Aliens: Dark Descent Review

thesixthaxis.com:

The Alien franchise has a chequered history in terms of gaming. For every Alien: Isolation or Aliens vs Predator there has been an Aliens: Colonial Marines or a mediocre Aliens: Fireteam Elite. Taking a fresh approach with top-down real time tactics, Aliens: Dark Descent turns out to be a fantastic fit for the oppressive and claustrophobic menace of Aliens. I’ve enjoyed my time with the game so much that I’m even happy to overlook the shamelessly stolen subtitle.

Aliens: Dark Descent starts off in a suitably cinematic fashion. You play as Maeko Hayes, a deputy administrator for the Weyland-Yutani company who finds her routine savagely disrupted by an outbreak of the legendary Xenomorph on her space station. This opening introduces you to the basic camera and movement controls and also effectively situates the game in the wider Alien universe. The bureaucracy and corporate complacency is totally in keeping with Weyland-Yutani’s role as human antagonist and sets up the story well for some interesting twists, as well as providing Maeko with a welcome depth of character. Once the Xenomorph is detected, Maeko must set off the quarantine procedure, Project Cerberus, sacrificing innocent people to contain the alien threat. Maeko herself is rescued by a squad of colonial marines and then sets out to redeem herself and save whoever is left.

Rather than a traditional RTS where base building and resource management are key, Aliens: Dark Descent is more like a real-time XCOM. You set out from your base ship with a small group of marines and must manage their skills and abilities to survive the maze-like levels. You can choose from a small range of character classes with different strengths which can be developed and levelled up as you