Aliens: Dark Descent – Everything You Need to Know

The Aliens franchise hasn’t seen many new games since the acclaimed Alien: Isolation launched in 2014. There was the co-op third-person shooter Aliens: Fireteam Elite, but it didn’t quite capture the terror of leading a squad of Marines into the unknown.

Tindalos Interactive is taking a stab at it next, with Aliens: Dark Descent on Xbox One, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. It’s an action strategy game focusing on squad-based tactics and survival, where you issue commands, complete objectives, gather resources and ultimately try to make it out alive. It’s out on June 20th, so here’s what you should know before jumping in for close encounters.

Planet Lethe

After an uprising causes an outbreak of Xenomorphs on Lethe, your squad of Colonial Marines is sent to deal with the fallout. Things quickly go awry, and the team must gather resources to fix their ship, the Otago, which is stranded. On the Otago, you’ll control Maeko Hayes, an administrator for the infamous Weyland-Yutani corporation, and on missions, Jonas Harper of the USCM to lead your troops into battle. As you progress through the campaign, it becomes clear that Lethe holds its share of secrets.

Real-Time Squad-Based Action

You can have up to five Marines in a single squad, and they move together through the shadowy structures of Lethe, responding accordingly based on the best soldier for what task. Commands are issued in real-time, and your team can take cover for increased defense, use suppressive fire to hinder threats and activate a Precision Shot where the closest Marine fires a powerful shot after a brief delay. You can ignite flammable surfaces to create chokepoints and throw down Flares to increase the accuracy of your squad.

Slowdown

Of course, things can get very hectic when you’re trying to quickly deal with incoming threats and plan out your next move. Fortunately, Aliens: Dark Descent features a button to slow down time, giving you more breathing room. The clock is still ticking, so you’ll have to make your next move eventually (unless you fiddle with the accessibility settings – more on that below).

Enemies

The Xenomorphs are the major threat on Lethe, and you’ll encounter all of the classics, from Facehuggers and Runners to Praetorians and Queens. They’ll react intelligently to your decisions and sneak up when you least expect it. Other enemy types include rogue elements from Weyland-Yutani and Maintenance Synths. There’s even an enemy type that fuses human and Xenomorph DNA into a terrifying new creation.

Persistent Levels

Each mission has different primary and secondary objectives to complete, with levels being large in scale. They’re also persistent, so everything you do, whether opening new paths, welding doors or unlocking new landing areas, will carry over if you ever revisit. You can even throw down motion trackers, which should provide details on the locations of Xenomorphs of future runs. Interestingly, there’s something called Planetary Infestation Level. It’s unknown what this does, but it could rise throughout the campaign, and it’s game over at the maximum level. Of course, it could also provide an increased challenge based on your progress – time will tell.

Marine Classes

There are five Marines classes to choose from. The Medic can have increased Medikit and Tool carrying capacity, increase the max HP of your Marines and even reduce their Stress when healed. The Gunner is adept at slaying hordes of enemies and can use their Smartgun as a Sentry unit, increase the slowing effect of Suppressive Fire for the whole team, and more. You’ll have several upgrades to choose from with each promotion and can customize the appearance of each Marine – from their faces, hairstyles and hair color to scars and fabrics.

Weapons and Vehicles

Many of the weapons and vehicles will be familiar to fans of the movies, from the M41 Pulse Rifle to the M37A2 Pump Shotgun and Service Revolver. Each Marine can have a Primary, Secondary and Special Weapon, with powerful choices like a sniper rifle, Incinerator Unit and RPG Launcher falling into the Special Weapon slot. You even get an APC, which can transport the squad between areas while mowing down any Xenomorphs along the way.

Stress

Xenomorphs will cause their fair share of damage to your squad if you’re not careful, but Stress is equally as dangerous. If you leave Marines uncared for or don’t give them proper time to rest, then Stress can take its toll (with the developer describing it as a “ticking time bomb”). All the different ways it can affect performance remain to be seen. However, it’s advised to take things slow, extract and return with a well-rested, upgraded squad rather than plunging headlong into escalating danger.

Permadeath

If an ally goes down, you can instruct their squad mate to carry them, which is ideal for extracting without losing them. Death is permanent, so if a Marine dies, they’re gone for good, and you need to train a recruit to fill out the squad. So if a Xenomorph knocks a squadmate down and proceeds to drag them away, you’ll want to save them ASAP from potential fates worse than death. As such, it’s good to have multiple Marines available and ready to go in case other active members face low morale or poor health.

Base Upgrades

The Otago serves as your base. You’ll make various decisions, like making speeches when morale is low to rally the troops or intervening in a brawl between squadmates (or not, resulting in both spending one day in the Medbay). You can research technologies like Hive Jammers, Stasis Grenades and better armor, and develop new weapons like RPG Launchers and Mines for an edge in future scenarios.

Accessibility and Difficulty Options

If you’re not in the mood to be frustrated or want to focus on Dark Descent’s story, there are accessibility options and different levels of difficulty to adjust. One of the options converts the Slowdown into an actual pause button, so you can effectively play this as a real-time-with-pause tactics title, taking as much time as you’d like to respond to threats.

Smart Delivery

While its resolution and frame rate on consoles isn’t confirmed, Aliens: Dark Descent will support Smart Delivery on Xbox, per the game’s Xbox Store listing. You’ll only need to buy it once to play on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. The PlayStation Store listing also seemingly indicates that the PS4 and PS5 versions are included together, so that’s a nice bonus.

PC Requirements

On PC, you’ll need Windows 10 or 11, DirectX 12 and 60 GB of installation space to run the game. Its other requirements are pretty reasonable, with 1080p/30 FPS on Low settings requiring an AMD FX-6300 or Intel Core i3-6100 with 8 GB RAM and a Radeon R9 380 or GeForce GTX 960 with 3 GB VRAM. Recommended requirements include a Ryzen 7 1800X or Core i7-9700K, 16 GB RAM and a Radeon RX 5600 XT or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with 6 GB VRAM, with an SSD recommended. This setup delivers 1080p/60 FPS gameplay on Epic settings, which isn’t too shabby, but as always, we’ll wait till launch to see the actual performance.

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