Aliens: Dark Descent - REVIEW

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of the movie Aliens. It is probably my favorite film of all time and I love the lore and terror of the franchise. The video game offerings related to the series have been a mixed bag, unfortunately, from the abysmal Colonial Marines to the absolutely stellar Alien: Isolation. So I was nervous and excited to try out Aliens: Dark Descent after picking it up during the Playstation Network Winter Sale. So strap in, because we’re on an express elevator to Hell, going down!

This can’t be happening, man

From the very start, this game stacks the odds against the player. Even on “easy” difficulty, there are challenges right out the gate. I had to play the tutorial level at least 5 times before I was able to complete it due to the immediate Xenomorph threat and lack of hand holding. Once clearing the tutorial and meeting my squad of ultimate bad-asses, I discovered that they were anything but. Every marine starts with a negative trait that impacts their mission performance. Things like decreased accuracy, added stress, and even starting fights with teammates during rest periods—subtracting much needed health—all lead to the feeling that I wasn’t dealing with a cohesive unit. And while these negative traits can be removed by leveling up the marines, the perk to do so seems random and isn’t guaranteed. To add to the feeling of impeding doom, every second that an enemy is actively searching for the squad during a mission, each marine’s stress level increases. Once the stress level hits certain thresholds, the marine is impacted by lower accuracy, reduced combat effectiveness, and they just start freaking out, wasting precious time in the heat of battle. To make things worse, if the marine has a high stress level for long enough, and particularly at the end of a mission, a trauma debuff is applied to the him or her. These trauma range from fear of fire to general fear of enemies and even more extreme debuffs, all adding more stress which leads to more trauma. This can quickly spiral into a squad of marines unable to complete missions.

Luckily, a base facility is unlocked relatively early that will allow marines to reduce their trauma level so long as they stay in that facility (and not participate in missions). Taking care of mental health has its benefits, but also costs.

Peace through superior firepower

While managing marine stress levels seems like a game in and of itself, the marine’s classes, equipment, and perks are another crucial key to success. There are 5 classes that a marine can attain through earning experience and the player is given a choice of two (seemingly at random) once the marine hits level three. Once their class is set, they have access to a pool of perks related to their class. Medics can use first aid skills to manage health and stress levels of teammates. Gunners can increase accuracy and deploy their smartgun like an extra sentry gun. Recon marines have access to a sniper rifle and silencer. Seargents can rally their squad decreasing stress and the amount of time needed for skills to recharge. Finally the Techer can decrypt locked doors and even have a drone that can act as a scout (that’s left alone by xenomorphs) and even fire a weapon.

A wide array of familar weapons and auxiliary firepower are also available to the squad. I found it best to have a different backup weapon for each marine. Some encounters require a flamethrower, while others call for a shotgun or rocket launcher. Deployable mines are a staple for covering the squad’s rear against a sneaking xenomorph ready to snatch away a straggling marine

All of these skills and items cost supplies to unlock. Early in the game, these supplies are very hard to come by, but as the game progresses, rescued engineers and scavaging multipliers make this less of a problem. Yet another thing that makes the early game such a trial

Building better worlds

Now onto the story of the game. Somehow, a xenomorph got let loose on a space station called Pioneer Station orbiting the planet Lethe. Pioneer Station has a protocol that, should it be triggered, stops the spread of any infestation by nuking the planet (and any ships in the system) from orbit—literally. Seeing the Xenomorph outbreak unfolding, this protocol gets triggered and a Colonial Marine ship called the Otago that happened to be in the vicinity gets knocked to the planet’s surface and the player must manage to keep the marines alive long enough to escape before the doomsday clock reaches zero. Luckily about 50 game days can pass before this happens and the final doomsday clock doesn’t even trigger until you’re at least comfortable playing (about halfway through the story). Each mission along the way can be abandoned to allow your squad to recover and resupply, but you can only deploy your squad once per day. Also, some events can happen that cause you to lose these deployments while overcoming them. You can either lose the deployment, or face some penalty; sometimes a tough choice. The missions offer a good deal of variety and challenge. However, there are a few twists that could have been left out (navigating a level without a motion tracker was a major pain). Xenomorphs must be the best kept secret because nobody knows what they are. They are referred to as “creatures” throughout the whole game. Fans of the movies, comics, and books will recognize many of the variants and there are several “boss” varieties including many queens which require special planning before engaging. The mission maps are quite large with plenty of areas to explore, but doing so comes with the cost of stress and health implications for your marines. Also, the telepathy element of the xenomorph society from the comics is touched on. Each mission took me about 2 hours on average and the entire game took me about 30 hours to complete. I went out of my way for a few achievements and there’s lots of lore and data-pads to discover if you’re inclined. I collected them all in the name of exploration, but didn’t read them. The doomsday clock, while always in the back of my mind, didn’t rush me into any poor decisions. I had plenty of time left when I completed the game. I’m sure there is more urgency on higher difficulty levels as the timeline is significantly shortened.

It’s a bug hunt

A marine checks gathers a xenosample from a dead xenomorph whose on-screen graphic is that of a living xenomorph

Atmosphere and ass-kicking aside, the game is not without it’s issues. The development team has been assigned to other projects, so any problems likely won’t be fixed. That being said most of the bugs I experienced were relatively minor. The most noticeable were visual artifacts remaining on screen long after they should have disappeared. Effects from opening supply crates, and dead xenomorphs still showing with their “alive” graphics still on the screen to name a few. This mostly seemed to happen if the event leading to the graphic occurred while the camera was somewhere on the map. Also, the game does a poor job of explaining some critical mechanics, like how to aim a sentry gun upon placement and the fact that if you leave a drone or turret and take your squad to a different level on a map, they will need to be repaired upon your return. Also reloading the drone with additional ammo is still a mystery to me. The game says it’s possible, but I didn’t see it in any of the skill menus. Finally, upon waking my PS5 with the game paused, I sometimes found that the game would simply not respond to controller input. The only way I found to fix this was to restart the game entirely. Luckily, I managed to manually save before putting my PS5 to sleep.

All right now listen up

Overall, I liked the game. It’s difficulty and the perception that I was meant to lose was off-putting at times, but the atmosphere, franchise, desire to see it through the end, and the need in my life for the constant beeping of a motion tracker kept me coming back. If you’re a fan of the Aliens franchise, or the most recent XCOM games, I think you’ll like this too. If strategy type games aren’t for you, you can probably safely skip it. My final rating is a 3.5 out of 5.