Much like in the films, Xenomorphs spray harmful acid blood when injured, meaning your space marines have a chance to take damage if they kill one too close to themselves. Stress is just one small component of your squad that you will need to manage, but it serves as a good example of numerous small mechanics that all work together to accentuate the tension between skirmishes. Your space marines exhibit this fear literally in a stress meter that rises as you are hunted by the hive, eventually inhibiting them from performing their alien-slaying duties as effectively as possible. Just a couple of Xenomorphs are enough to completely tear your squad apart, giving these creatures a sense of power that ratchets up the tension every time you face them. Enemies can, and will, hunt you as you move around these areas, with the recognizable ping from your motion sensor giving you some indication of how close they might be. Despite having a large view of your surroundings, the restrictive radius around your marines that you can actually see retains a lot of the tension as you explore narrow hallways in derelict outposts or twisting caverns in an infested underground mine. This restriction of independent movement allows for Aliens: Dark Descent's atmospheric horror to work, because it keeps your attention focused on one point at all times. You cannot move individual squad members independently, and soldiers will only break from formation if you instruct them to open a crate or retrieve a collectible, after which they will hurriedly scurry back. During each mission, you assemble a squad of four space marines and control the unit as a single entity. Its top-down view and cover mechanics are reminiscent of games like XCOM, but its real-time action borrows a lot from standard action role-playing games like Diablo. Secondary characters rarely get any moments to shine, so it's easy to start tuning the entire thing out in lieu of Dark Descent's far more interesting pieces.Īliens: Dark Descent is a mixture of genres to the point where it can be difficult to pin down exactly which one it conforms to most. Their chemistry is lacking and their relationship swings wildly from one extreme to the next in very short spaces of time, making it difficult to feel engaged in their plight or personal motivations. The story is mostly delivered through dialogue between the game's two leads, a surviving administrator from the opening space station and a grizzled space marine with a strange link to the Xenomorphs. Now Playing: Aliens Dark Descent - Story Trailer Aliens: Dark Descent has the inklings of a captivating tale that never delivers on any of its initial promises, boiling down an interesting premise in the opening hours to a standard story without much to say beyond its straightforward mystery.īy clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's As survivors scramble for a way to get off-planet while also investigating the root of the outbreak, you'll travel to numerous locations across the planet to uncover clues, scavenge for supplies, and shoot down anything that gets in your way. While there are many, many more Xenomorphs in Aliens: Dark Descent, this hybrid of action and real-time strategy mostly works because it conveys the same sense of fear you feel when engaging them, which makes it easier to gloss over the times its other systems don't quite work as well.Īliens: Dark Descent predominantly takes place on the planet Lethe, after a familiar scene of a Xenomorph outbreak takes place on a Weyland-Yutani space station and forces the entire area into a deadly lockdown. The survival-horror game Alien: Isolation comes closest, eschewing the typical direction of action for horror, making its single Xenomorph a terrifying entity that demands the fearful respect so many other adaptations fail to offer it.

There haven't been many games that have adapted the Aliens name that have managed to capture the essence of what makes many of its early films so captivating.

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