Short review to say this is an absolutely fantastic game. A must-play if you’re a fan of the Alien universe.

Particularly the environment and atmosphere shares high resemblance to that of the first two Alien films. The story and writing are both strong, the direction during cut-scenes was surprisingly of high quality, and voice acting was solid enough. It features an extensive variety of Xeno’s to engage in battle, and has a lot of lore relevant niceties that you see in the films like weapons, dialogue throwbacks, audio and sound design, and so on.

As a game it plays very, very well as a stealthy real-time tactics up a similar alley to the Shadow Tactics series. So even if you’re not particularly fond of the Alien universe or have no interest in it, there’s still enjoyment in there as a game as it shares the same trait of being able to reach your goal in how you see fit through an open-world map design in a trial and error style. Where it differs is that you control your marines as a unit and not as individual characters, and it has to be said Aliens: Dark Descent is by far the more punishing of the two as it is a lot more fast paced when you're under attack and doesn't allow the more measured approach used in Shadow Tactics.

The gameplay is fine tuned to challenge the player to consider different approaches in the way they take the game on by defending themselves via a variety of tools including grenades, mines, sentry turrets, flares, and so on. Materials including ammo and first aid kits are on the scarce side without being starved, but I could argue that if you have 4 or more sentry turrets on hand it does make certain situations a bit too easy.

No issues with performance at all besides one bug that I had to re-do 5 minutes of gameplay over, but after a 36h playthrough it’s nothing worth screaming about.

Negatives? There’s not really a great deal of variety of marine dialogue during missions, so you do hear quite a lot of the same one’s on repeat quite a bit. So a few more additions in that area would’ve been great.

Overall, it’s a strong recommendation from me. I enjoyed it as a game as much as Alien: Isolation. So, I’d love to see another Aliens: Dark Descent type game by this developer as this one was a worthy addition to the Alien universe.

This is now my second favorite Alien game after Alien: Isolation.

I usually don't play tactical strategy games, but as a fan of this franchise I couldn't let this one slip. And man, was it worth it. I can't remember the last time I was this addicted to a game. The tension, the atmosphere in missions, the resource management, building up your marine squads, taking care of them in the ship, it all creates an experience that hooks you, held together by a well crafted story that nails the tone of James Cameron's movie (and a bit of Ridley's too).

This one is a hit. Don't miss it.

This top-down real-time tactic game perfectly captures the tension and dread from the Original Movies. It manages to Deliver an Interesting Original Story with awesome Attention to Detail (for example how most of the Soldier Upgrades are Visualized on the Soldiers itself) and the ever increasing Pressure from the Alien Threat. You will get attached to your customizable soldiers and need to carefully balance to progress the objectives without pushing beyond what your squad can handle. Recommend if you like the Alien franchise and can get into the Genre.