- Tested on PC.
- Steam code provided by the publisher.
- Home gameplay and screenshots
- Played about thirty hours in Nightmare mode (4/4) with automatic backup.
- Arrived at the mission 11/12: Watch out for the highest difficulty modes are arid and unbalanced as you will discover by reading this diary of a disillusioned marine!
- Damn it, it's impossible to change the difficulty along the way. A good listener when choosing your degree of masochism.
- Fichtre that it's hard, but what was it a beautiful video game experience in the respect of aliens!
Ode to James Cameron's film and his seafaring testosterone, Aliens Dark Descent Will put your nerves to the test. As good old Ash said, « I won't lie to you about your chances of survival, but... you have my sympathy... »
Being in the marines is like a farm holiday they said...
Like the recent film wanderings of the license with the mediocre Covenant, the saga has also experienced less glorious hours in the video game. After the excellent Alien Isolation which has definitely marked the survival horror, the last third person shooter Aliens Fireteam Elite had left a mixed feeling. Presented in hands off at Gamescom last year, Dark Descent, published at Focus, had been able to give water to our mouth. Rather than choosing the easy solution with an umpteenth FPS, the French from Tindalos Interactive preferred to opt for a more original game.
Designed as a tactical action game, Dark Descent recalls games like X-com – turn by turn in less – GTFO for the opportunity cost exploration/risk taking or Darkest Dungeon for the stress management of our unfortunate recruits. By alternating between phases of exploration of maps drowned in a thick fog of war and brief management sequences in the marine base, Aliens Dark Descent flirts with genres.
If the mechanics are generally simple at first glance, Dark Descent you will demand a reactivity to any test. A moment of doubt and it's the game over insured. With just one click, we give basic orders to our squad. The commands are intuitive and rather than controlling each bidasse individually, it is the whole group that operates in commando mode. On this point, the game comes out with honors and it's really gloomy to see these four makeshift soldiers block up against hordes of raging alien.
Of course, we find the whole range of weapons and gadget of Cameron's film. Before going on an expedition, it will be necessary to carefully choose his arsenal, his soldiers and allocate our exhaustable resources with intelligence between tool points, health points and precious battle turrets.
In addition to the main weapons, the developers brought additional firepower to the squadron with a system of three combat points that are slowly (very) charging. We can also gain more from our progress by boosting our saved soldiers. Another option on mission: sacrifice a tool point and move into mode distribution so that fighting points can recharge much faster over a short period of time while strengthening the specs of our soldiers. Ideal for xenomorph waves or out of control situations. However, be careful to use them sparingly under the penalty of no longer being able to hack electronic systems or seal rooms where to take breath.
Contaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaac...
Depending on the marines sent to the front, we can use the great means by using these precious combat points: a grenade launcher that slows down the hordes, a rocket launcher or a sniper to correct long-range xenomorphs, a shotgun for close combat or a flame launcher that is particularly effective in blocking aliens in a narrow corridor. Also add mines to protect your back. It will be necessary to exercise parsimony with the combat points used so as not to be overwhelmed by the monsters the time of charging.
One mission is thus to be as discreet as possible (good courage), since once discovered, aliens will go into tracking mode. The more situations arise, the more aggressive aliens will gain until they launch assaults like hornet swarms. The enemies will surprise you by adapting their strategy. At times, IA can have fun by bypassing your turrets or sending endless waves until you pierce your front lines. The knuckles play the number card with Russian sauce and they can quickly break your firing lines, destroy the armored doors, etc..
Xenomorph, you're losing your cold blood!
When the horde arrives, it will be essential to react quickly by cleaning the room before the arrival of the flow, poaching the maximum of automatic turrets against the entrance doors or gaping holes from where the aliens can escape and create removal lines to slow down the beasts. Then we wait, febrile, while the motion detector panicles.
The more the marines will be exposed in missions, the more their stress will intensify until they lose precision and bravery. These malus add together and a panicked soldier will gradually contaminate others. When the situation degenerates, it is strongly recommended to join our combat tank to extract the valuable resources of the marines. This same tank can also be redeployed to several places on the map, from which you can save your asses when you are outside and when a column of aliens is behind you.
Saved soldiers gain experience in the image of an RPG and can be awarded up to five different classes with their own abilities. The higher the spec, the stronger the spec. Increasing the chances of dismemberment up to almost 50% or critical costs will be essential to return situations to our advantage. But as they say in the jargon, choosing is giving up and Aliens Can cultivate his dilemmas. It's even the key to the title.
Increasing the mental strength of our squadron is also essential because a wounded or even amputated soldier is very likely to end up traumatized. Without adequate care, psychiatric disorders can worsen and root. For example, some marines will suffer from pyrophobia, which will increase their stress when using a flamethrower. So many malus who combine with our soldier's main character line. Some are more prone to stress, others to bravery, etc..
Aliens Wagner Edition
The worse the mission goes, the more physically and psychologically the soldiers will be broken, sometimes up to a few ten days during which it will be impossible to mobilize them without providing them with special care and additional means. In seasoned dolorist, I opted for the mode Nightmare who offers us no gifts as his name indicates.
Suffice to say that I sometimes felt like I was taking on the role of Evgeni Prigojine, when he catapulted his troops in Bakhmout, between two hypocritical speeches to galvanize the cannon flesh. « 10 days of ITT for an amputated arm? Fragile bands Hey! Um, congratulations. Hey! » throws the colonel, well hidden in the USS Otago. Dark Descent is intransigent and is certainly one of the toughest games of the year, in its last mode of difficulty anyway.
Aliens are extremely fast, even when the weapons menu is opened and time is slowing down. When a soldier passes the weapon to the left, it's for good. The universe as death is therefore persistent and the longer it takes to finish a mission, the more alien infested the place and become virulent. Ammunition, too, is not legions, and once the main weapon is dry, your soldiers will pass by handgun and your chances of survival will be divided by three, if not more...
Soldiers can also fall into coma, tituber as in Dino Crisis and thus reduce your defence capacity before extraction. The facehuggers are also likely to jump into your face and condemn the poor victim, unless you have developed the right technology to save the unfortunate in a very short time.
An alien can also take advantage of the zizania to kidnap one of your own and you will have to eliminate it before he joins the hive. Not always obvious since xenomorphs are much faster than you and it will be impossible for you to use heavy weapons on monsters, because your soldier is necessarily in the line of sight. Killing a short-range alien is also a risk of acidic gum in the face. Keeping your distance is therefore essential. You must also consider the arrival of more swift or heavy xenomorphs but we will let you discover these surprises welcome by yourself.
Given the difficulty of the game, we are sometimes reduced to abandoning our precious material behind us. This is particularly the case of turrets that can be destroyed when aliens overflow us. When the mission turns to the Berezina, one is sometimes reduced to escaping behind our combat tank, otherwise severing to return later rested and better armed. Overall, the maps are huge and the objectives are not always very clear, so that to get into a station runs very quickly with vinegar as the ammunition melts like snow in the sun. By default, the game offers an automatic backup that is beneficial to limit nerve attacks.
To this can also add areas whose doors will have to be sealed to create a checkpoint and lower the stress of your soldiers. There again nothing is free, and the necessary points are rare. If you don't, you'll either have to sniff out, or squander your anxiolytics to hold on. Again it will be a balance to weigh between reducing stress and keeping valuable care kits. A cruel dilemma especially as xenomorphs can eliminate you in a fraction of seconds. Sometimes we don't even have time to see our recruits go from life to life, even in slow motion. As for the passages in total darkness, the latter reinforce stress while the beam of our flashlight will offer a meager comfort.
Bogs to gogo in Nanarland
« But tell me, Colonel, that sounds like an excellent game, no. ? » Everything would be fine in the best of the worlds if the experience were not tainted with flaws that fuel frustration. Already there are these cursed bugs that rot a mission and make you venerate automatic backups. You are advised to leave them enabled by default to enjoy the adventure, the game being clearly designed to reload the games after a carabinated defeat. For example, it happened several times to reach the target target and to be unable to launch the elevator.
These bugs are recurring and we are obliged to load the previous backup, or even more upstream. Great moment too, when a kinematic starts and we lose total control of our brigade. Meanwhile, it's buffet at will for xenomorphs... I also pass the passages stuck in the rest room. It was worth a nap to end up in prison for life... Fortunately these bugs can be bypassed by the use of automatic backups.
Among the defects, Dark Descent Probably could have offered more varied environments and more inspired music. The OST is really poor and contrasts with noise quality. I also want to dedicate a few lines to the colonel, caricature caricature with these Totakéké eyebrows that reinforce unworthy facial expressions of a 2023 game. It is all the more unfortunate that some sequences in synthetic images are generally successful. No doubt the budget of the title was limited and that good old colonel paid for it...
The intrigue finally rests on a stupid scenario where the only moments of sincere emotion will be those where the expressions of the characters turn to the frank laugh. Of course Cameron is never very subtle in these films and the game respects perfectly the universe ofAliensBut were we really forced to integrate stories worthy of family life in the midst of an alien invasion and fanatics who worship them secretly?
The clichés accumulate without ever being attached to these insipid characters. Even if we can customize our recruits, their modeling is so bad that it's no use. It would probably have been more interesting to include better written personalities like the saga Fire Emblem where every final death was a mourning. It is also a pity that the Monopoly's chances card system is no more complex to the image of Frostpunk. Indeed, between the days that flow tirelessly, one can choose between two very summary, little inspired and often identical branches with the risk of having a positive or negative effect on the key.
I suggest we take off and blow up a nuclear charge. At least we'll be sure of the result!
But the cherry on the cake comes from one last element of gameplay that you would be wrong to neglect. At half the game, an element explains the countdown from the beginning of the game. We are told that a nuclear missile is on its way to atomize the planet. So, if it sounds funky on paper, it's pretty awkward if we didn't integrate all the management elements between missions, including assigning engineers between each day.
In mode Nightmare, we find ourselves de facto faced with a lack of time to finish the game. It's all the more a pity that it's a little silly to have to reassign engineers between days, when they haven't finished their job. What interest if it is not to confront the player with a wall of unnecessary difficulty in the last quarter?
Par ailleurs, viser le 100% à chaque mission pour trouver des ressources et technologies supplémentaires est certes bénéfique pour le centre de commandement et vos marines, mais cela prend du temps… Et c’est d’autant plus ballot lorsqu’un missile nucléaire toque à la porte de l’USS Otago. J’ai moi-même été victime de mes travers maniaques à vouloir explorer chaque coin du titre… jusqu’au point de non-retour.
Hey Billy, y a moyen de sortir de ce trou ?
C’est donc l’heure des aveux. L’auteur de ces lignes a beau avoir fait du mieux qu’il pouvait pour finir la mission 10 qu’il pensait la dernière, c’est avec stupeur qu’il a découvert qu’il restait deux niveaux et plus qu’un jour avant l’Armageddon… Alors que le tunnel du game over semblait de plus en plus inévitable, j’ai poussé mes soldats jusqu’à leurs derniers retranchements en finissant la mission 10 d’une traite avec des soldats traumatisés à vie et victimes d’un stress extrême. Impossible de poursuivre.
Un seul mort sur une trentaine de jeu (merci les rechargements de sauvegarde) mais impossible de finir Dark Descent sans se prendre une ogive de plutonium sur le crâne. J’ai donc capitulé, trop frustré de devoir recharger ma partie une dizaine d’heures en amont malgré une aventure qui m’aura obsédé sur quelques jours d’une intensité folle. « Après tout, y-a-t-il vraiment un film Alien qui finit bien ? » philosophe le perdant rancunier.
J’ai échoué et j’ai rechargé mes sauvegardes jusqu’à en perdre la tête. L’épée de Damoclès est prête à s’abattre, l’horloge atomique approche de l’heure fatidique. RIP marines, cette secte de fanatiques qui idolâtre ces créatures était-elle sur la bonne voie ? Ash avait finalement raison et je dédie donc ces quelques mots à ces créatures, finalement si parfaites : « Alien. Xénomorphe à la grise robe, dans l’enfer de l’espace, à mon regard tu te dérobes… Tu es vraiment le plus agile ! »
Ce test transpire la souffrance! Ça me parle. Moi qui me demandais quel allait être mon prochain jeu après The Last of Us: Part1, eh bien Aliens Dark Descent est désormais tout trouvé.
J’ai lu ton test en écoutant la BO du premier d’ailleurs :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pnev1fa2bY&list=PLqnnuEVGcRQxuqYpNjdR32_dVRzDmVs1O&index=1&ab_channel=FlixSoundtracks
Je pense que tu aurais vraiment dû le commencer en ”Normal” ou en ”Hard”. Le dernier niveau de difficulté est souvent de rigueur soit quand on a déjà assimilé toutes les mécaniques du jeu en question, soit quand on est vraiment accoutumé au genre auquel le jeu est relié. Perso je le commencerai en hard je pense, mais clairement pas en ”nightmare”!
Je vais venger tes soldats…
Hâte de lire ton retour. N’hésite pas à donner ton avis ici s’il est différent ou complémentaire du mien.
Oui j’ai été trop gourmand en mettant tous les indicateurs au rouge vif. Je n’avais pas vu qu’il y avait moyen de baisser la difficulté de “l’horloge”.
C’est le seul truc que je regrette de ne pas avoir descendu d’un cran. J’aurais sans doute pu finir le jeu sinon. Venge moi Ummagumma !
J’adore ! Je comprends mieux pourquoi tu as pris autant de temps pour l’écrire 😉
Oui, j’ai vraiment essayé de retranscrire cette obstination face à un mur de difficulté finale et des bugs bloquants. J’ai certes commis des erreurs propres à la découverte, mais je voulais vraiment en découdre avec le jeu. Y a pas de titres de la franchise qui se sont aventuré sur ce terrain là et rien que pour cette raison, le jeu vaut le détour.