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[Aliens:Dark Descent]Harsh language used
Noneoftheabove
Just a conforming non-conformist.Twilight ZoneRegistered User regular
Just a conforming non-conformist.Twilight ZoneRegistered User regular
Alright sweethearts, what are you waiting for, breakfast in bed? Another glorious day in the corps. A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the Colony. Every meal is a banquet, for the Bugs. Every paycheck a pittance. Every formation a disaster. I LOVE the corps!"
Aliens: Dark Descent is a real-time strategy (with pause) videogame released on PC, Next Gen/Last Gen consoles.
Good ol' Disney and the money making machine has spit out a pretty decent descent into the not always easy to get right Alien series of game adaptations!
The folks here tell me Dark Descent is kinda like XCOM sans turn based elements.
In Dark Descent you control and upgrade a squad of Marines trying to complete a series of objectives on the Colony settlements of planet Lethe. There are time pressures and Marine base upgrades with stress coping mechanics. Much like Darkest Dungeon, there is a choice to be made about who you are willing to recruit and throw back out there to the wolves in hopes they survive with their sanity still intact. It's entirely up to you how long you deploy in a mission. How much can your squad take before they run out of supplies, aggravate the locals or succumb to a nervous breakdown? Do you leave things unfinished and return another day? The Aliens will still be waiting, only this time with more numbers after that last deployment that went sideways and dragged off or killed your buddies.
Game over man, game over!
Say, did you remember that out of print boardgame that recreated the Aliens iconic moments? No? Well, this title here has some similiar vibes. And one dedicated fan created a really cool play area for it! Not bad for a human, BloodySloth!
Dark Descent does a great job of capturing that tension, mood and atmosphere of Aliens. Despite some changes or modern takes, this title does keep much of the look and recreation of the Colonial Marines and hardware unlike others that went a little too outlandish in my opinion.
Aliens: Dark Descent is a real-time strategy (with pause) videogame released on PC, Next Gen/Last Gen consoles.
Good ol' Disney and the money making machine has spit out a pretty decent descent into the not always easy to get right Alien series of game adaptations!
The folks here tell me Dark Descent is kinda like XCOM sans turn based elements.
In Dark Descent you control and upgrade a squad of Marines trying to complete a series of objectives on the Colony settlements of planet Lethe. There are time pressures and Marine base upgrades with stress coping mechanics. Much like Darkest Dungeon, there is a choice to be made about who you are willing to recruit and throw back out there to the wolves in hopes they survive with their sanity still intact. It's entirely up to you how long you deploy in a mission. How much can your squad take before they run out of supplies, aggravate the locals or succumb to a nervous breakdown? Do you leave things unfinished and return another day? The Aliens will still be waiting, only this time with more numbers after that last deployment that went sideways and dragged off or killed your buddies.
Game over man, game over!
Say, did you remember that out of print boardgame that recreated the Aliens iconic moments? No? Well, this title here has some similiar vibes. And one dedicated fan created a really cool play area for it! Not bad for a human, BloodySloth!
Dark Descent does a great job of capturing that tension, mood and atmosphere of Aliens. Despite some changes or modern takes, this title does keep much of the look and recreation of the Colonial Marines and hardware unlike others that went a little too outlandish in my opinion.
Noneoftheabove on
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I'm excited to replay this on the hardest difficulty, or even fiddle around with what looked to be custom difficulty options. It does make me a little bummed that this doesn't feel like it's going to be as replayable as something like XCOM, as its hybrid mission structure still feels pretty linear, especially after the first area, which feels substantially more open than the following two, at least.
That sounds like a lot of negativity, but I'm still thinking about this game all the time, and I'm having a tremendous amount of fun with it.
I get the impression the devs thought you would leave a string of them behind you as you moved to cover your flanks/rear, but in practice there's absolutely no reason to do that over bringing them all with you to utterly trivialize onslaughts/bosses.
I'm just about done with the Dead Hills area, and it is a bit worrying to hear the next locations take a change in becoming linear. Having such a large first area was a great opening after the intro tutorial.
Agreed that I'm not sure how replayable it will be vs XCOM given the linear mission structure. I would hope that they would add in a long war-esque mode given the successful reception this seems to have gotten. Some DLC campaigns seem like it would be an easy sell as well.
Sentries are good because they should be good but if you fuck up, they can't help you back on your feet or un-kill Marines.
The good news is the Queen is dead. Our team kicked the nest and woke the hive. Thankfully we were well prepared for a heavy engagement. The bad news, and I can't fault him completely after what we all had been through, but Sharp was struggling to keep his cool. And this caused tension in the ranks. We were all stressed. Slater was popping the naproleve like candy. We would clear an area and set sentry choke points when out numbered. We faced multiple onslaught waves after we took on the Queen. With the Hive enraged, and Pvt. Neron introducing the bugs to the Ol' bake a'flake, we managed to back out and regroup to gather our supplies and take a breather. We knew the Hive had cacooned colonists and time was running short. Running low on gear, the hive was just too active after we struggled to take on a class 2 xeno on our last attempt to get bug sample data and see if we could do anything for the colonists. It was after this engagement we had run out of supplies to continue with a hive on full alert.
Finding the nest and taking on the Queen should get us promotions at least. End Report
Maybe it's unintended, but the cynicism of that image is very on-brand.
The second team did far, far worse and had the M56 Gunner, Recon specialist and the newly minted Sergeant for leadership. These clowns were very well armed and level headed, and just sent in for cleanup. But they still shit their diapers over an easy assignment. It was disgraceful. I'm going to get them all reassigned to latrine duty in the ass end of space as soon as this crisis is over!
Anyway, was doing a long-ass mission and I felt like I'd barely started cracking a major section of it despite doing a whole new mission just to explore it. I felt like it was getting really really tight and eventually bailed and I was wondering why things got so hot when it didn't feel like I'd done that much to deserve it. Except then the stats screen came up.
Well over three thousand rounds expended. Hour and twenty minutes of mission time. 28 Runners and eighty-eight Drones dropped, plus a handful of Warriors. So I guess the mission was a little more intense than I thought.
Also, what's your strategy for using cover spots and avoiding Aliens patrols? It seems like there are so few spots to take cover as a hide mechanic to make it a good strategy. And the Dead Hills colony seemed to have some key spots, despite not allowing more corners and room debris to duck into.
First one is that one of my gunners has decided to shoot enemies the moment they enter his range. Instantly. Regardless of combat state. So now I can't snipe anything because the dumbass gonna just immediately opens fire and a Hunt starts and the planet is at max infestation level so it makes getting around this mission a real pain in the ass. Second one is the one where a sealed room won't trigger a Rest point. Which means that even after I make my way over to this Queen fight, I can't save before it because I can't Rest in the room across the hall. So I might have to restart the whole damn mission from the elevator over this nonsense.
Anyway, BIG BIG tip that I didn't figure out until pretty late in the game: sealing a room IMMEDIATELY ends a Hunt (and I believe even an Onslaught). Yeah, burns a tool, but earlier on before you can deal with Trauma this will hugely cut down on stress and has the added benefit of halting the increase in Hive activity. And the Rest function taker 100 Stress off your TOTAL stress, not your current pip level. So if you're halfway through the second level of stress and Rest, you'll drop down to an overall 50% stress (i.e., you'll now have no stress penalties).
But the game is buggy. I've had a Marine that would just follow the group around and not fire or allow interaction of any kind, another just get stuck in one spot because I cancelled a command, one get stuck in Supression Fire mode, a drone that simply... disappeared at the start of a mission.
In general I’ve being really enjoying this. About the only complaint I have is the universal xcom a like one of not knowing what pace you’re meant to be shooting for meta game wise.
That and having the stress management facility not open up until a few missions in is a tad annoying.
But if you get a Sniper with Smartass (or any regular team member, really), there's zero point to taking a Tekker. Yeah, they can scout with the drone but the only "surprises" you can't see on the motion tracker are eggs and xenos in stasis, which the Sniper can actual kill if needed. The drone can't actually do anything about either of these and the whole time you control the drone, your team is just sitting around waiting to get found. And one skill in the Sniper class (silenced shots) makes them borderline indispensable whereas it take three skills to get a drone that can shoot, and it isn't even very good for that. About the only semi-notable thing the drone does is eat the first hit or two if the Tekker gets attacked... which leaves you with a busted drone you have to burn a repair part to fix or otherwise ignore. Oh, and the drone does let you make a noise "ping" to draw enemies away from certain areas and into traps, but burning a Motion Tracker accomplishes the same thing albeit by costing a Command Point (which you regenerate anyway).
I will say the meta game has me sweating things a bit. I'm at a point where I'm racing a timer and have about nine days left out of thirty and I think I'm on the last mission, but I'm not sure. Which means I'm pushing the Marines further than normal because I may not have 2-3 days to finish this mission. What if the next one is even tougher and takes 3-5 days? That'll be cutting things dangerously close. Some indication of how much I have to do in the time I have would've been a really good things to know, but at the same time I'm playing on Hard, play fairly conservatively, and I think I'm solidly on-track to beat the timer.
Heck if techies boosted how many command points you get from burning a tool that’d rock too.
Also out of the box the drone comes with a noise maker which you can abuse the fuck out of. It's got a shorter range than the motion sentries but doesn't cost any command points.
The most useless class imho is the Medic because as always the goal should be to not take any damage in the first place. One of each class is I think the optimal team comp because most classes have squad wide buffs that don't stack afaik.
When it was mentioned here that the maps got smaller, I worried. The cool factor of the game requires the size to cover and try to complete objectives versus squad morale and resources. So this next area doesn't really break that I'm relieved to say.
Surprisingly, I felt like Hard should be the advisable difficulty to play it on. I found the game frequently challenging without being total bullshit, aside from the odd bug or three. When I had missions collapse, it was basically always because I did something stupid. Many times, I knew I was taking a stupid risk and figured "what the heck?" and things did not pan out. If you're wily, smart, and think fast, you can stay ahead of any bad encounter enough to be the winning party. And on Hard, even a single Drone is damned threatening, particularly in the early game. If one manages to get on top of you, a Marine is probably going to take a hit or two and, early game before more armor points and the anti-acid gel, everybody is getting a dose of acid blood when you kill the thing. If two drones get point-blank? Yeah, that can almost drop two Marines right there plus the acid splash will moderately injure the other two. Probably the biggest surprise of the game to me is how much they don't hit you with scripted cheap shots. Ambushers are random. Which aliens spawns and how many and where is random. Their patrols are semi-randomized; sometimes they might just look in a doorway, sometimes they're gonna come in and examine the whole room. But you're never going to open a doorway and, surprise!, find 20 Warriors rushing you for a surprise poke in the eye. The game almost always sticks to its own rules and just lets things play out.
Close, cramped places made me feel nervous as hell. Open sight lines with limited approaches comforted me. There was a bit too much sneaking, but it did make for a solid rotating dynamic of trying to hustle along silently, explore enough to find useful things without getting trashed, fight enough to avoid getting injured, and getting out before the Hive gets too riled up. The game really conditions you to constantly scan your vicinity for a defensive position because you literally cannot know when a xeno is going to pop out of that spawn point in the room your passing through and once that fucker gets burned down, all of its buddies are coming you way. If you don't have a defensible position mind almost constantly, you will get fucked up. And some of the maps are properly labyrinthine; you will wander for twenty minutes and it will feel like an hour, simply because your constantly on the watch for a xeno in the walls or a damned Runner doing patrol at about 80 miles an hour.
Overall, a far more solid game than it had any right to be. Definitely still needs a pass or two for bugs, though, I hit at least one or two a mission and some of them required partial or full mission restarts.
I will say that the second-to-last mission really annoyed me.
We're in a spooky alien city? Let me just casually turn around and maintain no situational awareness so I can get killed from behind. Oh there's a giant alien that my gun is having no effect on? Let me just stand here slack jawed while it telegraphs its incredibly obvious swipe attack.
Along with that, being able to order your APC around is an awesome mechanic. Not only is letting you unlock multiple drop points per mission a great idea, the APC can be an excellent tactical tool. Several times, I used it as a firebase for an impending Onslaught. I think the best move I ever pulled with it was looking at the motion tracker at one point and seeing no less than two dozen signals in tight proximity in a building. Instead of trying to force my way in, I parked the APC outside, burned a motion tracker for noise, and watched as the building just completely emptied itself out into high-caliber cannon fire. And I had my squad tucked into a corner so it never even alerted the Hive, meaning zero ammo spent and zero Hive buildup for dropping a good two dozen enemies.
Being able to redeploy from the APC mid-mission was also a great tool for when you're exploring. Think you missed a room with something good? If it's by an APC spot, pile in and drive over, no problem.
Overall, the APC mechanic is something I could definitely see wanting in the likes of the XCOM games. It's a neat dynamic element that helps in bad situations and makes for a pretty useful tool, but without breaking the game at all.
I was skeptical at first, but I like how Dark Descent makes real time work for this type of game. I like the option of pause or slow that keeps things moving and the tension building. If this was pure turnbased I think the player immersion would be less because it is a top down, pulled out perspective.
I'm taking my time with this game and not going through it all in one sitting. So I'm still fairly early on with just the Docks area at 70% complete on the first run.
I heard there are 12 areas of the game, and if they all are as objective filled and expansive as Dead Hills or the Docks, then this is a pretty big game for people who choose to get the most out of each area. Despite some technical issues with Dark Descent having a lack of polish that patches are sure to fix, this game is very much worth a buy for that type of gamer who is an Alien fan and strategy player.
What I personally appreciate is how much of the design choices of Dark Descent take inspiration from Alien Isolation. Such as in the text fonts or environment assets. The game shares the same universe, but keeps a continuity of design approaches where it is right for this type of game which is cool. The game encouraging you to hide or avoid being overly aggressive seems to be a nod to Isolation.
As for the Hive activity and hiding, it annoyed me at first but it does make sense in the context of the setting. The Hive as an organism is not sentient (the Queen might be sapient, but is at least clever for an animal and capable of some actual thought), so it actually makes sense that you can get the Hive worked up, disappear, and then the Hive just stops looking for you. It's not a thinking entity, it's a bunch of instinct-driven creatures working in concert. Lose the attention of the Hive and it just forgets you are there, with only time being the way to calm the Hive down. And if you leave and come back, the Hive doesn't remember you and it kinda has to "wake up" to your threat all over again.
And the persistent grim tone is definitely more like the original XCOM game than the Firaxis versions. This planet is fucked up, this situation is fucked up, these missions are fucked up, and everybody wants to get the fuck out of there. Definitely a solid game for the pricepoint, and the mechanics hold up really well for the length of the game without getting tired. At the same time, a more procedurally-based long-form campaign with more Marine and tech options would not go amiss.
A strategic layer would be nice, too. Instead of all the settlements already having fallen to Hives, you could have some fallen, some almost untouched, some at different levels of infection, and you could run sorties to help push back and root out Hive infections. Setting up defenses for the ship and scrounging up parts for repairs and research would obviously be a part of it. Ultimate goal is to clear the planet with whatever surviving settlers you can and then blow the rest.
Here's what I figure.
Which is the whole thing with Cassandra. She and her father both have psychic abilities that can "understand" the hive. Marlow couldn't use her father because of his Marine background, so he alters Cassandra in some way. Now, presumably, Cassandra could direct a Hive if she chose to and, presumably, neither the xenos or the strain would kill her. Her father, being unaltered and weakened, dies from the stress of holding back the Titan xeno so his daughter can escape.
Marlow's whole thing is integrating humanity and xenos into something like one organism, but without the likes of Cassandra (or massive amounts of alteration and an in-stasis xeno embryo) the xenos just kill humans. And obviously WY is absolutely just drooling over the idea of psychically-controlled xenomorphs as a weapon, which is why the director does all the backstabbing.
As for the Titan? Fuck if I know. I assume it's supposed to be a survivor from infecting the Prometheans, which is why it's enormous? But there's no indication as to why it just sort of hung around in stasis forever and didn't turn into a Queen and start a Hive. And why did it have deformed legs? There didn't seem to be any reason for that, since coming from a Promethean should mean arms and legs like a Promethean. And why is the inner jaw like thirty feet long and prehensile? Again, no idea. Was Cassandra put there to control the Titan? Be protected by it? The xenos can tell who is a synth and ignore them so a Marlow duplicate could moved Cassandra there undisturbed. But it seemed real weird that the Titan was so intent on killing Cassandra, but was waiting maybe 30-40 feet away when she was put in the room.
I made one marine a medic at the outset just when I was trying all classes, but as soon as I deployed a Sniper and a Tekker together that was a wrap, my team comp was immediately decided.
I have the tekkers drone zoom around uncovering the map for the squad, with main objective being to spot any eggs or snoozing xenos, I park the drone in front of any I find giving the sniper easy LOS for a free headshot.
The problem is that the tactical gameplay focused on stealth and exploration doesn't lend itself to generated maps very well I think. In XCOM you start to recognize all of the tiles, but different pack compositions and locations can still keep every mission reasonably fresh. Going through the same set of rooms to gather resources over and over again isn't going to be that interesting.
This just went back on the list to play.
Absolutely gives me the vibes from the movie in a really cool way. Only at what I think is the halfway point of the second location, and while the game is buggy as heck right now (though it's mostly minor weird UI stuff, and it just patched bigtime today), it's a blast.
Got really into it last, uh, August I guess, but never progressed very far. Hopefully some of the jank is diminished. It's a hell of a lot of fun and I think it's really flying under the radar for a lot of folks.