Aliens: Dark Descent review: decent, if desperate to sit with the cool console kids

In the same way that Alien: Isolation is, for many, now the definitive Ridley Scott’s Alien game, I’ve got no problem getting all ‘game critic who wants to feel important by making wild declarative statements’ and saying that Aliens: Dark Descent is now, for me at least, the definitive James Cameron’s Aliens game. It’s the first to really capture the white-knuckle vibe of setting up perimeters, quipping out that last line of top-tier banter you’ve been saving, and seeing the shapes on the motion tracker creep closer and squeal louder. It really does do the license justice, so if that’s what you’re looking for, dig in. I just wish it trusted me to be able to count higher than one. Not that much higher, either. Just four.

Dark Descent is not a game for strategy game fans nearly as much as it’s one for Aliens fans. You order your entire squad around at the same time, pausing or slowing time to issue commands like grenades or suppressive fire, using a stock of command points that refill over time. It’s a game that’s (rightly) decided that a very particular type of strategy game is the best format to convey Aliens’ whole schtick, but then seems to have realised, hang on, we’re at risk of (alien) isolating and possibly even (alien)ating a lot of potential customers here. What if there was a way to do XCOM but without all the knobbly bits?

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