Backlogged is a series that sees us revisit games which for one reason or another passed us by when they first launched, but always occupied a special place on our backlog. That is, until now.
Someone once described the plot of Aliens — the 1986 movie directed by James Cameron — as a Vietnam War movie set in space, and it sort of makes sense. You’ve got foul-mouthed grunts with assault rifles and light machine guns, cigars, gunships, and combat in an alien hellscape. Overwhelming firepower trumps tactics… until it doesn’t, then things fall apart, and you make a harrowing escape while someone makes the ultimate sacrifice.
Here’s the trailer:
Notice the similarities? Swap Vietnam’s jungles for an off-world mining colony, the ambush-loving NVA and Viet Cong for ambush-loving alien xenomorphs, upgrade weapons to 90s sci-fi standards, add a dash of corporate greed, and you get Aliens. As it happens, this also happens to be one of my favourite sci-fi movies of all time.
No Aliens game, at least as far as I can recall, has ever captured the vibe of that movie. Alien: Isolation encapsulated the terror and horror of Ridley Scott’s Alien, and while Alien vs Predator 2 (2001) was a fun game, none has really given Aliens the treatment it deserves, until Dark Descent that is.
While I was excited for the game when it launched in 2023, the buggy state of it put me off. It was only a couple of months ago when it popped up on GamePass (for free) that I decided to give it another shot.
Tactical depth
Aliens: Dark Descent begins atop an orbiting space station. Without spoiling anything significant, a xenomorph gets on board, things quickly go awry, you (Administrator Hayes) activate quarantine protocols, blow up a bunch of stuff, and end up escaping aboard a spaceship which subsequently crashes into the alien-infested mining colony the station was orbiting.
You then switch to survival mode and try to get everyone off that xeno-infested world by deploying marines to various planetary facilities in the hopes of finding intel, essential resources, and a way off that doomed planet. Level design stays true to the original Alien films, and as also with the original films, the tale is simple, effective, and concise.
At its core, Aliens: Dark Descent is a tactical RTS of sorts where you control a squad of four — and later five — marines. Ammo is limited and health packs scarce. The longer you spend on a deployment, the more stressed your marines get (which stacks debuffs over time) and the greater the xeno threat. Missions are open-ended and don’t need to be completed in one session, granting you the flexibility of extracting early and returning later when things go south.
Where Dark Descent truly shines is in combat design. Stealth is strongly encouraged, but you may approach combat however you choose. Enemy activity (thanks to the Alien franchise’s signature motion detector) and upcoming assault waves are telegraphed well in advance. You’re always given ample opportunity to plan and prepare kill boxes with turrets, overlapping arcs of suppressive fire, flares, mines, grenades, and more. You’re rarely caught off-guard, and have a powerful assortment of weapons at your disposal. Resources are scarce, but plan properly, and you’ll always have enough for any encounter.
On the flip side, you never feel at ease and are on edge throughout. There’s not one moment in the entire game that isn’t tense, creepy, and incredibly atmospheric. A single oversight or a moment of carelessness can have dramatic consequences on your playthrough.
Xenos are fast, armoured, and often spray you with acid when they die. When you’re detected, they launch a hunt and come at you in droves. All the ammo in the world won’t save you if you’re too stressed to reload in time or fail to dodge a leaping warrior.
You need to keep moving forward, but you can’t stop looking over your shoulder. Leap-frogging with multiple turrets is safe, but they’re slow to deploy, and the process eats up valuable time. It also doesn’t help that the game triggers autosaves only before key events. Manual saves only trigger when you find a safe-room that you can weld shut at the cost of your already limited resources. Just like your squad, you can’t just take a breather whenever you feel like it.
Dark Descent is mentally and emotionally draining, creating and managing tension in ways that few games ever have — and I love it!
There are bugs (and not just xenos)
From frequent crashes to inconsistent AI, the game just never felt right at the time it launched. Even now, a little over a year later, Dark Descent is not in quite a polished state. I’ve had xenos disappear from the map entirely because one got stuck during a hunt; another bug I heavily exploited allowed me to infinitely replenish my ammo supply; sometimes saves wouldn’t trigger in safe rooms, I could go on.
The game is also in need of several balance changes, particularly around how enemies spawn into the map. Human enemies (yes, there are some) appear — and die — in unlimited waves, xenos emerge at fixed intervals from their hidey holes, and some threats simply cannot be dealt with stealthily despite the game giving you ample time to do so. If developer Tindalos Interactive could put in a bit more time and finish polishing the game, I think we could be looking at the definitive Aliens game.
Regardless, Aliens: Dark Descent is the best Aliens game since Isolation, and the best tactical RTS I’ve played in years. It’s far from perfect, but as a fan of Cameron’s movie, I can’t recommend this game highly enough.
Game Pass version of the game reviewed on PC.
