Aliens: Darkish Descent overview: The Prometheus of RTS video games

June 30, 2023

26 4 minutes read

Aliens: Darkish Descent is billed as a real-time motion recreation, rigorously skirting the real-time technique classification. This new classification is just not a gimmick. Tindalos Interactive has produced a tense single-player expertise that flirts with a number of disparate style traits, whereas clearly offering a singular and bold strategy. Nonetheless, very similar to the divisive Alien movie franchise Prometheusits experimentation struggles to take care of artistic momentum all through.

Darkish Descent fully strips or purposefully narrows the points of useful resource gathering, technological enchancment, and base constructing discovered in lots of RTS titles. There is not any real-time macro layer to talk of, with the moment-to-moment concentrate on the micro actions of maneuvering your workforce of 4 USMC troopers. It is akin to StarCraft marketing campaign missions the place you are exploring with only a handful of Terran marines. This highlights the strain round particular named characters and their survival: As a substitute of ore and minerals, you are nervous about ammo and stress. And when certainly one of your grunts is slaughtered — or worse, carried away by an Alien drone to be impregnated — it fosters grief and remorse. This can be a brutal recreation of moments that persist with you.

You are eased into this framework with a 45-minute tutorial, which additionally features as a prologue to the larger story. This extended intro is welcome, as there are some quirks to the programs at play, and it is advisable come to grips with the weird tactical choices they current.

Probably the most subtle of these tactical programs are targeted round command factors. You spend this useful resource to put down cones of suppressive hearth, ship highly effective short-range shotgun blasts, and spit partitions of fireplace to guard your place. You may by no means pause the sport, solely resorting to sluggish movement if you open the command menu. It is crucial you attain consolation with this method rapidly, because it’s the guts of tactical resolution making through the high-intensity battle.

However this tutorial can also be Darkish Descent at its most mundane. The motion sequences are uninteresting, providing a number of fascinating tactical selections or alternatives for creativity. It flirts with hazard in not attempting to hook a brand new participant, failing to focus on the sport’s strengths or entertaining cinematic fight. This prefaces a equally rote storyline, which begins with a Weyland-Yutani company plot full with a disturbing artificial human. There are moments later within the marketing campaign which equally slip into predictability, and it is in these phases the place the sport threatens to loosen its grip in your consideration.

A lot of the intrigue arises from the varied subsystems that compose the feel of the fight. The precise clicking round and maneuvering is considerably uninspiring. What’s extra, you may’t ship a solitary trooper or smaller hearth workforce to defend a place or carry out a flanking maneuver; the squad is compelled to stay collectively. This retains the motion streamlined, nevertheless it additionally saps a number of the tactical depth. Moreover, this may make for a number of repetitions in sequences, as you repeatedly attempt to keep lengthy slim sightlines to drive approaching hordes by way of bottlenecks below your most frequent hearth. It does handle to maintain issues satisfyingly easy, although. The totally different environments are wealthy and totally realized in scope and imaginative and prescient. You get to journey by way of sprawling colonies and large house docks with complete sections encased in a xenomorph shell. All of that is additionally enhanced strongly by the roster administration and open-world points of play. It is in these intervals of tentative, closely armed exploration the place Darkish Descent actually takes off.

There are additionally moments of magnificence and inventiveness. When you are traversing huge sectors with each inside and exterior fight zones, you are unexpectedly swarmed by xenomorphs of all styles and sizes. The AI adapts to your ways, maneuvering round defensive vectors reminiscent of sentry weapons and partitions of flames. It’s important to deal with facehuggers and acid blood, and it feels as if you are really being hunted. Even the atmosphere itself will often flip in opposition to you, forcing your troopers to confront their psychological trauma by sealing themselves inside rooms with welding torches.

Between missions, you analysis new gear and unlock abilities along with your varied troopers. pouring expertise and assets again into your barracks. This layer, clearly impressed by Firaxis’ XCOM video games, creates a beautiful loop of steadily rising your troopers’ potential solely to make them a good juicier goal for the xenomorphs. It is sharp and memorable, and it results in some nice emergent storytelling moments.

the place Darkish Descent pushes past XCOM is in mission choice. The marketing campaign is considerably linear, nevertheless it achieves an open-world really feel by permitting you to uncover new areas of the world map — varied settlements and installations on the planet Lethe, which is experiencing a world disaster. Whereas it is required that you just full the principle story aims in every sector, it’s also possible to return to every one to scroung up lacking objects and full sub-tasks at a later time. Darkish Descent‘s construction even lets you evacuate mid-mission, preserving the psychological and bodily well being of your squad members after all of it goes sideways. I’ve had excessive moments of highs and lows, as I’ve evacuated a number of instances when pursuing sure aims, salvaging what I may and inserting my squad within the med-bay earlier than re-deploying with new roster members. Do that too usually, and the alien menace will intensify over time. This creates an phantasm of a persistent atmosphere, one which’s evolving of its personal autonomy.

Aliens: Darkish Descent is at instances bold, usually to thrill, however often to indiscretion. Whereas some might want a extra intimate and terrifying Alien Isolation sequel, this isometric tactical problem is wealthy in consequence and reward. This might not be probably the most coherent or distinctive Alien online game we have seen, nevertheless it’s actually noteworthy and imaginative.

Aliens: Darkish Descent is accessible now for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Sequence X. The sport was reviewed utilizing a retail copy offered by Focus Dwelling Interactive. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, though Vox Media might earn commissions for merchandise bought through affiliate hyperlinks. Yow will discover extra details about Polygon’s ethics coverage right here.