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In Dead Hills, for example, you'll need to locate the command centre, and use it to locate a half-dozen missing colonists, escorting each one from wherever they're hiding to your ARC. And all of this is before you think about completing your objectives, which are often as multilayered and uncompromising as your battles with the xenomorphs. Bug sprayĪll this combines to create a thrilling rollercoaster of tension, where a single xeno wandering into a room can spiral into an intense, protracted battle that could leave your marines terrified, maimed, abducted, or plain old dead. They can reduce stress by popping Naproleve pills, or welding the doors of a room shut for a quick rest. When this shifts up a gear, not only will more aliens prowl the mission area, they'll also send a massive horde in your direction.īut these attacks also increase your squad's stress levels, making them shoot more wildly and consume more ammo.
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Every attack increases alien aggressiveness, represented by a creeping ticker in the top right of the screen.
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Yet no matter how well you fend off the xenomorphs, there will be lingering consequences to the fight. Hence, Dark Descent's tactical fundamentals involve deploying these abilities effectively, knowing when to stick and when to twist. They regenerate automatically, but the rate is slow. But using these skills costs Command Points, and by default you only have a pool of three. Suppressive fire will slow encroaching aliens in a wide cone, while grenades and shotgun blasts are useful for eliminating specific threats. Hitting spacebar opens up a more elaborate skill menu. Your squad will automatically shoot to keep the creatures at bay, but that alone is rarely enough to stop them. When a xenomorph spots you, the hive is stirred and they go into hunt mode, homing in on your location. Whenever possible, you want to avoid the skittering white dots it highlights, not just because xenomorphs are an intensely bad hang, but because whenever you encounter them, it'll be worse than last time. As you skulk around the mission, exploring buildings and highlighting interactable items with your shoulder-lamp, your motion-tracker in the bottom-right of the screen tracks any movement in a 60-metre radius. It seems odd at first, but makes sense once you realise just how vulnerable your marines are when isolated. Unlike most tactics games, you control the entire squad simultaneously, moving them around with the right-mouse button and interacting with environments using the left. There's a bar, an armoury, a clinic, a command centre, and underneath it all, a twisting warren of mining tunnels. The first of these takes you to a facsimile of Hadley's Hope named Dead Hills, a sprawling shake 'n' bake colony with numerous buildings laid out on multiple floors. Each mission of the linear-ish campaign sees you dispatch a four-person team of marines to locations around Lethe, either to improve your situation or investigate why the moon is overrun with bugs. Once stranded on Lethe, however, the stories you create more than compensate for the narrative shortcomings. A mess of forced conflicts and awkward dialogue, it's a draining parasite hidden in the game's chest, just waiting to burst out with a clanging line or an incongruous emotional outburst. But the script lacks the same wit and subtleties. Tindalos Interactive has a decent cinematic eye, and Dark Descent captures the aesthetic and soundscape of both Scott and Cameron. The cause of the crash is detailed in an elaborate, story-driven prologue that doubles as a tutorial. The game takes place on Lethe, a xenomorph-infested moon owned by the OG tech-startup Weyland Yutani, and where the Colonial Marine frigate U.S.S Otago has had the misfortune to crash-land. Dark Descent plays its weakest card first, so let's do likewise and get it out of the way.
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