Aliens: Dark Descent

I have been a fan of Aliens since I first saw it on VHS back in the 80s. It feels like I have been waiting forever for this game to be made. Now that it is here, I couldn't be happier.
If you are a fan of Aliens, this is a must-buy.
I just bought the DLC; not because I really wanted the DLC, I just wanted to give the developer more money.
Thank you for making this game.

A real treat to play. They took the first turns of XCOM, when you're just waiting to see if it's Chryssalids, and turned that into a whole game itself. All the classes bring something great to the table and you will find each rewarding to level up and tech out. The real draw, as with any Alien game, is the Aliens themselves. They're ever present and even a single drone can be a tangible threat if you handle it poorly. There's a horde mechanic that encourages you to try the stealth, which is also fun and a rewarding gameplay style, then once you've done all the hard work you can bunker down by the APC and deliberately taunt the hive into coming en-mass for your marines. Things have a habit of spiralling out of control once you're in the more fortified hives and you'll find yourself using all your tools to get from room to room while you watch wounds and stress stack up on your squad. The game captures the stress of confinement well and all the mechanics push you towards being efficient and making hard decisions (keep an eye if you've just made a dash for the elevator, anyone that isn't in the elevator when the door closes is dead). The environments are beautiful and authentic to the universe and are very much integrated into gameplay, you can't set up temporary camps in rooms that have hive webbing in them and you need to keep an eye on your motion tracker near vents and crates as xenomorphs will hide and wait for you to walk into them. This will become frustrating as you find yourself inevitably stuck between roaming xenos and vents while trying to avoid setting off a hoard onslaught. If I had two pieces of advice to offer, it would be invest in a recon marine with a sniper rifle (get the silencer asap) and remember you don't have to run everywhere (your marines will survive a lot longer if you keep them closely grouped and walking lets them defend themselves better).
The game is somewhat buggy but the devs have been fast to respond with patching and many of the previously obnoxious bugs (a surprising amount related to datapads) have been fixed already. I'm glad this did so well, I hope we can look forward to more Alien content.

Great game, like I haven`t played in years. Not perfect tho, bur immersive, balanced, decent story and even thou some times cliche, the characters don`t have the dumbest lines like in most recent blockbuster games.

This was a great take on the tactical squad based shooter. Really great use of the Aliens universe and getting the tensions that the series is known for.
The squad AI system is great, but I did feel at times it limited my tactical choices, such as splitting a squad to cover a hallway each or creating crossfire zones, but it does simplify the micro management.
It can be a bit easy to cheese it should you have the knowledge of the levels with the resting mechanic, and it makes the countdown timer a bit redundant.
I enjoyed it and I like XCOM if anyone was trying to make that comparison. It's not the same, but a great game in it's own right.

Just completed the game on medium difficulty, and what a gem it is!

If you are a fan of the lore this game really feels like an expansion of the universe, albeit with a new location and new characters. I found the story to be engaging, the gameplay itself was good and the difficulty was challenging but not insurmountable.

The squad customisation and special abilities were fun and versatile. The missions themselves and the objectives made for a very fun and rewarding experience. I would recommend!

Aliens: Dark Descent:

Look, I am going to level with you. This is not my type of game at all. Any tactical ''turn-based'' game I just cannot seem to like. The key aspect here that made me enjoy it was the removal of the ''turn-based'' mechanic. That being said, this game should not be seen as anything other than hard. I has some pretty big asks, and as I fan of the franchise I just could not put it down.

It will most probably not resonate with everyone but it resonated with this gamer.

At a glance: ?/100
______________________________________________________________________
Graphics:__________Beautiful
Gameplay__________Fun, tactical and hard.
Audio_____________Excellent
PC Requirements______mmm. You must compare for yourself. It needs the juice
Difficulty___________Jissis guy. It is hard. So hard I had to drop the difficulty from Medium to Story, and replay. Joh!
Grind_____________Get that APC. It's a game changer
Story_____________Yeah man. The story is solid. I enjoyed it
Game Time________About 40-hours on ''Story mode''. Hey, story mode is valid, okay!
Price_____________Reasonable for what you get.
Bugs_____________I only encountered 2. Nothing game-breaking. Nothing a reload cannot fix
Verdict____________95%

Sincerely
Bromst0ne

Top game! I couldn't stop playing this game because of the atmosphere and the story. I have replayed a lot of missions (between the save games) so i could implement the correct strategy (i didn't want any KIA, oeps except the last mission). Has been a long time i really wanted to finish a game.

I have been absolutely captured by this game, it just gets it. Aliens, the tension, the story, its a homage to everything i love about that second film, the comics, and AvP1/2 the game (not the remake).

The gameplay had me hooked, im really not sure how to categorise it... like an x com lite minus procedural elements (apart from random text events). It absolutely nails the atmosphere and trying to keep the whole squad alive, the stress low whilst also desperately trying not to be seen because next time its an onslaught and you arent prepared feel amazing.

That being said... its not xcom, so if your looking for xcom you may be disappointed, it tells a story from beginning to end through the campaign missions and whilst how you complete those missions may not always be linear, it mostly is.

The game also has some jank to it and needs some QOL improvements, the ability to send 1 person somewhere, without the whole squad moving would be great, looking at you recon guy who always seems to end up at the back of the squad no matter what!!

A faithfully and creative testament to the franchise encased in a suspenseful, thrilling and sometimes unforgiving RTS format. A deep dive that requires some patience and returns hair raising game play, in exchange.

the intro drags on for a bit with unskippable dialogue which makes replayability slighty annoying, however once you get the ball rolling the game is very enjoyable. Recon is busted AF and i would recommend not using recon for a more true Alien experience.

As a fan of XCOM2 and ALIENS (movie) this game gives me an experience like no other movie or game has.
I did have to push through the first few missions since they seemed so repetitive and a bit dull. Once I moved to the second location and more XP unlocked customization of the marines, and faced different enemies, then it felt like another type of game, the kind I feel like I just need to complete another mission and have a hard time to stop playing.
I am glad to support the developers, you can see how much passion and respect they have for the Alien franchise.

Unexpectedly great game after a line of failures in Aliens universe. I wasn't really looking up to 3rd person squad game to be this good. It is awesome. There's loads of reviews out there so I won't be getting into it. Simply put it is a really good game which is so rare these days. Great job dev team!

Addition after some play time. Game is not yet balanced on difficulty side of things. Level can be easy peasy and boss fight on impossible levels. Or the very other way around. Feels like beta version.

Fantastic game, If you are an Alien fan I highly recommend it! Great atmosphere and Feels alot like playing one of the first two movies. The only thing I really dislike is the campaign death clock, but it does add to the sense or Urgency I guess. (Plus they are adding an option to disable that)

Im like "Oh Shit Alright" i say this as im running low on ammo as i get swarmed by things that arent human. And as my marines cry out im deaf to this as i dont care, as they always say, "a good bug, is a dead bug."

If you like Aliens and strategy you will probably like this game. A competently executed and unique take on the franchise in video game form. At least the best Alien game since Alien Isolation, as low as that bar is.

theres no free mode? its good for 1 playthrough wth???

This game is amazing until you realize its very short and you can't really play very long. It took till almost the end of the game to get a level that made sense, where there are enemy marines and aliens and you all killing eachother and it was only 1 level. Max level is 10 and it takes almost the whole campaign to get there and the campaign is only 6 levels and there is no FREE MODE?? No hey just keep playing until you have no marines or anything. Its really kind of crazy. Great quality and gameplay. big learning curve but Xcom fans will enjoy it, for a very short duration. Its like a total of 40 or 50 game days I really cant believe it.

It's fun, but there are a lot of things missing that would turn this from a decent game into a great game.

First off, pacing. Every enemy type is revealed within the first 3 missions of the game. Out of 12. I would have been perfectly fine had they chosen to use the Crusher as the final boss of the first area. Pretty much every major reveal feels like it's seriously rushed and lack the lead-up necessary to make that payoff satisfying. I think they should cut a lot of the major enemies from the first few missions, just to give the player time to breathe and get used to them.

Second, I hate how the squad works. I love the order system, it's very intuitive, but there are also elements missing from it that would greatly improve quality of life, like a Form Up order that would cause any marines not next to the leader to move at maximum speed while the rest of the squad moves slowly so you don't have to keep sitting in one place while you wait for them to catch up.

And on top of that, I'm not a fan of the class mechanics. The only classes that actually really matter are the Gunner, who gains access to a Smart-Gun, and the Medic who can heal marines twice as fast. The others are practically useless. The Tecker can be replaced by any marine with the Smart-Ass perk, as can the Sergeant by using the Team Spirit perk. The Recon class can't really be replicated by any perks, because their only special ability is locked to the special command menu, and costs command tokens.

And I think the command tokens are where the gameplay really falls apart, because it both limits your options and makes them not cost any resources, making these abilities extremely powerful. And since all of these abilities can belong to any squad member (except for the Recon's precision shot) they lose any sense of special meaning they otherwise would have had.

I'm personally hoping they add an update with an optional Tactical mode where all the abilities are tied to special classes and have limited uses. Imagine a Breacher class with the shotgun as a permanent secondary, after 5 rounds they would need to spend an ammo point to reload. Or if suppressing fire was tied to the Smart-Gun and caused them to bleed through ammo faster while decreasing their overall accuracy. Or if you needed a Tecker to hack doors, or set up turrets, or a Recon to set up proximity sensors or flares. Tying these abilities would make building the squad something that you actually need to think about

And while we're at it, just one more thing. Bigger maps and bigger squads would make this game so much better. Right now the max squad size is 5, but having a larger squad or maybe the ability to command multiple squads and having to explore a giant complex while trying to evade a proportionally large horde of xenos would be exactly what this game needs. It could wind up being pretty resource intensive, but I think it would be worth it in the end.

Overall had a good time. It has some questionable design choices. some rushed story elements and a few bugs: not just the ones you expect, Had a fun time with the atmosphere and the squad dynamics, even if i wish they could have a few more customization options. Fun unique time that will take you around 25-30 hours on normal difficulty, Janky, but good time.

First: I play offline, so the shown game time is WRONG. Steam should check my achievements, with that little game time i could have never reached level 10 achievements.

This game is, what the movie Alien 3 should have been, a worthy successor to the great second movie.

Good story, brilliant atmosphere and lotz of stress. (and thats not a bad thing in that game...in other games i dont like stress but here its great...) In some ways its like x-com, but the core gameplay, the action, feels like a new genre.
Basically its a tactical real time rts, where you command your 4-5 man team as one RTS unit. (so you can play this game without pause, but i dont recommand that at the beginning, or the aliens will tear you apart...) I prefer turn based games normally, but in this game rts is a MUUUCH better solution.

The alien ai is good, it patrols and hunts for prey, reacts to noise, evades fire when possible, makes jump attacks, that you can evade and tries to flank your sentry turrets.

The game runs very good in high detail on my old 5700 XT in 1080p, WITHOUT FSR. With FSR everything runs good on ULTRA max Detail.

The sound is perfect, it delivers great atmosphere.

Only downside: For me the game is too short. 40 hours is ok for 35 Euros, but i would have prefered paying more and having a longer experience. My advice: Play it on HARD from the beginning, otherwise the great horror action tactic trip is over too soon.
I will definitly buy every add on that brings new story campaigns. And a second part with maybe more complex strategic elements, would be great too.

A little sidenote at the end: This game is 20 years after part 3, so the marines have better technology: plasma guns, tanks that arent damaged by alien acid, motion trackers that detect non moving aliens. Even a gas that reduces the numbers of aliens on the whole planet. Otherwise you would simply have no chance, against the masses of aliens. (over 25000 if all humans are infected)

GREAT GAME for a fair price. For me the best game i played in years, but i am a big aliens fan, so thats a little subjectiv opinion. And after the two patches i had nearly no bugs at all.

Ever wanted to feel like Gorman from Aliens, carefully guiding your troops through a dark maze, only to suddenly see all hell break loose, and everybody dies, and you just kinda lose all hope, and panic and your brain just shuts down?

It's fun

While this game is enjoyable, and has an awesome atmosphere there are bugs. Still, it's one of the best Alien games ever. They have nailed the feel of the universe completely.

(This bug is apparently just not the info displaying properly, the debuff should be gone)
Like having all your marines lose all their Bravery(which resists stress) and a good chunk of their Accuracy(obviously helps with hitting xenos) after having been on a mission once.
See, after getting deployed marines get Tired. And, for me at least, the debuff to stats remain even after having lost the Tired debuff. This is kinda serious, since it means that instead of getting better, the marines get worse despite levelling up. My Gunner marine at lvl 4, should have +10% Accuracy over the starting 50%, instead he has 5% less than a lvl 1 marine with no upgrades.
And this hits all my marines after a single deployment.

There are other bugs in the game as well. But so far none of them that I've encountered are as bad as the above. Usually they can be worked around.

Great climate, good gameplay, mostly enjoyable story with some parts being an exception, UI as terrible as you would think by looking the computers they use in this universe. Has some interesting ideas, from great ones like maps persisting multiple deployments to slighly lacking like controling whole squad, not individual soldiers.

I was also positively suprised by amount and quality of cutscenes.

Highly recommend, you get more than you can expect from store page description.

Make no mistake, this is a good, solid game that's proud of itself. The atmosphere is great, the story is interesting and it's focus on controlling a single squad tackling missions over several runs is a great breath of fresh air.

However, the game punishes you for playing the best part of it, the combat. I LOVE the combat, the balance between quick thinking, resource management, preparedness and and careful strategy all playing to the rush of Xenos barrelling towards you is the best part of the game for me, however the hunting mechanic coupled with the increasing difficulty heavy pulls you towards focusing on stealth.

This is where the game falls apart for me, while there are a few options for sneaking around the Xenos, more often then not when I get detected I feel less like it's my fault and more the game being cheap. Your punished for playing the most thrilling part of the game and Stealth is frustrating because of how the detection system works.

You generally have four options for "quietly" dealing with aliens, using mines, distracting them with motion trackers, luring them into a turret kill tunnel using a drone and the Recon's precision shot with the silencer upgrade, the last of which requires 0 prep making it my most commonly used skill in the game, however it's not reliable and I've been detected even when using it the nano-second an alien comes into view while trying to hide/walk away from the alien, and the moment you get detected that hunted meter starts ticking up, forcing you to either reload or using a tool to seal yourself up to halt it.

Not being able to make manual saves makes this issue SO much worse. If this game had a combat focused mode like an arena or one-shot missions then I'd be down, but the stealth is, slow, frustrating and more often then not you'll get detected for something that felt unfair, like an alien runner bolting to your position from across the map faster then your ability to find somewhere to hide or turning a corner only to walk head first into a sleeper you couldn't have seen because of how dark the maps are.

Or wake up a bunch of facehuggers because the game's real picky about what is and isn't inside that red grenade circle, or because you used the grenade skill and woke up another cluster of eggs you didn't see. Forcing you to reload and dance your squad in and out of a doorway while your recon slowly shoots them 1 by 1 until you run out of command points and have to wait EVEN LONGER FOR...(sigh)

Bottom line, I want to like this game, but the BS stealth makes it an abusive relationship.

My PC spec
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming K4
Ram: 32GB (2666MHz)
GPU: Asus GeForce RTX 3080 TUF Gaming OC V2 10GB
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 3,7GHz

A fantastic game that captures the Alien feeling perfectly.

First off the game has some bugs. At the time this review is written there is a rare bug that makes your squad instantly shoot at enemies when they see them, when you are not defected yet (In stealth mode). This can accrue when you have a “survivor” in your squad or after the “onslaught” event. To fix this you can…
1. Load a save before you started the mission.
2. Extract from the mission & deploy again.
Hopefully it’s fixed soon because it can be really frustrating & ruin a mission. The game also has some minor bugs like enemy models standing up when they are dead instead of laying down. It’s only visually though, your squads treat it as if it’s dead..

The game runs just fine on my PC but sometimes after a long session the game can start dropping frames. Restarting the game fixes this. However, sadly you can’t just save & restart the game. To manually save you have to create a “safe zone” by using up resources, if you are not playing on “No one can hear them scream” mode (Ironman mode, only 2 saves) the game also autosaves.

People compare Aliens: Dark Descent to Xcom & I can see why. It’s however very different in my opinion & telling someone that it’s like Xcom could give them false expectations. It’s like you would say that Escape from Tarkov is like a battlefield game. Instead of controlling each marine you control the squad as one entity. When you give an action order it’s most of the time the closest marine that performs the action unless a specific class is needed. For example, a Tecker for hacking or a Medic for giving first aid. The system works well most of the time but can be a bit frustrating when you want to use an ability with a specific marine but they don’t have a line of sight so you have to find just the right spot so they can see.
There’s not that many weapons & the customisation for appearance is very basic but it has an interesting Trauma system. During a mission stress is built up & with time they build up traumas that give some kind of negative effect. I love this mechanic because it reminds me of the second Alien movie & the classic line “It’s game over man it’s game over!”.

The story is good, it’s cheesy as hell but in a “Aliens” kind of way. I liked it & it had some really nice story parts.

I highly recommend this game & really hope they will release dlc or even make a second game.

First the important question, would I recommend this game? Yes, but!

So what's awesome about this game?

The suspense. At least to me it felt like a good build up. Sometimes RNG of enemy spawn might feel a bit unfair but it overall adds on quite a lot of the strategy and gameplay. Do I risk it and go this route? Or do I take a longer route for safety?

There are a lot of elements to this game that I really liked, genre aside, it does feel like exploration of the maps can be rewarding leading you to loot and even unlocking shortcuts to get to and from areas a lot better. Especially if you're mid-mission and ran out of supplies and don't want to go back.

The risk is what I truly appreciate about the game. On one hand opening this door makes traveling easier, but on the other it now another door I have to keep an eye on where an enemy can come out of.

I've found myself running/rerunning the same runs over and over just because I want the perfect outcome and scenario.

What did I dislike most about the game?

The amount of characters you get. Don't get me wrong, it's nice having extra characters around you can send to the field if you had the unfortunate event of losing someone, or even if they are in the med-bay recovering but having to level up new level 1 recruits vs rolling out with your current high level squads, there's almost no choice there. The initial set of characters I ended up loading into the game with ended up becoming the group I carried with me throughout the entire game and I 100% disregarded the others even if they introduced a "Training" system to level them up later in the game. Just felt like it was a bit of a waste of time when I could just let my current squad recover and then redeploy.

What's the "but" part about the recommendation?

So right before end-game you are in a pretty tough horde fight (that took me awhile and I had to redo some parts to get back cause I messed up) and it really felt like a build-up to something much much bigger.

Turns out it wasn't, once you get to that last portion of the game, there is no death, and it's almost a pointless interaction. Don't get me wrong, the story (personally) I think is awesome, especially with what they added on but to move from a high steak battle to something where death wasn't a factor felt pretty cheap. Made that whole last battle felt worthless.

I thought we were going to get a "it's going down" moment but unfortunately we did not.

Overall, I'd still recommend it through, it's quite a fun game and I would definitely reply it to see what other combinations I can run with and even try to clear out every side objective.

Fantastic game, if you're a fan of Alien, this is a must. The story was better than Alien 3 and any following sequel.

I love the gameplay, it's a very streamlined squad based tactics game, you control the whole squad at once so there's no micro management needed. There's nice upgrades and progression.

The absolute best thing is the way the missions are structured: you have a large open world area with multiple little missions to do within it (about 15 per mission). You can leave at any time if things start going sideways, you can try to tough it out and complete the whole thing in one go, but the resources are permanent, so if you loot and use everything, you won't have any supplies left when you come back. This is what really made the game for me, you really get to chose when to push your luck.

Highly recommend
9/10

"Nobody touch Nothing" unless of course it's this game. I'm a hardcore Alien fan so of course I'll recommend this game, it's a "Express elevator to H***, Going down." Seriously though, I enjoy the RTS involved with the game. It gives a breed of X-com and 2D Fallout vibes. The storytelling cut scenes are B rated, not bad if you can handle some of the cheesy acting, it ain't Hollywood acting, it is what it is. Of course with every game there is the occasional glitches, for example squad separation may occur moving throughout the map in turns, cramped rooms, and hallways so caution commanding your team in narrow passages of sorts. Please Plan your TICs "troops in contact" carefully, you don't want to end up being in the bottle neck of Aliens the can pinch your squad, they will make a meal out of you yet, especially on harder settings. I haven't completed the campaign prior to posting my review, however from what I played so far, it good money spent on bug hunt entertainment. Enough said, "STAY FROSTY"

The second best Aliens game after Isolation. Fun, challenging, original mechanics and a true love letter to the source material. Currently has a bunch of (non Alien) bugs, some game-breaking so maybe wait a patch or two before picking up.

It's got it's fare share of little bugs, most of which have gotten better, but this game is solid.

I really don't mind the lack of mico, like at all. All your Marines can shoot, know what to shoot and when. The level design hearkens back to Aliens in my mind with LV-426, making the colony look makeshift in places but heavily industrial in others. Atmosphere is 10/10 on that front. Gameplay is good. The cutscenes can be a little hit or miss but I think they did just fine making characters I want to see succeed.

Not sure how much is left of the game (not done yet) but so far 20+ hours has been well worth the price tag.
Solid 8/10

Great game overall. Fun and intense game play, alright story (which is a gem by the standards of the Alien franchise, barring Alien, Aliens, and Alien: Isolation).

Runs pretty well, no crashes in the 60 hours I've played it.

However, there are a few bugs (but compared to a lot of the releases today, not as many). If you run into a game-breaking bug, usually closing the game and re-loading from the last save fixes it (at least for me). Maybe happened once a mission over all. I only lost progress due to a soft lock once, and had to reload a couple of saves from earlier. Because of these issues, I'd use the easier saving scheme (there are two) until these issues have been ironed out.

Other than that, it's a pretty damn good game over all. Not my GOTY, but definitely worth a purchase at full price.

The Cinematic cut scenes, background artwork , voice over acting and sound effects are superb. Brilliant production. Many thanks and much appreciation. A bug in the main objective during a mission has tentatively been resolved. A couple of minor things here and there. I'm convinced these will be worked out. I look forward to any all expansions down the road. If you enjoy the XCOM2/XCOM series since the 1st release on PC you will feel right at home here.

An absolute must if you are an Alien series fan. The game encompasses the best attributes of Alien 2. WARNING: the game is hard. The difficulty pairs well with the overall experience of Aliens 2. Highly Recommended for Aliens fans and RTS Enthusiasts.

Awesome. Really like the game mechanics surrounding the squad, like the flashlight or the "real time, slow mo command the whole squad" thingy. Also commanding the ARC around and using it at your disposal is friggin cool. Atmosphere is really on point for the Aliens franchise. I'm not far in the game yet, but I'm already deeply entertained.

This game is far from easy. Small mistakes are punished. Some of them will be yours. Some of them will be the way your squad interprets your commands.

But few games I've ever played have made me feel as rewarded when a plan goes well. And few games have made me panic harder when the plan falls apart.

Being a fan of the first two films, ALIEN and ALIENS, this game delivers. Aliens: Dark Descent was great, from the visuals, to the tension, to the story(for the most part. Explained below)

Pros:
Great visual presentation, and sound design. The dark environments, the way the game makes your skin crawl when you see parts of the Xenomorph Hive. The best part of the sound design is the sparse use of music. Well done! The story was great...for most of the game. I enjoyed the customization, being able to build a squad, name them, and actually care about what happens to them(finished the first mission getting out of the Mine/Hive with a wounded, limping marine, and another carrying his brother on his shoulders. INTENSE!! The characters in the story, from Harper to Hayes, were great...again, for the most part. A strong first and second acts that made me think THIS IS THE ALIENS SEQUEL I WANTED.

Cons:
The STORY. Pharos Spire, with the chatting between Maeko and Stern, annoyed me. Your squad is in the spire, fighting off Xenos and Corporate Security, while Maeko and Stern are congratulating each other on existing. This was JONAS HARPER'S MOMENT, not theirs. Maeko was great up until the spire mission. Towards the end, it fell apart, and made me just roll my eyes. While I loved the game, seeing Maeko come down the ramp of the dropship in full MARINE GEAR made me laugh. Having her, and the other two in the game go down into the final area INSTEAD OF YOUR SQUAD MAKES NO SENSE. While I get why they go down into the Final Area by themselves, my SQUAD deserved that FINAL ACT. I basically just shook my head and said "whatever". For the underwhelming and poorly written third act, I'm knocking off a few points.

Verdict: 7/10

This is the first game from the Alien universe I really love. It catches the atmosphere in a proper way. Some concepts might be inconsistent (EITHER I can build a save shelter where the squad can rest OR the critters can break welded doors; both at the same time makes no sense), but overall it is a great game!

Aliens Dark Descent is a solid Aliens game as well as a solid strategy game. There's definitely a few bugs and no i ain't talking about the Xenos but i will get more on that later.

Overall it's a fun experience, the game is very challenging when you are not prepared. And boy does this game really tear you a new one if you ain't ready. There's about 12 missions in the game. But after mission 6 you will be met with a Death Clock. After a certain amount of days passes the game will end and you will Lose. Similar to the Death Clocks in XCOM. Speaking of XCOM, this game's handling of your Marines is very well done. Being able to choose what class your marines can be is a nice touch. it picks 2 at random but you can select which class they want to be.

As for the difficulty of the game, the early game starts off pretty slow and can be difficult because you are new. And you are getting used to the game. However later on when you do get used to the game you will be faced with difficult situations that will have you asking "Should i keep going, or do i retreat back to the Otago?" Because your Marines stress will impact their performance on the field. On the last few missions i had kept my marines and completed the mission in one deployment because at the time i didn't know how much time i had left. Turns out it was a lot, and so i put my Marines through some serious PTSD stress. The combat in this game is a lot of fun, it's not quite repetative like how Aliens Fireteam Elite was. Because the ironic thing about this game is that it is a genuine horror game in the form of a strategy game. You have very low resources and your in a world that will be impacted by what you do. If you loot all the ammo then you will not have any the next time you come back. However there's only really 2 missions where you do return to old areas but even then you don't go to the same places so loot up all you can. But do keep in mind that ammo is not plentiful and running out of it can really impact the squad. Pistols are not that great, revolvers are okay but slow as heck and SMG's i hadn't really used much of to know for sure. I had a bug at the end of the game where i had like an infinite supply of ammo but even then i still had a few struggling moments. Which leads me to my second part of the review

Alien Agression is one of the most interesting mechanics of this game, the Aliens actually feel like a hive in this game. The more you engage them the more aggrevated they get. you have 3 stages of aggresion, Easy, Medium and Hard. Each stage increases the amount of Xeno's you will face as well as the possibility of encountering a catagory 2 class Xenomorph. Usually if you hit stage 3 (Hard) the game will straight up tell you it's time to leave. Like, right now! And i have had a couple of missions where i did hit maximum and boy they aren't kidding when the game tells you to leave. In my entire run i only lost 3 marines, however i have lost my squad many times. A squad wipe results in you reloading your last save so sometimes you can throw your squad just to reload your save. But i tend to have moments where if one marine fell, the rest do as well and that's usually the trial and error in this game and really shows just how much of a team your squad is. If one screws up, they all pay the price. And that's where the stress feature comes in.

Marine stress is interesting in the sense that it punishes you for being engaging with the enemy. As time goes on your marines will get more and more stressed and this added stress will give your marines a debuff that will severely impact them on the field. This alongside the agression system, never really pans out well.
But of course this game does have some bugs, I've noticed some slight cutscene rendering delays. Like models don't get their full details right away. It didn't bug me much but it was noticable. The ones that do bother me are the moments where my marines get stuck in a wall or desk and they can't get out. This only happened twice but otherwise it was fine. I had encountered a few glitches with the AI in which they got stuck on a few things but it only happened twice... again. There's definitely some bugs aside form the Xeno's but nothing too game breaking from what i experienced. I know there's some bugs in level progression, like key story elements don't trigger and what not.

Overall Aliens Dark Descent is worth the price, it's not full price so that's even better. This game is true to the Aliens formula and it's the perfect game for fans of the series. Or fans of strategy games. The fact this game can get a bit terryfying for a strategy game is definitely a plus side for me. The fact i only lost 3 marines in my first playthrough was pretty good, and i beat the game on normal.

This along with Alien Isolation are two of the best games in the Alien franchise that build on the story and characters. When I first heard the motion detector beeping the hair on the back of my neck stood up

Very good gameplay. Very atmospheric, challenging and engaging. This is no XCOM.

Ugly closeup graphics, but very nice from top view.

Buggy at times, but playable.

Story is serviceable I guess. With several cringe moments, but not too bad.

i highly recommend you to buy this game if you really adore the movies.
the atmosphere is spot on and i can see myself new gaming this alot.

i took a suggestion and disabled the command confirmation lines the marines have as it will sound very annoying in the long run and i suggest the same to you as your first experience.

what i didnt like however is how stiff the Alien drone is during walking animation.
it looks fine but i cannot unsee the arms going back and forth like it does in the game.
but its only a small detail,

the biggest issue i have is how often the marines say the line "its quiet... too quiet" over and over and over and over during missions.

i still highly recommend this to fans.
(also if you are one of those that heard its like Xcom, they are partly wrong. they dont use the turn based gameplay so you can have the real time experience you want :D )

This game is a bit broken in a few ways (save bug on lvl 7, various issues with doors not working, squad members falling through floors, etc), but I absolutely love it. The Commando's-esque gameplay in the Aliens setting is a great match and there is arguably more of a decent narrative than there needs to be. The ability to keep the action slowed down while your marines are firing accurately, popping off special abilities, and plotting a path forward gives you the option to keep moving at all times instead of simply holing up and waiting for your marines to clear the horde. The eventual power accumulation of your squad may undermine the original Vietnam allegory of the Aliens film, but turning your Xenos-fodder-marines into a moving wave of lead-spitting-death is undeniably rad.

This game is fun, and makes you feel like everything you do matters. There is a limited amount of resources on the map and you don't want to waste it on heals or resting. The only problem I have had is that sometimes the gamepad inputs don't work. I cannot press A button on some screens so I need to use my mouse but some screen the A button does work. I do recommend this game because the routes the aliens take feel randomized or at least no the same when I reload the save so it can make the outcome different. This game also reminds me of AvP Extinction but you only control a small squad. I do like that they auto do tasks like loot and move together, there is no huge army that you need to select all the time because its just the squad.

This is a lot of fun. Many will liken it to an Aliens-based Xcom, but I found it had strong Wartales energy too.

The developers have done masterful work channelling the Aliens (not Alien) movie. The sound stage, the characters/acting, and the gameplay reminded me of that movie at many moments, and made me re-install Fireteam Elite and Isolation, because the nostalgia power was strong.

It's not without flaws - at time of writing I've some 55 hours gametime, and this is because 30 hours in I got a progression softlock bug that wasn't fixed in the patches to date. Despite this I re-rolled because the gameplay is THAT GOOD, and regretted nothing.

I wish it had an NG+, because I want to do nothing more than dive right back in. I will be lining up for any DLC they make.

Dawn of War 2 and X-Com had an Aliens themed love child. The squad control style is unique, but very enjoyable. Above all it does an incredible job capturing the suspense and tension of a proper Aliens title. I never imagined a horror/suspense theme could work in an RTS of any style, but the enemies are dangerous enough and supplies/morale are limited enough that the urge to hide from monsters is more than just a stealth mission gimmick.

It can be buggy at times, and the character models aren't top notch, but I've had a lot of fun with it and would recommend it to anyone who would care to hear "Dawn of War 2" "X-Com" and "Aliens" in the same sentence.

Excellent tactical game. Its not easy, but very rewarding.
Tactics and troop management is very xcom like, but taken to the next level. Its great development of the ganre.
Awesome atmosphere and graphics.
Lots of references to source movies.