The Aliens franchise has had its fair share of lackluster game releases, but ever since the success of “Alien: Isolation” in 2014, the gaming industry has started taking the franchise a bit more seriously. Even the recent release of “Aliens: Fireteam Elite” in 2021 proved to be an overall fun experience for me. Now, “Aliens: Dark Descent” takes a daring step by presenting us with a top-down real-time strategy game, deviating from their tried-and-true first-person format. From French developers over at Tindalos Interactive, I believe this is their first game as a company, but there is a high sense of production value on the screen that I can immediately tell there is a lot of talent at this company.
Set in a science fiction universe of the “Aliens” franchise, “Aliens: Dark Descent” immediately reminded me of a different sci-fi game altogether, that of Blizzard’s “Starcraft” due to its top-down camera perspective. While the two games are fundamentally different, the science fiction aesthetic and this shift in gameplay style being real-time strategy, created a unique and intriguing experience. “Starcraft” is an anomaly for me, because I tend to not like many real-time strategies, so while I love this franchise and the look of this game, it still has an uphill battle to win me over.
In the game, you take on the role of Deputy Administrator Maeko Hayes, a strong female protagonist known for her adherence to rules and protocols. Although, upon discovering an alarming discrepancy in a cargo shipment, Hayes embarks on a mission to uncover the truth. As expected, she encounters the infamous Xenomorphs, who threaten her and her crew’s lives doing what they do best, wreak havoc. Determined to protect her team, Hayes throws caution to the wind, deviating from her by-the-book approach. Each mission effectively progresses the story in really engaging ways that feels true to the characters and the lore of Alien in general, I always noticed a sense of importance and purpose. The cinematic scenes do a great job to flesh out the side characters, an amount of depth to the narrative I honestly wasn’t expecting, but I very much appreciated.
Throughout the game, you’ll be commanding a team of colonial marines, each possessing unique strengths and weaknesses, which will get better as you skill them up. Individual leveling allows for unlocking new skills that benefit specific classes. Back to the narrative for a moment, despite being playable, these marines have very limited prominence in the main story. I found myself more attached to the characters introduced in the cinematics, who are often absent during the actual gameplay. It is probably due to their permadeath feature, the permanent death of your marines does add weight to their survival, not because you care about them as human beings, but because of all the work you put into leveling them up, as recruits start back at level zero. You also get the ability to rescue and recruit individuals you come across during missions which can sometimes balance out your losses.
With its isometric view, “Aliens: Dark Descent” really makes this a strategy game, giving you a good perspective of what’s around you or where you still need to go and explore. While the marines always stick together, you can assign individual tasks while on the move. Real-time combat heightens the tension, but the option to slow down time during intense moments facilitates better coordination, giving you a moment to fully acknowledge what is going on. This feature proves invaluable when protecting strongholds or organizing precise maneuvers. The game does provide intermittent encounters with both xenomorphs and hostile humans, aiming to break up the pace. While fighting the xenomorphs remains enjoyable, engagements with humans can feel pretty tedious and can get stale after a while. Despite this, I can tell the developers were trying to mix things up a bit, which is appreciated, but the perfect blend wasn’t always there. Notably, the inclusion of the iconic (and very formidable) Alien Queens as boss fight type encounters adds to the challenge, I often had no idea when they would happen, so the lack of preparation time usually leads to casualties among team members.
“Aliens: Dark Descent” incorporates regular auto-saving, which helped to revert to a previous save if I completely made a terrible call and regretted my play through. On a completely different note, I need to bring up the repetitive nature of the marine responses to my player commands, which quickly can become monotonous. While I hated this repetitive dialogue searing into my brain all the time, the overall quality of the game’s dialogue during conversational moments and the cutscenes remains pretty great.
So yeah, “Aliens: Dark Descent” may not be my favorite Aliens game in recent years, it does stand as a solid addition to the franchise. The decision to venture into the real-time strategy top-down genre proved to be a risk worth trying out, it showcased this franchise in a refreshing new way. The game successfully captures the science fiction aesthetic and provides an engaging storyline that kept me invested in the lore-building. Despite some shortcomings, especially my own in not loving this specific kind of genre, it did its best in trying to win me over. It’s hard to say if the console is the best place to play this game, I think I would have preferred this on a PC where a mouse and keyboard would have been much easier to control my team and move the camera around. Overall, “Aliens: Dark Descent” is a commendable effort that took the right risks, pushing the boundaries of the franchise and offering an enjoyable experience for fans and strategy enthusiasts alike.
7.5/10
For more information, visit: https://store.focus-entmt.com/us/product/814037/aliens-dark-descent
Related: Reviews by Nick Navarro
Gaming since I was given an original Nintendo as a kid. I love great storytelling and unique ingenuity. When both collide in a single game, I'm a happy gamer. Twitter/IG @NickNavarro87
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