There are games where monsters are designed for you to think they can be scary, but are easy to put down. And then there is Aliens. Outside the bad ones, a lot of good games made use of the unique scary nature and overall design of the monsters for years.
Even if the good old days of Alien vs Predator have gone by quick, Aliens still manages to find ways to continue thriving in any decade. Fireteam Elite was a good reentry, but that was just a cookie cutter survival shooter compared to this. And it's made by the guys who worked on Battlefleet Gothic: Armada titles.
Aliens: Dark Descent has some nuts needing to screw tightly, but dare I say, it is the refreshing take for an entry. Integrating the best aspects of XCOM 2, and Darkest Dungeon, as it constantly draws tension in every area. A real-time survival horror tactical strategy title that really did nail the atmosphere.
Watching over the planet moon, Lethe, the Pioneer Station revolves around the mining colony in it with, of course, the interest of the Weyland-Yutani company. Administrator Hayes notices something wrong in the cargo hold, then decides to investigate. Boy was she in for a big surprise.
Took a few crewmember's death, some uncomfortable noises, and a barrage of facehuggers attacking the ship's main crew and her supervisor to realize that it's real now. Barely surviving, she heads to the relay comms room and initiates Cerberus Protocol. Which was created in case of outbreak, like this. And so the other ships, including USS Otago take fire from satellite gunfire.
After encountering a Xenomorph, the marines from Otago arrive last minute and saves her. Before this, the game's tutorial was taking me to the scariest of places, I was thinking I might have to think quick on my feet, and in here I did. Didn't matter she had a gun, that thing was going to kill her.
I wished that, even with the marines now at my disposal, the tutorial section wasn't so holding me for the hour length. But I guess it was important since it taught me what the mechanics are, and how they worked. This RTS is squad based, I have skills at my disposal based on the ones each squadmate have, and slows time to a crawl when used. With a lot of micromanaging to do as well.
This isn't a game where I get to go Gung-Ho, kick-ass and take names. This is a survival game where I have to manage, and supplement my soldiers so that they have the best chance of surviving each fight, and this lesson is what I learned harshly from my first mission. As all kinds of odds were stacked against me.
The Squad I had were babies, trash-talking bottom feeders that needed to get their teeth sink into the action before becoming hardened not only with literal trauma, but enough experience to unlock new traits, skills, and promoted to a weapon's class. Taking on one alien is one thing, you kill them too close or shotgun them, they spew acid after death. Don't be fast enough, they put damage.
The other thing I have to be constantly be aware of, is their stress meter. Let's say someone is paranoid, gloomy or cowardly, there are 3 stages of these stress meters. Max means absolutely bad news, which reduces their stats like accuracy, bravery, etc. Taking pills eases them up, but that's only finite. The longer they do the mission, the worse it gets.
But good news for these guys, because I can extract my teammates with the famous APC, the turret automobile that can even move my teammates from one possible location to another. As well as help to extract hostages or survivors found, but also if my teammates are extracted mid-mission, they can come back well rested on the next. Just shows how forward-thinking the future is for soldiers well-being. Am not kidding, I can get these guys out, and send another on the next day.
Redeployment was where the game started to crap on me, enemies were more aggressive. Because I kept getting detected. There were times soldiers at low health got abducted, and I couldn't do anything, because I was busy fending off waves of them. 3 Xenomorphs is super unlucky, 5-7 of together is instant death. Being detected more, increases their aggression meter.
The final boss for this mission was the queen, and she had face huggers. Those little abominations give 2 seconds before they lunge themselves to my teammates faces. Game over, I had to load the save all over again. The Sentry Turret I placed by the door did serious damage, but only much use
till the drones showed up. This was a hard rock situation, and I had to load save over and over.
Lastly, had two surviving, but one needed to carry a survivor that wasn't turned into an implant. The last 2hr played was stressful, even before this, last deployment had one guy carrying another marine of what was left of that squad. He was defenseless, and I was doing my best avoiding aliens before getting both to the APC for extraction.
My rewards were an engineer, researcher, 2 new squadmates, and a few of my surviving soldiers getting class rank, one is a recon who a use a sniper-rifle, and the other is a gunner with a smart-gun. The one favorite from Aliens.
I really like each of the squad progression system, despite that they can die, and I'll lose them, plus this game making my job harder making sure they get out alive and kicking well. Making sure they have the upgrades needed, unlocked from reaching high levels, and keeping their sanity in check.
Speaking of sanity, oh boy, this guy, Smith, turns into a conspiracy theorist, and forcing him into next mission, he was becoming borderline insane. Then was affecting morale by riling up the crew in Otabo, Was even given a warning where an event might happen like a brawl in the canteen. But he was helping my rookies survive the onslaughts, so couldn't help send him, I guess 🤷♂.
The story here takes place 19 years after Alien 3, so a lot of what that film has is used as story reference. Weyland-Yutani, and the Marines know that Aliens exist, they've encountered them enough to have research, weapons, and training divisions in order to train up the grubs.
The main baddie is a cult leader who has become disenfranchised after being used and abused by the company, using his degree in alien biology, he was the main perpretator that started the alien infection spreading in the first place, and remains to be a strong contention for some of the main characters of the game like Sgt. Harper.
So how stressful is it to play a game like this? Oh it's stressful alright, but once I've gotten it figured out, I was locked and loaded. This game had me glued to the screen for 8hrs straight, I couldn't stop. I never had this much fun since I played Dragon Age or other games I've mentioned earlier. It's an action-based RTS, but one that relies on finishing more objectives and engaging less for survival.
It's a perfect combination of RPG elements, RNG, stealth and tactical gameplay, and with a thick atmosphere true to the Aliens franchise, it's hard to put myself down from playing this. Mission structure is based on finding loot, extracting people to add as more to crew, opening doors for access, story objectives, and more. It's also highly discouraged to continue fighting the aliens, but not entirely.
Combat gives XP, and the aliens have xenomorph DNA that can be extracted, and later used to unlock things like stasis grenades, cure for facehugger pregnations, and so on. Heck, resources are needed to unlock weapons, and upgrading units allowing access to new type of explosives, drones, ability to revive units, increase in command points and resource caps, hacking doors etc.
Basic skills like surpressing fire slows them down, throwing a flare increases accuracy, grenades do their thing, the sniper rifle I've unlocked with my recon does headshots, incinerator burns anything to crisp, even the default shotgun when used well, blows chunks on these alien foes. I mean, I took out an army of these guys with 3 sentry turrets, and only one of mine came out unconscious.
The enemy types get wilder, I already have drones, runners that came from pregnated dogs, the praetorians, and now I got these mutated human soldiers carrying chest bursters, and lastly warrior aliens, those guys are a force to really reckon with due to how much of a bullet sponge they are.
I already wrote too much, I don't think I can explain more of how much this game exudes badassery. Like, it is a faithful creation to the films entirely. Everything hits the sweet spot. There are issues, tho, like taking too much time to retrieve items, the A.I. being exploitable because it's dumb some times, I really think the difficulty spike at first was a bit too much, and not liking how the camera works.
There are technical issues too, this game can be kind of buggy at times, but not to the degree of ruining the fun for me. I think anyone who wants a fun RTS title or a good Aliens game in general can really look into playing this. I know I will, it's very lengthy too. I played 10hrs, and just finished 20% of it. Yet to even unlock having a 5th squadmate.
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