Aliens: Dark Descent Puts You on an Express Elevator to Xenomorph Hell, Going Down
“I really should have explored the map more.” With the help of the three turrets we laid down, we cleared the first few waves. It had less ammo counters, but it held up. Then a xenomorph came out of the air duct behind me. Game over, man.
When I sat down to play at Focus Interactive’s booth at PAX East, I wasn’t sure what to do with Aliens: Dark Descent. Aliens have had a dangerous track record regardless of the medium, and aside from 2003’s Alien vs. Predator: Extinction, the franchise has tended to focus more on action than tactics and strategy. Shouldn’t have worried. Dark Descent tries something new, but what it’s aiming for fits perfectly with the franchise.
Aliens: Dark Descent is a real-time squad-based tactical action game. Colonial He ends up commanding an entire squad of Marines instead of controlling one of them. If you’ve ever seen an alien, imagine you’re Lieutenant Gorman, sitting in an APC, giving orders, and watching your squad carry out the orders. Commands are automatically executed by Marines best equipped to execute at the time, based on equipment, attributes, or placement.
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The demo I played dropped a team of four into a facility that recalled the vibe of the industrial Wayland Yutani that marked Hadley’s wish for aliens. Tindalos Interactive has taken great care in capturing the alien aesthetic. From the sounds of pulse rifles and smart guns, to the look of computers placed in the room, to the way xenomorphs move, to the acidic blood sprayed when my team takes them out, everything makes it look, sound and feel. A nail-biting movie. The sound effects were so good that I thought they were straight from the movie. Few Aliens games embody the cinematic style as perfectly as Dark Descent.
The attention to detail is more impressive considering how large the map I was traversing was. I was looking for a device called Codebreaker, and there was also a side quest that encouraged me to find an armory and discover more about what happened. Occasionally came across heteromorphic forms. He’s no match for a team with just one alien, but even his single blip of his motion tracker can be stressful. If there is one alien he could easily have multiple aliens.
Stress is also something your team deals with. Over time, individual Marines build on a scale of 1-100. Upon reaching 100, Marines gain one of a variety of debuffs, such as decreased accuracy, fear, or less likelihood of engaging in combat. These debuffs can stack up to 3 per Marine. Stress can quickly weaken your squad if you’re not careful. That’s where Dark Descent resource management comes in.
You can deal with stress in many ways. Use health kits to defeat it, reprimand your squad to temporarily halt their ascent, or, if you have enough tools, weld the door of a particular room shut to create a sanctuary and let your squad rest. You can. Everything you do takes resources. Welding doors need the tools they need to fix anything. Using a health kit to reduce stress means you can’t use it to heal later. A reprimand is a band-aid, an easy fix. Soon, the Marine’s stress begins to rise again.
Managing resources is important, and the choices you make at one point in a level can help or get in the way later. Welding the door shut shortens the xenomorph’s access path, but the weld must be broken to retreat from the area. My time on Dark Descent was filled with different choices. Digging deeper into the facility meant consuming resources, stressing me out, putting my team in jeopardy, and making my hives more aware of my presence, but it also allowed me to acquire useful resources later on. It was a slow and deliberate process, alternating between motion trackers and squad stats each time we stepped into a new area.
When you go into battle, your squad is ready for it. In addition to their standard weapons, there are many abilities they can use when they inevitably encounter aliens. , my personal favorite is the flamethrower with a cone-shaped flamethrower. The flamethrower not only damages any Xenomorph it hits, but also leaves the fire on the ground, forcing it to take another route. Activating the ability slows down time, but you need to be on the ball to ensure you hit a moving target. Abilities, like everything else in Dark Descent, are resources managed by Ability Points. Picking a spot is important.
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I enjoyed Dark Descent the most when the Xenomorph was thrown at me, and I had to manage everything at once: the position of my squad, the health and stress of my Marines, the abilities I used, the turrets I placed, Spots of fire on the ground, while challenging me to prioritize targets and manage close-range encounters. All battles have bets. Knocked out Marines can be picked up and carried away, but anyone who dies is gone for good. Combat is a tense and hectic affair. Even with the ability to slow down time, it’s important to think on your feet. Even killing an alien can be dangerous if alien blood is splattered on one of your Marine girlfriends. Perfecting a fight makes Dark Descent feel incredible.
I couldn’t survive long enough to open that door. I tried it twice and he lost both times due to the choices I made earlier. He spent precious resources welding the wrong door, used health kits to heal stress he should have saved, put his squad in the wrong place, and left all sentries unplaced with his turrets. But I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Aliens: Dark Descent isn’t easy, but it’s already addicting. If it manages to live up to its licensing legitimacy while still delivering the tactical action we’ve already seen, Aliens: Dark Descent will be a special and unique installment in the franchise.
Will Borger is a Pushcart-nominated fiction writer and IGN freelancer. His work has also been featured on TechRadar, GameSkinny, DigitallyDownloaded.net and Into the Spine. He specializes in fighting games, action games, strategy games, and first-person shooters. You can chat with him on Twitter @bywillborger.
