We’ve seen some of the wildest genre mashups in the last few years, but you probably didn’t expect it to be a survival horror RTS. And that’s basically what Aliens: Dark Descent is all about, adding stealth elements and tense resource management to isometric squad-based tactical action. Fully locked and loaded, it captures the essence of the 1986 film Alien better than any game ever. But Dark Descent doesn’t go as smoothly as it should, as slimy and fun technical issues frequently lead to spooky problems.
Mixing elements from XCOM, Darkest Dungeon, and Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, Dark Descent is undeniably a very unique game full of interesting ideas. While many Aliens-licensed games wrongly focus on getting you into town with a pulse rifle, this one perfectly focuses on the franchise’s paranoia and danger, and the run-of-the-mill drones. and even runners. again.
It’s quite possible to fire a gun in rapid succession and probably get a ton of kills easily. But every time a xenomorph spots you, it alerts the nest and the hands of the clock start ticking. This increases the number of Xenomorphs, makes them more aggressive, and makes the entire remaining mission difficult. The best way to play is usually to not find one at all. But if you already have a high level of consciousness, stronger boss aliens and more drones will be summoned, so the consequences of waking up your shiny-headed friend are far more dire. This led to some very heart-pounding combat retreats through narrow corridors and hiding in supply rooms hoping that Zeno on patrol wouldn’t check in here.
mental breakdown
Casualties occur even in firefights where no lacerations or acid burns occur. Simply encountering aliens, being hunted during the activation phase of a hive, or even seeing tons of blips on your motion tracker are all sources of stress. This allows you to stack up to 3 random debuffs on your Marines, and they all go “game over, dude, game over!” And it makes everyone else even more nervous, missing decisive shots or being disobedient. So the more you scare them, the less effective they will be in battle.
Combine this with the hive’s perception system, and from your first few teasing engagements with a single drone, all hell breaks loose, as if one wrong step could wipe out your squad. I can only say that the way it creates deployments is amazing. . It makes all your little soldiers human and at the same time very thoughtful about how to manage their physical and mental resources. Sometimes it’s better to signal the dropship and end the mission with the objective incomplete. The campaign takes up valuable time on his map because he has to come back later, but it saves the combatant’s life. And that means every mission feels like a good alien movie, slowly building up to a crescendo punctuated by screeches and gunfire.
It’s all these incredible design ideas that make me feel so conflicted about Dark Descent’s technical shape. Sure, it’s good enough that minor, quirky bugs like poorly synced dialogue in cutscenes can be ignored. However, even after a massive patch that was clearly helpful during the review process, we sometimes had to replay entire missions because the core mechanics didn’t work as expected. The safe room I sealed off with precious engineering resources didn’t really allow Marines to rest and reduce stress, and I lost a great deal of momentum. In one case, my stress meter seemed to hit the highest setting without even an alien being around, and the entire team went completely insane and had to rescue me.
These issues are too frequent and too game-breaking to turn a blind eye to. Most can be painstakingly avoided by restarting the mission, but he may lose an hour or more of progress in that case. The entire 12-mission campaign took about 30 hours, of which at least a few hours involved replaying bugged missions or having to withdraw due to bugs and return to the same location with a new squad. I want to say that I did .
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Thankfully, the campaign tier doesn’t suffer as much. Aboard her crashed USCM ship USS Otago, Darkest will be tasked with managing research, medical facilities, training, equipment, and even a therapeutic clinic to treat long-term psychological damage in her dungeon style. The UI is all very clean and well organized, but not without its quirks. For example, I don’t understand why you can’t upgrade a Marine’s equipment from the same page where you assign new skills.
Progress can feel a bit stingy, especially considering the planetary infestation is getting more serious with each passing day and the number of Xenos patrolling each map increases. Level 10 Marines feel only marginally more useful overall than rookies, especially when it comes to the Bravery stat, which determines how quickly stress builds up. But with classes ranging from the iconic clever gunner to the sergeant who keeps everyone out of action, there’s a lot of great specialization and synergy to discover.
With a compelling story to accompany it, this is more than just a rehash of previous Alien films. Morally contradictory and interesting characters with compelling motivations pave the way. Voice acting can be a bit inconsistent, especially since there aren’t enough unique marine voices to effectively distinguish the entire roster. I’ve also noticed that it really breaks the mood when the squad leader constantly yells something like “Double time!” When we were sneaking around and trying to keep quiet. But the main characters give a truly memorable performance in the most dramatic scenes.
And these environments are also quite nice, capturing not just the style but the feel of James Cameron’s undeniably classics. The way the fog glows when illuminated with a flashlight is a spine-chilling recreation of the movie’s play of light and shadow. The sound design adds to this with the unnerving squeeze-squeeze sounds as you march through the alien-infested regions of planet Lethe. And throughout the process, a variety of missions and objective types keep every deployment from feeling the same. There are even some twists later that introduce new and unexpected enemy types.
