Aliens: Dark Descent

Classic old school squad tactics game. Faithfully recreates Alien universe. Good atmosphere and stress mechanics. No playing nice. No frills. Lots of reloads. More than the usual number of software bugs for a game this old.

This game was an incredible addition to the RTS genre. Aliens could overwhelm you if you were not properly prepared at any time. Every dark corner held dangers, rewards or both, and it really felt like a real gamble going after everything. The game conveyed the anxiety and stress of the squad to the player very successfully, you had to make decisions and keep working towards your objectives on the fly, trying to keep everyone alive and overcoming all obstacles the game set for you. I absolutely loved it. It was extremely refreshing to see a game deliver something new on period where every game feels the same. Aliens dark descent truly deserves praise for its mechanics and gameplay.

A must-play for any Alien fan, this game nails the atmosphere and concept but falls a bit short in execution. The blend of XCOM-style strategy with the Alien universe is intriguing, but it lacks depth in some areas. The characters could have been developed better, with stronger chemistry and more engaging interactions. I also found myself missing a bit of that eerie, otherworldly fantasy that makes the franchise so iconic. While many elements are clearly inspired by Aliens and Alien 3, they don’t always feel fresh. The ending is a decent attempt but doesn’t quite hit the mark. Overall, it’s worth playing—just wait for a sale

It's OK. As far as RTS - and Aliens - games go, it's definitely one of the better ones. But I found it gets a bit slow to play. There isn't a great choice of soldier upgrades, weapons or promotions. It works really well in terms of gameplay, I really like the stop/slow motion mechanic to use your abilities, but personally, after the first 10 hours, it started to feel like a chore to play. The kills aren't satisfying and looting is super slow. If you're a diehard fan of the franchise, I recommend this game on sale, but in general, I don't.

If you came into this game looking for Aliens: XCOM, you will probably be disappointed. First and foremost, this game isn't turn-based. But this is not to say that it's bad in any sense. As an Aliens product, it shows a lot of love for the franchise. The tactical command aspects are much less about managing your shooting as an XCOM game, and more about mission command; moving, avoiding contact, managing resources.

Aliens is a horror franchise and the game does not forget. Your troops are living an Aliens movie and they'll get messed up by it just like anyone would. Avoiding contact where you can is an important part of the game, because you're not going to run out of targets but you can run out of things to fight with. There are a few important anti-frustration features there. Abilities can dig you out of holes, you have an armored vehicle to shuttle you to fixed points around the map (remember you can and should use it to run away to a far corner of the map if you're being hunted!) and provide a base of fire. The game hits the atmosphere of an Aliens experience in that it's definitely got a good bit of survival horror in its bones.

I'm not sure I can call this game great, but it's definitely good. There's no wow moments, but they wouldn't have fit in; no magnificent visuals, but also nowhere to put them. What the game does have is a coherent vision of what it wants to be that it executes well, love for its source material, and a solid telling of its story. You will not feel your time is wasted as either a general tactical game or an Aliens experience.

unique and fun gameplay, nice break from traditional games - would get it on sale, and it's perfect.

If Alien: Isolation was the best Alien game, Aliens: Dark Descent is the best Aliens game. Combining elements of squad control, stealth, resource management, it provides interesting take on semi-survival horror experience.

So it feels like realtime xcom might be, it looks like bethesda never bought Fallout and someone made an aliens mod which terrified the studio and so they D+C'd them.

If you like Aliens, you'll like it. It's harder than you expect tho - in a good way

I love this game. It reminds me of X-Com series but it also has a very unique style. I'd like to play more games of that kind and quality. I gladly recommend.

Main objectives would bug and have to restart all over losing hours of progress. Then at mission 6 atmospheric processor terminal bug were it completely stopped me from advancing, reload or otherwise. I'm not starting a entire new game in the hopes it doesn't get this same bug. Reloading save 30mins prior didn't work. Restarted game, reloaded. All attempts failed and still get bug. Dev's not updated game in years. Shame. Fun game but abandoned by the devs.

Great game. Very reminescent of the Aliens movie. It has its flaws, but in general, it delivers a solid alien experience.

It's a really great game for anyone that like the Alien IP, and tactical games.

Good game whether or not you're an Alien fan or not, with a small caveat.
The issue is bug. If you're running old platform, sound might not work right. The gameplay itself is great for an Alien game. As of writing this, I've only been through the first map at normal difficulties. I'd say playing at normal is challenging enough.

In this game you play as a group of survivors. Game started off with female administrator, as tradition of Alien after Ripley, but that's only in tutorial. The actual game you will control several marines. Each with their flaws, but not gifts, so expect to lead a squad of undisciplined cowards with bad mouth and bad luck into the den of Xenomorpth. See why normal difficulty is hard enough? Not yet? Well, these gitz can get injured, tired, and got mental trauma too. Each debuff reduce their effectiveness, maybe individually or team or both. This is something I find frustrating, but it's an Alien game so I just accept that they gonna quite lose their minds a bit. They can still fight.

And with that you will lead them. Swap marines to keep missions going, all the while racing against time of planet infestation. Each deployment allows you to explore the haunting setting with Xenos crawling all over. You can avoid them, avoid the hive altogether by stealthing around. Not always possible but it is somewhat doable. This open between stealth and fighting create tense gameplay, the kind that Alien game should have.

If I'd criticize, I'd say I don't know any of the marines. They all have names, faces, traits, but I don't have situation that get to know them individually. I wish the first batch should be handcrafted with permanent name and trait and banter. If that's the thing, this will be a throwback to the memorable casts of Aliens. As it is, even as I don't know them, I do remember some of them by their ability and flaws. It doesn't remove anything from the game, but it is a clear void where it can shine even brighter.

I'm bad with horror game, and this one is just horror enough, action enough, tactical enough, and overall fun enough for me to give a thumb up. I'd say this is 4/5 stars. It is fun. It is a great game, but you have to admit that it's not comparable to some massive massive game that stand on their own IP. This one is as good as an Alien game supposed to be.

Captures the vibe of the Aliens film which is exactly what I hoped for and though the story is a bit weird, obvious and cheesy at times, I still found myself thoroughly entertained throughout and routinely found my heart pounding and my anus puckered while trying to extract my squad from yet another sticky situation.

The XCOM meets RTS was interesting and though simplified/shallow it plays well EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT CONTROLLING A SINGLE MARINE IS MADE EXCRUCIATINGLY PAINFUL!!!! (There is no drag an select or clicking on an individual marine.) Though you can work around it: tab for selecting Marines to interact or perform actions the only way (I found) to get an individual into position is to move the whole squad and the clicking the stop order for each of the other members of the squad. As many as 5 clicks to move one Marine. As the battlefields are fluid the difficulty in positioning will routinely lead to silly tactical blunders that break immersion.

There is also a mechanic where the performance of your team degrades as they are exposed to combat. This "stress" adds a neat bit of management and adds to the tension and stakes, but the way you alleviate this (by resting in a room in the middle of a mission) is kinda silly...there are Xenomorphs in the vents and my dudes are somehow taking a nap? Also your mission controller will...as your team is being swarmed by acid spewing aliens and comrades are dropping like flies...constantly tell you "stress can be as deadly as a bullet"...lolwut

Game has a lot of bugs, but fortunately you can kill most of them.

Somebody has to start, nice game but forcing cutscenes onto you is not tolerable for me.So downvote for really bad and comepletely unneccasry decisions.

The Aliens formula works best in a 2-hour format, but still a good bit of fun if you've got a hankering for the atmosphere. Squad orders being given for the entire unit may feel strange at first, but I think it works well here and rarely ran into issues with the AI doing a poor job. That being said, with limited enemy types, a formulaic mission structure, and ultimately limited progression, people looking for a vibrant tactical-ish action game may want to look elsewhere.

Really well made AA Alien game with some rough edges. Very much like a live-action XCOM. I would recommend this if you enjoy a good challenge which should take about 25 hours to complete.

Pros:
Rewarding difficulty curve
Captures the Alien atmosphere really well
Great combat
Fun levelling up / squad management features
(Mostly) Unique and difficult mission designs

Cons
Some UI jank
Story is a bit lacking / ending has issues...
Voice acting and facial animations are a bit odd at times
Limited replayability (would be fun playing on a higher difficulty)

Absolutely awesome game - a few missions can be tedious, but other than that, a lot of fun to play.

Hoping for an expansion that will continue the story.

I played on medium, which is still way too hard for me. I just don't have the patience for this game. It is extremely well done, and I think it would be cool to have a modern Aliens RTS, but more Command and Conquer and less strategic and thoughtful. So many times I had to go back into the hell I just escaped to get something else for the story,

The tension and pressure never give up. I wish there was a "return to the vehicle" button because so often I would get tripped up on these massive maps when what I really needed to do was get the shazam out of there as fast as possible. I felt it would be similar to StarCraft II: Nova Covert Ops, and it is, but no base building and so much less forgiving.

I could never really position my team right so that I could use the sniper silently and effectively. I kept having to expose the whole band of merry men to get people into position, and by then the enemies see me so a stealth shot didn't really matter much.

Every real time strategy game has one or two missions where you're given a finite amount of troops and resources to complete a mission in a building/ship/small space, and its down to a bit of sneaking and a bit of careful exploration. This game is like that for 46 hours so far.

Great game in the Aliens world..Not easy but challenging and fun. You get to the point you do everything to keep your people alive and growing along with the very human traits each soldier has that can be a negative or not with the other troops. Good game and keeps you on your toes!

Its pretty brutal, if you like top down strat games buckle up, this is pretty intense. I was impressed. I replayed it twice. I'm on my 3rd new game +. Its never easy!

This game is great - It exactly captures the mood of "Aliens". Excellent mechanics keep the intensity on throughout. Must play for fans of Aliens and/or XCom.

tl;dr: Still recommendable, but boy are there gigantic issues. This is a 9/10 game stuck in a 5/10 body. Get it, but get it on a sale.

The squad control idea is amazing and I truly hope another game picks up on it. And improves upon it, because not being able to at least select who goes first will get you caught and alert the swarm so many times, leading to so many reloads it is extremely frustrating.

The final mission is a joke. Bugs galore, male voice lines despite no males alive anymore (it's all scripted who goes on the mission, you have no control), zero pressure as nothing can hurt you - only something specific can, but that bugged out for me and just twitched around on top of me, stuck in an animation. Just... ugh.

Then there are the other bugs like marines just downright yeeting themselves off the physics grid so suddenly your 4 or 5 man team is one soldier short for the rest of the mission (or, again, you need to reload). Soldiers get stuck on the level so you need to fiddle around (or, again, reload).
Sometimes, lifts just don't work and you need to not only reload, but restart (!!!) the level.
Sometimes, the UI bugs out and shows full HP for enemies despite them being almost dead.

The management interface is severely lacking. There is a timer, but you have no clue how many days you roughly have per mission or how many missions there are (hint: 2-3 days per mission and a few "misses" from events are perfectly fine, I had that and had 8 days left on Hard).
The only interface where you can choose who goes on a mission will NOT let you upgrade those soldiers, so you have to memorize the name, slowly navigate back through menus, upgrade those soldiers and go back to mission selection - what an insanely weird decision!

You can pause time. But not while looking at the map for some messed up reason, despite being able to scroll the camera just fine otherwise while paused.

Why the hell can you not aim abilities (except for sniping) directly snapped onto enemies? You'll miss so many eg shotgun shots because for some reason the marine still aims where nothing has been for many seconds.
Sometimes your marines will also simply not do the ability you told them do and instead do nothing.

There are more issues, but I think this wall of text is long enough...

All of these flaws wittle down what could have been an excellent game to a still enjoyable, but overall mediocre one.

Incredibly cinematic and engaging story backed up with solid mix of stealth and tactical gameplay

game is not perfect unlike the organism that is in this game, but i had a blast playing it, i want dlcs and a sequel, cheers
PS archivist achievement is broken, it does not trigger

Really good game, it takes a while to master and get into it fully, but overall a very well done 4.5/5

Game over man game over! This is the best Alien game since Alien Isolation. The game is very difficult and stressful but very true to the universe and just overall a good time. I recommend.

Really sweet RTS set in the Aliens universe.

I wish it had more weapon options but the core gameplay loop is so satisfying that it is not a dealbreaker.

9/10

The game started out as a lot of fun. The story was interesting, the combat was spread out enough that it was always intense and kept with the atmosphere you'd expect. The only thing that's a huge red flag right off the bat is that the facial animations look like some horror creation from the PS2 era. But the game doesn't wrap itself up quickly enough. And honestly, it seems like they were trying to make an Alien XCOM game without getting sued by 2K. Not a terrible game by any means, and I would definitely recommend it if you're obsessed with the Alien franchise, but otherwise, I'd probably pass on this unless you're getting it at a steep discount. 7/10

great aliens franchise game, im not very good at it so i can't comment on the balance but it is enjoyable although it feels a little too linear imo

I don't like it.
I think they've nailed the atmosphere and level design but for me it is too difficult.
Initially I set up the difficulty to medium and I failed, went back, set most of it to easy.
I am now in what I believe is the third day. I have to go down and investigate a mine, in the very first settlement.
I have made the mistake to take with me 2 tired marines and didn't pack up the mobile turret. I managed to advance all the way to the door with the queen, but I can't defeat the queen and can't also go back to the elevator because I trigger hunts along the way and I'm dead by the time I get close to the elevator.
Loading a save is my only option but worked a lot to get to that door with the team in one piece. I am trying to have fun not play sneaking simulator.
This is my personal opinion, yours may vary.

It's my first ever review and I played a lot of games on steam! It's been years since I had played a decent game that took me days to finish and it had an great story to follow which I really enjoyed. If you like Aliens and X-Com then it's for you. It's a mix of both. Great graphics, story, didn't notice any bugs either, hopefully there will be a sequel. It does keep you on your toes to finish it within the time before planet gets nuked so make sure you get going!

Just finished all achievements as of 87.1 hours on record. Fun game, interesting story and game play. Not sure about the ending nor the new lore?

A few bugs that irritated me. Sometimes allies can clip through floor or get stuck on the forklift when attacked and damaged 100%. Had to reset for some of the bugs.

Not a fan of the ammo system not being persistent, but the tool and first aid were perfect. Nightmare mode was no joke. Character customizing was fine, but not really necessary in a single player game. Wish each of the marines could be other players rather than a team of AI that you point and click. Still enjoyable when the bugs don't interfere.

Feels like its just out of early access, but if devs clean up the last few bugs, it is a great game. Especially if you enjoy the alien universe.

9.4 out of 10

Pros:
1. 50+ Hours of Game Play
2. Great Character Dialogue
3. Good Original Story
4. Very Smooth Grouped Movements and Usage of Abilities Especially with things like Laying Multiple Mines. RPG kinda felt worthless the aiming system was a little wacky. Also I didn't realize you cant hurt your teammates with these until near the end of the game.
5. The battle system with rechargeable points to use extra equipment was a really good idea. Including the charged V revenge button.

Cons:
1. Very minimal and rare but I would see question marks on the mini map for a dead body item pick up and I wouldn't be able to find the body I think the glitch might happen if an alien dies on exactly on top of the dead body. Also the final mission felt rushed doesn't show your hp or anything which was a little annoying, I get it was mostly supposed to be cinematic though so not a huge deal.
2. Could of been a little longer. Wanted More Defend the Otago Missions.
3. The game was really challenging at times but when one of your marines dies it feels like its "game over man" the lack of extra fire power almost always leads to a squad wipe. So I was basically going back to saves over and over without any risk of losing units. Maybe make it so once a Marine dies you can drop ship in another to take their place mid mission?
4. Was hoping for perhaps AI controlled marines to come help on bigger missions or to assist in certain levels where it makes sense.
5. Camera systems turrets and opening closing vents / allowing access to the aliens should be changeable like you can open the window for them then close it so its not a new spawn point for aliens or you can turn enemy turrets through the camera system as long as it suits you then reactivate them more of this woulda been fun to play around with when your fighting other non aliens.

Bought the game as I do with anything Alien wise, Overall I liked the story line, it got a bit ludicrous towards the end. BUT overall an enjoyable game. I am not one for the click base movement. But Recommend game to play. Good graphics, A little harder to play with controller not as precise and lost a few marines due to facehuggers and couldnt find where the marines were on the map to save them in time.
7/10

This game did a good job of capturing what I remember from watching Aliens many years ago. The missions at the start of the game were very intense, my stress went over 100 a few times. The design of later missions seemed to get progressively worse, but it didn't outstay its welcome. Definitely worth playing if you like the Alien franchise.
I would have liked the ability to order 2 marines to swap position though; it was frustrating to have skill shots but not be able to use them because the required squad member went somewhere with no visibility.

So this game is not easy by any means just like the opening message says when you boot up the game. You'll be hunted down and your actions will affect the Marines you send out on deployments, no matter what happens the game has a high risk system to where the missions get harder as you run into more Xenos however your Marines will suffer less and less as you adapt and understand how to play the game. It's a super fun RTS which says something as I normally avoid most RTS games, I've heard it is similar to XCOM. I've yet to run into any of these mysterious bugs (no pun intended) people keep talking about. Some missions are easy to cheese through others will be hell but the game is fun and simple none the less.

How I imagine this game was created:
Group of developers sitting around a table "We need a new game to make some money"
Excited developer "What if we make a new Alien game. We take the uneasy feeling you get in Alien: Isolation and fix it with the consequence of defending an area like you would in Aliens: Fireteam Elite"
Another excited developer "AND WHAT IF WE ADDED A CULT AS INSANE AS THE FLAT EARTHERS WHO ALSO WANT TO KILL YOU"
Calm collected dev "Hmm almost too perfect... Let's make it an RTS and make sure that you can traumatize the crew of the ship and make resource management seem generous till you realize you are deep into a mission and you can't find anything to help your traumatized marines because they have stumbled into a huge nest of Xenomorphs with no where to hold up with the impending threat *^____^* "
Everyone staring collectively "That's the greatest idea ever"
3 months later game published

It's pretty good. It's more like Company of Heroes than XCOM though. Difficult and impactful.

Negatives : Has too much story. The gameplay is great but the game is afraid to let you play it sometimes. Like the first two hours of the game especially is low amount of gameplay.

Marine voice acting is mediocre + repetitive. There's one VA that does a great job but otherwise it's really eh for something you hear 200 times.

Its great in the beginning when it's actually a suspenseful tactical game with a great atmosphere. But the longer the campaign goes on the more it devolves into a continous run and gun game, where you are constantly in a fire fight for there are so many enemies on every map that it becomes impossible to avoid them or be picky about where to engage. Combine that with LOS problems where for example you cannot use a sniper shot on a target 4 out of 5 marines can see and it suddenly becomes very clunky. At that point it loses much of its original appeal for me.

This game is awesome. It's a little less punishing than XCOM and a similar style campaign-based tactical strategy game. My only complaint is the game will sometimes crash which can lead to some progress loss(It happened twice during my 27-ish hour campaign). Minimizing my background applications seemed to solve this issue for me.

Absolutely nailed the atmosphere of Aliens. Really fun and engaging gameplay. Encountered a few bugs but I'd still recommend this game.

Good game, there some bugs but the whole idea is very good

Aliens: Dark Descent is a very good if buggy and at times completely unfair game.

I've done playthroughs on story and nightmare difficulty and would absolutely recommend doing a 1st playthrough on story, the game really isn't that easy even on story difficulty but it removes most of the unfairness and frustration.

The only really noticeable difference on higher difficulties is that enemies have FAR more health, which stretches your already limited resources to breaking point, there's also roaming runners to make stealth more difficult. Aside from that I really didn't notice many differences between the two difficulties so you aren't changing the core experience playing on the easiest difficulty.

Honestly, I didn't expect much from this game as I never heard about this company/studio. Although I've only played to Chapt 3, the story is amazing with great acting and really intense moments like watching another Aliens movie. This game took me a few tries to understand the mechanics. You really need to know all the basics in this game (e.g., when to deploy scanners and learn how to set them off to draw off the aliens). It's not always a straight up fight too. Retreating is often a good strategy. use the APC as much as you can too.
I'm very happy with this purchase. I just hope the studio will make more games in this series...maybe thrown in a Predator or Predators as a 3rd party hunting both Aliens and Marines as part of their own hunts.

You won't be disappointed in this game. It's great to see another perspective of Weyland Yutani personnel and Colonial Marines in action, especially Administrator Hayes and Sgt Harper.

This is the best Aliens game I've played in years! The atmosphere is absolutely perfect, the gameplay is fun and rewarding (and somewhat stressful at times:), I always felt really captivated by the game whenever I played... I just couldn't stop, which is definitely a good sign in my opinion:)

It's like watching a great alien movie. It has everything you need in a game, atmosphere, suspense, fear and uncountable bullets!!!

I very rarely review things, but for this game I feel the need to because of the very positive reception that it's garnered. If you had fun with the experience, then that's all that matters at the end of the day, but I am about outline some reasons as to why I don't know how this got such good ratings.

-The first time I began questioning decisions made by this dev team is the first Queen fight. Your group gets passive stress from being hunted and generally fighting, but you see a Queen and.. you're not immediately psyche-shattered? But that wasn't the worst part - the Queen I killed with total ease, no one even got hit, but a random Facehugger jumped on someone and even though the fight is over, all 3 marines just stand over him and do absolutely nothing until he dies - yes, I know you get the xenotech to remove it shortly after, but no one is even going to try??? Also, guys, I understand that on the first mission you’d use the standard USMC equipment because you don’t really know what you’re up against, but why the fuck would the Otago (crashlanded ship you’re in) not start fabricating full face masks with the workshop?

-Speaking about stress, this is going to be hard to believe but you expend a resource of tools to weld doors to create 'safe' areas to rest. Now, you only remove a bar of stress (assuming no other random traits or something) and then you're expected to leave. But you can have up to 3 bars of stress. So I'm not kidding - you must UNWELD the door and then immediately reweld the door to do another rest in the same spot. This is to get you to use resources, but imagine in reality seeing that in the movies or something, very stupid.

-And on the topic of safe spaces, the ARC - this thing evacuates people and provides fire support as a tank pretty much and is completely indestructible. A number of things do not make sense about this vehicle.
A) When roaming xenos walk around it, it shoots them on sight and kills them, and the xenos seem to have a strange understanding that the ARC is completely impervious to their attacks and simply walk in their scripted lines and await being riddled with bullets until they die; they won’t even attempt a Hunt on it. Not even xeno type 2s can do a single thing to this wonder of mankind. Wtf?
B) Why can you not rest inside THIS thing??? Why the hell are you resting behind a door that if a xeno decided to for whatever reason, can break the weld in like 15 seconds.
C) One fun thing to make use of is a motion tracker, but not for tracking motions in different areas of the map, but to overcharge it to draw xenos to a location - I’m sure you already are guessing where this is going, you can put them right next to your ARC for them to kill a bunch of things, but I don’t even really care about that, I care that for some reason no one is installing a blaring signal on the ARC to make it constantly emit a noise to use its infinite ammo to kill everything for you in any area it can fit.

-And now, we’re going to get to the real crux of the problem, the core gameplay loop. This game will eventually make you dread fighting xenos, not because it’s a tense, nail biting situation to see if your marines will survive the encounter, but because this game does not respect your time, at all. The game is essentially telling you to not engage with the xenos because if you’re detected, you start a Hunt phase which plays out like this: get detected either by one stumbling upon you or you shoot one, the rest in the immediate area come to attack, and then you wait 10-15 seconds for another 2-3 xenos to come to your location. Then, once you trigger a second Hunt (at least on hard difficulty) it likely will turn into a ‘Massive Onslaught’, and this is when xenos will attack your position with a lot more reinforcements. Now, the thing is that you have what I initially really thought was cool, but quickly came to realize is maybe the single worst tool they could’ve put in to encourage a playstyle of holding a position - the sentry gun. Do not mistake this as saying it’s not good, it is plenty good; it can’t suffer accuracy penalties like your men, you can put suppression on it to slow the enemy, it has a ton of ammo, etc. Beautiful thing. BUT, the game CLEARLY was balanced around you using these things whenever you can because while your men are competent enough to kill small numbers without their help, you are not going to get through later Hunts and Onslaughts without having these out or blowing all your command points and taking at least some damage. Anyway, the sentry gun is encouraging you to hold a choke point, let the xenos come to you, lay down lanes of literal/bullet fire, and kill them with ease, right? WRONG. Because while you’re cooking and dismembering xenos like a well-oiled machine, your men are for some reason losing their minds, their stress keeps going up no matter how well you do in combat. And often towards the end of the Hunt phase, it spawns in a last batch that will just barely not find you, but now are patrolling the area you just were walking in trying to clear, so you’ve actually gotten almost nowhere because the moment you kill one, you repeat this process over, and over, and over, and over, AND OVER, ad nauseam (yes, every mission has unlimited xenomorphs) while your men get more stressed so their accuracy sucks so they blow more ammo and will need to treat the stress trauma. You can overcharge the motion sensor like I mentioned before, but this also quickly becomes tedious as you must keep remembering to place one in a decent spot just to desperately not do another fight that has no actual challenge to it and only serves to drain my squad’s and my own sanity. This leads me to believe the game devs actively want you to just keep doing objectives while being hunted or during onslaughts, but tactically this seems like an idiotic decision to put your squad in peril by not being in good positions to deal with creatures that are pretty hardy and lightning fast. However, missions turn into a humongous slog if you DON’T do this clearly dumb way of playing.

-The voice acting and story and the art style for what I assume to be a pretty budget game are all good in my opinion, I have been intrigued and will likely finish the game just to see the conclusion, but really only because I’ve played so much will I be finishing it - kind of a sunk cost fallacy, but it is what it is. Clearly some true effort was put into the game, but it needed one or two more passes with people really asking the question of “is this fun” or “does this make sense”. P.S., there’s a gag with your squad getting spooked by a rat on the motion tracker, but while this conceivably is meant to inject some levity to the game, it also leads you to start wondering about questions you didn’t know you needed to pose because is this motion tracker seriously not calibrated to only detect things you’d actually care about knowing the whereabouts of??? Why aren't a lot more rats showing up on it, or any other wildlife not eaten/killed by xenos? Just… weird.

Review: Alien: Dark Descent
I'll try to summarize my thoughts on the game. First, let me say that these are just my personal impressions and experiences. I played the game on default settings and completed it.

Gameplay
The game itself is fairly difficult, especially if you don’t use a bit of brainpower. It reminded me of gaming in the 90s, where you weren’t hand-held all the way through, and there wasn’t an autosave every 30 seconds.

There are many factors that make the game challenging, which I appreciate:

How much you avoid contact with the Xenomorph.
How loudly you move or whether you run.
How much stress you expose your soldiers to.
How I Played the Campaign
First of all, I’d like to mention that I completed every mission on the first try, and I didn’t lose a single soldier. For the final mission, I still had 12 days left on the countdown.

I started with a squad setup of 1 Commander, 1 Technician, 1 Sniper (getting a silencer early is crucial), and 1 Medic. Later in the campaign, I switched to adding an additional Sniper. This setup allowed me to silently take out two enemies at a time, avoiding noise and preventing enemies from being drawn to me.

My soldiers’ stress levels were consistently manageable. If stress increased, I’d simply "dig in" — weld doors shut and rest. Although tools are limited in the game, this approach worked well.

I placed beacons everywhere, and near ARC/APC, I sometimes placed up to five. I discovered that if you need to lure enemies away, you can leave the ARC/APC area, activate a beacon near it (which will attract and eliminate enemies drawn to it), and continue your mission in peace. Of course, this tactic isn’t always applicable but can be very useful in certain situations.

Story
It’s a classic Alien narrative: you’re trying to uncover what the Xenomorph is, why it’s on the planet, and how it suddenly took control of everything. You’re also investigating why it was in a container on your ship and why someone attempted to flee the star system with it.

Sound
The motion detector’s beeping dramatically amplifies player stress, and for me, it worked brilliantly.

Graphics
7/10 — nothing groundbreaking, but it gets the job done. After all, who plays Alien for the graphics?

Overall Summary
In my opinion, this is a very good game set in the Alien universe. I’d say it’s my second favorite Alien game after Alien: Isolation, which remains unbeatable in my eyes.

There's a bit to unpack about why I don't recommend this game, which is very frustrating because there's a lot that I do like, but the things I don't like make it practically unplayable to me.

Very Buggy:
This game suffers from some very bath pathing issues with the AI. You'll see drones get stuck on all sorts of things, resulting in them... getting stuck, which means you have to kill them sometimes to get past them (meaning the chance of you being "Hunted" or "Detected" are extremely high. Considering your goal is NOT to be detected when possible (as this effects the in level difficulty) this is a major issue! I've encountered this bug, on every level at least a few times per level.
That's just the pathing issues. That doesn't include the multitude of other bugs from the UI ammo counter becoming a solid box, to downed marines bugging out and performing actions, etc. This game was easily released a year too early. It's essentially ALPHA from how buggy it is in those regards. I could go down the rabbit hole of other bugs I've encountered.

Story:
The story isn't awful from the few missions I've played. The voice acting is good, the facial animations are somewhat good, etc. There's a lot of plotholes though.

Gameplay: This is a major one. during the gameplay you'll see areas where new aliens can spawn from. They come up without warning and very quickly. The devs place items such as resources, datapads next to these areas pretty often. I get it, they're dangerous. However, in some cases in certain levels or areas, if an alien dies, it may immediately respawn from said pit. Meaning it's possible to face an onslaught of spawning aliens every few seconds (after each successful kill) from said pit while trying to remove resources. It makes for a very frustrating time. Additionally the aliens seem to follow planned patrol routes with little deviation except for when Hunted. The lack of cooldown between aliens spawning from a specific pit and the fact there are patrol routes can create issues when doing certain levels where you simply have an unavoidable alien encounter that results in you being Hunted (and possibly triggering an Onslaught.) Even when using mines and turrets to avoid it.

There's a lot of issues with the gameplay especially when it comes to command point / tool points usage. A lot of skills require command points (regenerative resource), however certain things cost tool points (Welding doors, hacking open certain airlocks). Certain things you'd think that should be simply limited (motion detectors, landmines) instead are limitless while other things you'd think should be limitless (Welding doors, hacking doors) cost resources. Why is this an issue? You have access to an ARC vehicle on multiple levels, or areas where aliens don't spawn. You can essentially create kill rooms fairly easily to distract most aliens or slaughter them to "mine" the xeno points. ...Which doesn't seem like something that was intended, yet is very easily discovered.

The Cinematic movie cutscenes (skippable) are very good. I enjoyed watching them early in the game and when they do appear, but they quickly become less common and becomes in game cutscenes (unskippable) that appear during a lot of the "IF YOU PROCEED YOU MAY DIE, MAKE SURE YOU RELOAD" spots. Meaning if you... died, you have to rewatch this frustrating cutscene, every time.

If you're interested in this game, watch gameplay of it Maybe the first two levels on youtube. If you still want it? Buy it on discount sale. At this time, until some of these bugs are either squashed or major expansions come out and change the gamebreaking gameplay factors, I am not recommending this.