We haven’t had a new Alien film since 2017’s Alien: Covenant, but the renowned sci-fi horror franchise is anything but dormant. There’s a new comic book series from Marvel, a Fede Álvarez-directed film coming to theaters in 2024, and an ambitious Hulu TV series created by Fargo and Legion’s Noah Hawley that keeps delaying its production start date despite having the pre-production almost locked. But of course, the realm of video games is where Xenomorph eggs won’t stop hatching. Enter Tindalos’ Aliens: Dark Descent.
Traditionally, game studios over the decades have chosen to adapt the IP into video games following the action-heavy Aliens formula, which ran in almost the opposite direction of the original film. Following his first meeting with 20th Century Fox, James Cameron thought that literally making Alien 2 was a fool’s errand (something Alien 3 confirmed), so he instead pushed the “space Vietnam” angle — and the result was such a resounding success that it’s hard to argue against it. That film’s impact on pop culture was so powerful that we need more than two hands to count all the sci-fi features and games shaped by it. This also means that, with the rise of FPS and sidescroller games shortly afterwards, Alien games naturally embraced a “shoot at monsters” identity to make quick bucks, relegating the series’s horror elements to the aesthetics and little else.
Image via Konami
With 3D graphics came the possibility of actually honoring the films’ dark and tense ambiences, yet the IP – now also tangled with Predator following the success of the AvP comics – struggled to escape the action-oriented approaches. It wasn’t until freakin’ 2014 that we got a straight-up survival horror Alien game in Alien: Isolation. While the initial reception for Creative Assembly’s first tango with the genre was only “generally favorable,” it was so genuinely scary and treated the source material with such respect that it quickly gained a cult following. And yet, Sega never gave a sequel the green light. Moreover, Alien games went to sleep for some odd reason until the Disney takeover happened.
I personally had (and still have) a great time with 2021’s Aliens: Fireteam Elite. As a return of the IP, it delivered everything you’d expect from a modern co-op shooter, and it’s pretty much what Colonial Marines should’ve been. More surprisingly, it expertly introduced bits from the two Alien prequels into a post-Aliens narrative. But then again, we were missing the actual horror that comes with the Alien films. Thankfully, Tindalos Interactive’s Aliens: Dark Descent has fixed that.
It’s hard to know for sure how much creative freedom was given to this small French studio, but the final product is more than solid in spite of some jank and bugs. It’s also the ballsiest Alien video game in probably forever. The choice of going full RTS alone (something that half-worked for the overlooked AvP: Extinction) is worth an applause, but the fact that it also manages to channel the first two films’ tensest energy consistently wowed me. It’s yet another Alien game starring Colonial Marines, and the isometric camera should take players out of the scares. However, its merciless pacing and the sum of its mechanics and systems distill almost everything that made the franchise and its titular creature icons of horror cinema.
Image via Focus Entertainment
At first glance, Dark Descent may look like XCOM but Aliens, but no, it’s a completely RTS (not turn-based) experience. It simply works on a smaller scale, taking cues from veteran series like Commandos and other squad-based strategy titles lost to time. Of course, all the progression stuff in-between missions is lifted straight from the XCOM reboot entries, but that always seemed like a perfect fit for the Alien universe to be fair. The standout element here is the sanity mechanic and how it can make or break entire runs, essentially becoming nearly as lethal as the Xenos’ ambushes and acid blood. If you know how it feels to screw up an entire Darkest Dungeon save with bad decisions, you’ll find some of that pain in here too.
Your marines can be killed or quickly dragged away (something that will happen as Xeno activity ramps up), but sometimes, mental breakdowns are what will make the entire operation crumble. Dark Descent can often become as glorious as the final stretch of James Cameron’s film, but it more often than not looks and feels like the second act instead, which has most of the survivors losing their shit as their options run dry. Game over, man, game over! And make no mistake, there are plenty of potential Hudsons in the USCM roster.
Much like in XCOM and Darkest Dungeon, there’s a risk-reward – and roguelite-ish – element to the game’s core systems. Maybe the next mission needs your finest warriors instead of rookies, but everyone needs a rest. Push someone too hard and they’ll break, possibly turning the mission upside down. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to extract them before they are overwhelmed or too injured to complete the objectives, but oh, I forgot to mention: The clock is ticking all the time.
Image via 20th Century Studios
The Alien franchise loves a good ol’ “total annihilation” scenario, and Dark Descent goes wild with the concept. Before even reaching its midway point, you learn that, in a few days, the planet’s surface will be bombed. But there’s an entire USCM ship to fix and a conspiracy to unveil before we can leave. Screw up a mission? That’s one day gone. Choose a bonus random event over a mission while at base? Same thing. You might not be facing the Xenomorphs down there alongside the marines, but becoming the on-comms boss and base manager might be even more stressful.
The talented folks at Tindalos not only knew there’s more to the source material than creepy corridors, jump scares, and acid blood-soaked action; they also turned every little screenwriting trick that made Alien and Aliens classics into key components of the tense gameplay loop. Everything adds up, and soon enough, you learn that the post-mission debrief can be as scary as braving an endless onslaught of aliens. Aliens: Dark Descent is yet another shining example of how closely examining a property’s strengths in other media and believing in smaller studios can yield unique results and please diehard fans in ways AAA projects can’t.
Published: Jul 22, 2023 11:32 am