While many games based on the Alien movies have been released over the years, few have been standouts. Actually, for every good game like Alien: Isolation, there have been terrible duds like Alien: Colonial Marines, and others not even worth the mention.
But still, fans of Ridley Scott’s Alien movie will still cheer the fact that another video game based on the movies is coming our way, even if this one has more in common with James Cameron’s Aliens sequel than the original 1979 classic.
You see, in Aliens: Dark Descent you control a squad of marines, which has crash landed on the planet Lethe, the Alien’s homeworld.
“Aliens: Dark Descent slings fans into the cold embrace of space where players will have to employ a range of tactical abilities to unravel an authentic Alien narrative full of sinister secrets, iconic Xenomorphs and brand new threats. Dive in and explore the horrors and wonders found within Aliens: Dark Descent, through a cinematic, narrative campaign”, says publisher Focus Interactive in a press release.
What’s interesting here is that, while this will be a squad-based, strategic game, the action will take place in real time. Also, this will ditch the turn-based gameplay seen in games such as XCOM 2, doing away with the need to give orders individually to each of your marines. This is because when you issue an order in Aliens: Dark Descent, the best-suited member of your team will obey it – with a marine’s equipment and abilities being taken into account for this as explained in the gameplay video below.
This also has an RPG element, as you can level up your squad members, which can acquire special abilities throughout the game, but those who end up picking up the game when it releases on June 20 will need to be careful, as the game features “permadeath”. That’s right, any marine in your squad that dies is gone for good, so extra care will be needed to reach the end game with your entire team alive…
It remains to be seen, though, whether Aliens: Dark Descent characters will be interesting enough (or the game’s narrative strong enough) for players to care, but judging by the trailer above it looks like this could be the first good Aliens game in a long while when it launches this summer on consoles and PC.