shit out of me, every time. Granted, this is an indie game. The developer, Tindalos Interactive, have a staff of under 25, according to their LinkedIn. Sound design, poor writing and direction, a few game crashing bugs here and there, are all things I can let slide when it’s a small developer. What they’ve accomplished here, is something so many others have tried and failed in the past, and that’s worthy of a lot of praise. This is the definitive experience for fans of Aliens the movie. It offers pulse pounding action, all the aesthetic from the film, and a fuck tonne of Xenomorphs to mow down, but all while terrifying the player with an experience that’ll set your stress levels on high. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this game and while it is a little rough around the edges, it succeeds in more ways than it fails. Aliens Dark Descent drops the ball story wise but more than makes up for it with its gameplay. I adore this franchise and whilst I’m more lenient on some of its lesser regarded entries, I’ll always relish an experience that understands the franchise and respects the Xenomorphs legacy - That’s more than what Ridley Scott is doing anyway. Thanks for reading. --- Some stray thoughts: -The lines that your marines repeat over and over are hilarious and never failed to amuse me. I struggled to choose just one for the opening quote. -Hunslet, the pilot, constantly making weird jokes and getting told to “can it” by Harper was also hilarious. -You can utilise stealth if you have a recon guy with a silencer and this helped me out a tonne with my nightmare run. It’s very hard to pull off consistently though. Shit always hit the fan eventually. -This being my first RTS, I played on the easiest difficulty and still had a really hard time with some missions. -The larger Xenomorphs the game would sometimes unload on you were cool. Setting up killzones for Queens were some of my favourite moments. -Seriously, the story ends so abruptly that I was genuinely baffled. It seems likely that the developers ran out of time.