Even with all the wild genre mashups I’ve witnessed over the past few years, I could never have imagined a survival horror RTS. That’s essentially what Aliens: Dark Descent offers, blending stealth elements and intense resource management into its isometric, squad-based tactical action. When it’s firing on all cylinders, it captures the essence of the 1986 film Aliens better than any game in recent memory. However, pesky technical issues often rear their ugly heads, dampening the overall experience of Dark Descent.
Taking elements from XCOM, Darkest Dungeon, and Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, Dark Descent is undeniably a unique game with plenty of interesting concepts. Unlike other Alien-licensed games that focus solely on combat with a pulse rifle, this one delves into the paranoia and danger of the franchise, making even ordinary drones and runners menacing once again.
It’s entirely possible to approach the game with guns blazing and rack up easy kills. However, if a xenomorph spots you, it alerts the hive and triggers a countdown, causing them to multiply and become more aggressive, in turn making the rest of the mission much harder. The optimal strategy is usually to avoid detection altogether. But if the hive awareness level is high, the consequences of being spotted are much more dire, with powerful boss aliens and swarms of drones being summoned. This often leads to intense fighting retreats through narrow corridors or hiding in supply rooms, desperately hoping that the patrolling xenomorph won’t stumble upon you.
Mental Breakdown
Engaging in firefights, even without suffering wounds or acid burns, takes a toll on your Marines. Simply encountering aliens, being hunted during a hive activation phase, or seeing multiple blips on the motion tracker all contribute to stress. This stress can result in up to three randomized debuffs on your Marines, causing them to become more anxious, miss their shots, or become disobedient. Therefore, the more horrors your squad experiences, the less effective they are in combat.
The combination of the hive awareness system and stress mechanics creates a natural progression from initial encounters with a lone drone to a feeling of chaos where one wrong move could lead to the complete annihilation of your squad. This brilliant design humanizes your soldiers while forcing you to carefully manage their physical and psychological well-being. Sometimes, it’s better to call for extraction and leave a mission incomplete, at the cost of valuable campaign time, in order to save the lives of your fighters. This results in every mission feeling like a thrilling Alien movie, building up to a climactic firefight.
Despite the incredible design ideas, I find myself conflicted due to the technical issues plaguing Dark Descent. While minor bugs like out-of-sync dialogue in cutscenes can be overlooked, there are instances where core mechanics fail to work as intended, even after a helpful patch was released during the review process. For example, a sealed safe room, created using valuable engineering resources, failed to provide rest for my Marines and reduce their stress, significantly hindering my progress. In another case, the stress meter remained at its highest level even when there were no aliens present, resulting in my entire squad losing their sanity and forcing me to evacuate.
These issues occur frequently enough and have a significant impact on gameplay, making it difficult to ignore them. While some can be overcome by restarting missions, doing so means losing hours of progress. Completing the entire 12-mission campaign took me approximately 30 hours, but a substantial portion of that time was spent replaying bugged missions or having to retreat due to technical glitches.
Thankfully, the campaign layer suffers from fewer issues. From the crashed USCM vessel USS Otago, players manage research, medical facilities, training, equipment, and even a therapy clinic to treat long-term psychological effects, similar to Darkest Dungeon. The user interface is clean and well-organized, although it has some quirks, such as the inability to upgrade a Marine’s gear from the same page where new skills are assigned.
Progression can feel slightly stingy, particularly because the planetary infestation becomes more severe with each passing day, leading to an increase in patrolling xenomorphs on each map. A level 10 Marine only marginally surpasses the effectiveness of a rookie, especially in terms of Bravery, which influences stress accumulation. However, the game offers a diverse range of classes, from the iconic smart-gunner to the sergeant who prevents everyone from going AWOL, providing ample opportunities for specialization and synergy.
The game also offers a compelling story that deviates from the plots of previous Alien films. Interesting and morally conflicted characters with compelling motivations take center stage. The voice acting, while occasionally inconsistent due to a lack of unique Marine voices, delivers memorable performances in the game’s most dramatic moments. Additionally, the environments are visually stunning, capturing the style and atmosphere of James Cameron’s iconic classic. The use of light and shadow, particularly when the flashlight illuminates the fog, creates a spine-tingling experience reminiscent of the film. The sound design adds to the immersion, with the unsettling squishing sounds as you traverse the alien-infested areas of the planet Lethe. Furthermore, the variety of mission and objective types prevents every deployment from feeling repetitive, and later twists introduce new and unexpected enemy types.