In space, nobody can fix your bugs. Besides the fairly buggy nature of
Aliens: Dark Descent, it is somewhat of an unexpected sleeper hit of the year. The gameplay, and general mechanics work well, and are clearly thought-out, which together with the visuals and audio creates a very nice
Aliens experience. It truly feels like the movie when you slowly skulk the poorly lit and narrow space colonial corridors – then for it to suddenly switch from tension to high-octane action when your badass Marines with their cool outfits and iconic weapons open up on the deadly and terrifying Xenomorphs. It actually resembles
Aliens to a fault, as it becomes a little too much familiar in the narrative. Seemingly, there is only one way to write games based on the Alien franchise.
Weyland is back at it again
The main story is focused on and around Maeko Hayes, a Weyland-Yutani employee stationed on a space station orbiting the planet Lethe. One day when doing whatever she does as a Weyland administrator, someone unloads Xenomorphs in the cargo hold, which as most of us know is a bad idea for the health of the crew. Chaos ensues, and soon the space station is overrun with angry critters. However, in the confusion, she notices that more of these cargo containers containing Xenos have been shipped out, and in desperation, she activates the Cerberus Protocol. This is some kind of containment procedure that makes sure nothing survives contact with the Xenomorphs to limit infection and spread. A rocket defense system surrounding the planet gets activated and starts to blast closeby ships into smithereens. While a civilian ship gets destroyed, the military vessel USS Otago survives the initial attack, but loses control and goes into a spin towards Lethe.
Luckily for Maeko, the military sent a boarding party to the space station, and by pure chance, she gets picked up by the Marines, which then together with Maeko follows their crippled ship Otago to the planet Lethe’s surface. From here on the real game starts, with you, Maeko, and Sgt. Jonas Harper of the Marines to investigate what the hell happened. Who unleashed the aliens on the space station, and why is the planet of Lethe already under siege by the Xenomorphs? As you might expect the Otago survives the crash but is badly damaged. In barely working conditions she will act as HQ during the investigation, much like the Avenger in
Xcom 2. She is broken and needs repair, which also becomes an important part of the narrative experience.
Now, I don’t want to ruin the story here, but I can guarantee you that there is much more to it than this. Yet, as mentioned, it doesn’t take too many steps from the tale of
Aliens. There is an idea here to make it stand out, but when you get to the end, you have basically gone through all the common tropes when it comes to this franchise. Weyland is bad and beyond greedy, weird scientists have no care for anyone, only progress – oh, and don’t forget, we got the crazy synths too! It just seems to me, that these games will forever be made in the mold of
Aliens – for both good and bad.
Good, as the setting is extremely cool, and it’s always nice to be able to recognize stuff from the movies. Bad, as in beyond the setting and atmosphere – why must everything follow the same old story beats? I don’t get it, I think I have experienced this storyline about a dozen times now in every media related to
Aliens. So to be fair, it’s not only the games. Maybe it’s one of those franchises that just have one type of story in them, considering how terrible both
Prometheus and
Alien: Covenant is.
Regardless, the narrative works for the setting, even if it has been seen and done before. Some stuff does feel a bit silly, though, which has the effect of undermining the seriousness of the story, and the situation in general. It becomes a little too much “comic book”. The ending mission is one of these moments, unfortunately. More than that I will not say, but I have to mention it, because it’s one of those endings that work, yet, how it goes down is perplexing.
Spray and pray
We are in luck, though. While the story might be one big feeling of Deja vu, the gameplay is excellent and makes up for the bland narrative. The whole thing works a bit like
X-com in the sense that you run operations from a base, there you also do research and equip your men. Over time your Marines and equipment get better, which will have you pick their weapons and perks – all the good stuff to create the ultimate badass. The main difference here is that the game is real-time, while Xcom is turn-based. You can say that the combat reminds more of the
Men of War series, in both look and function, while the base orientation is more in the style of X-com. Now, since it’s Xenomorphs you will be killing (for the most part) a huge deal of the gameplay is stealth. See, each time you engage the aliens, the queen mother gets angry and sends bigger and meaner Xenos after you. This is unsustainable, as you will run out of ammo, medkits, and sanity eventually.
However, each mission can be tackled as many times as you want, which means you can evacuate your soldiers from the operation area while keeping your progress as it is. Gun turrets, doors that you have wielded shut, and stuff like that will be a permanent thing on each map. You and your men will return fresh to do battle each time, with the alien queen having calmed down – all the way down to
easy. You really don’t want to make her mad for long. When danger levels reach
high, you better bug out quickly, because she will send some truly nasty and hungry stuff after your Marines. This aspect is very cool, and plays into the game perfectly, as being a commander is more than just egging your men on, it’s also deciding when to give your soldiers a break.
Remain quiet
The sneaking is rather simple, as most times you just have to dodge out of sight of the enemies. However, it’s very tension-filled since if an alien spots you, you are not only in for the fight with that specific alien, but all the Xenos nearby who are connected to the hivemind. In the beginning, it might not be seen as much, but as earlier stated, every encounter will drain your resources. Ammo and leadership you can always overcome, but these dramatic meetings will also affect the psyche of your men. Dodging Xenomorphs for hours on end is just too much for the fragile human mind! If you keep your Marines in the field for too long they will develop psychological issues. I had one guy develop a terror for fire, so every time someone in my squad used the flamethrower he panicked like a scared little boy, like someone torched his favorite teddy bear.
It’s all very cool stuff, and these mechanics work well together to create a true
Aliens™ experience. It does feel like you are commanding your squad like Lieutenant Gorman from your command vehicle. The game also has a perma-death system, and the only time
Aliens: Dark Decent forces a reload is when the whole squad gets chewed up. In the normal save mode, the game saves at crucial moments, which makes it very easy to reload if something goes wrong. However, it also comes with a more ironman-orientated save system that only saves your progress on missions while resting in saferooms. I highly recommend using this system, as it increases the tension tenfold during operations, and forces you to live with your mistakes. I had a couple of guys die on me, which sucked, but overall it made the experience so much more intense. I had to carry out another dude because he lost his leg. These dramatic moments etch themselves on my mind like glue, and I appreciate every one of them. It’s what makes gaming great in my opinion, and I wish more games had these kinds of systems in place that create memorable gameplay and narrative memories on the fly.
When the crap hit the fan, so to say, the combat is great and hectic. Luckily, the game slows down when you hit the space key, which gives you time to give orders. Beyond shooting, your men won’t do much on their own, and here is where you come in. Depending on class, weapons, and equipment, you get to pick what to use and how. However, like most things in
Aliens: Dark Decent this also comes with a limit. You can only give so many orders before you exhaust your officer. It’s fairly realistic too, considering that micro-managing your military units is a big no-no, and only opens up for confusion. I think this system represents it well, even if it’s mostly for gameplay balance.
Bugs!
Sadly, the game got more bugs than just Xenomorphs, as it is very prone to crashing. I had to replay one mission four times before it let me finish it. I thought my run was over at that point, but thankfully it let me ride the damn elevator the fourth time. Other bugs are having units getting stuck on the terrain (even the aliens), units that stop responding to commands, Xenos dying in odd poses, and weird statistical glitches that seem to affect the attributes of different units. These problems will probably get fixed eventually, but it’s never a good thing having these kinds of crippling bugs show up during the campaign. And I got away easy compared to some stuff I have been reading about on the forums.
Graphically the game looks fantastic, everything you might have picked up on from the
Aliens movie is here, from the specific architecture of the colonies, to units, weapons, and of course the aliens. If that is not enough, the animations are great too, they just feel right, especially the minor mannerisms of the Marines – how they move and shoot walking through the corridors.
Aliens: Dark Decent also have plenty of cutscenes. The style of these scenes has a lot sharper angles to them, much like the modern
Deus Ex games, creating a bit of a comic-book flair to the presentation. Sound, voice-acting, and music are all good too, as most of the effects are directly taken from
Aliens. The beeping from the motion tracker is such an iconic sound by itself, however, some of the magic runs a little thin since this is not the first game based on the Alien franchise.
While I had a really good time playing
Aliens: Dark Decent, the main mistake of the game is having a strictly linear narrative campaign that unfortunately will play out the same way each time. It’s a big shame because as mentioned the systems developed and used in it are excellent. If the campaign was a little more sandbox, with a bit more freedom given to the player on how to tackle the missions, I think
Aliens: Dark Decent would have been a clear hit that would be played for years. Now, while the story works, it does put a limit on repeatability. Besides that, the game is good for what it is and is definitely an unexpectedly fun experience that I highly recommend getting for at least one playthrough, especially if you dig the Alien franchise.
Thanks for reading.
