Aliens: Dark Descent – Review

The gameplay is a mix of full-on tense action with shootouts against attacking aliens, balancing ammo/supplies, maintaining the squad’s mental health, and leveling up the right characteristics to make your controlled marines into proper killing machines.

The mission basics see you controlling a squad of four marines, and gaining experience for completing objectives as well as eliminating aliens. The problem is, the longer you take, the more your squad health deteriorates, mentally and physically. It is very hard to escape most attacks without scrapes, limbs lost, or acid burns eating through your armor. The worse that the situations become, the more mental anguish your soldiers go through. This results in a multitude of handicaps, making your marines all the more ineffective.

The systems require you to pay attention at most all times, and make any and all supplies into items to be treasured. Everything is limited, including time. Finding the right balance to all the gameplay elements is key to survival. Most missions have infinite aliens, so don’t expect to clear the whole map and proceed without fear. In fact, the more aliens you clear, the more likely it is that you will trigger an attack by a whole slew of aliens that know exactly where you are, and come running at full speed. You are given very short warning to these occurrences, so you better build your defenses quickly and hope you withstand the attacks.  

The tension is absolutely real, as I found my heart beating quickly on almost every level, multiple times. You really feel the need to keep your squad healthy, and functional, otherwise you are easily overrun by too many aliens due to inexperienced marines, or devastating injuries. Watching your best soldier be drug off by a large alien is haunting.

Acid splashes from nearby punctured aliens, face huggers spring out of eggs, and one can never trust a ventilation system. All aspects of the Alien movies are put on display in this game, however one point of the plot lost my interest a bit and I thought was unnecessary (namely a human a cult obsessed with the aliens). Despite this plot line, I still fully enjoyed the experience all around.

Music from the original films brings authenticity, as do the familiar sound-effects of the blasting M41 Pulse Rifles, Heavy Pulse Rifles, grenades and more. The unlockable arsenal of weapons and defenses gives you a fighting chance, and keeping your marines alive to level up to the higher ranks gives you the edge.

There were a few bugs, including one level that stopped saving along the way, which made that particular level quite hard to finish. I think that has been patched, however even with the patch I was not able to get that level to save, and did struggle to complete it in one go. I did not have further issues after that level, but it did frustrate me for a while. For my experience, the bugs did not detract too much, and I was able to complete the game.