Aliens: Dark Descent Review (Shockwave)
For this game I wish Steam had a "maybe". Aliens Dark Descent isn't a terrible game. It's worth it in a decent sale if you are a fan of the aliens franchise, but it just has several unforced errors that keep it from being great and at the same time feel rather punitive by the devs.
The game-play is generally good. Like Xcom except in real time and not turn based, with very limited pausing (no pausing by default but rather a slow mo while you give orders). The missions aren't bad and the overall game design is fairly well done. I'm only about half way through the campaign and the missions are long enough to be satisfying and it seems like the game length overall is not skimped on.
You level your marines much like X com or other games, field a team of 4 or 5 and level up backups when the main squad is tired or injured. You improve a base, research new weapons and are up against a time crunch where you have to complete the missions before a certain number of days have passed (right out of X com 2) All fairly common tropes done better in other games. Nothing ground breaking here, but it's all taken and set in the aliens universe which again, is compelling for fans.
The devil is in the details and it is in the details where the game gets janky. it is all about the tactics you use to defeat the missions. Setting up turrets, choke points, making sure you are carful, avoiding ambushes, etc. Winning well (not getting injured) is essential to fielding your team again for the next mission. But the game dose a lot to prevent you from doing that.
1) You can not choose your movement order or order marines to move individually. Thus you can not put your guy with the most armor in front or hurt marine in the back. In areas where you need to silently snipe a bad guy before they notice you your sniper may be in the rear and you have to expose your entire squad (and get seen) before he get position for a shot. A simple marching order (that can be changed on the fly) would go a long way here, but as it is, it saps the "tactical" aspect of the game.
2) They over use cinematics that force your team into bad situations. Changes of camera angles during cinematic is common so you come out of it confused. In one instance the game warns you that you are about to encounter a very hard situation and should prepare your squad.. so I put down my 4 automated sentry guns in a nice defense-able position before opening the door with with the warning.. and the game cinematic made me run INTO the room.. changed the camera angle 180 degrees, closed and locked the door, and started a giant fight (my guns were all locked outside). So after carefully thinking through the tactics (which this game is all about) the devs basically took control of my squad and made them be super dumb. so I would lose (not packing up the guns before going in the room).
3) Random skills on marines. Having to choose between skills for your marines and not being able to get a perfect build is ok, but the randomness here seems petty. There are uber game breaking skills and near-useless skills and you get a random choice of three each level making you extremely uninvolved in how good your marine is in combat. if you get lucky skills they can be 2-3x as good as if you don't get offered those skills all outside of your control. In addition what class you become is Random. You could take accuracy skills on your marine for 2 levels and then not be offered the sniper (recon) class at level 3. There are also skills that require more than one marine to have them (team spirit) if you take it with one and don't get offered it on another you can end up wasting the skill entirely if you can't pair it.
4)There is no manual saving. This alone is a huge drawback to any game. Sorry but people have lives, and there are hour long stints in this game where you may not have hit a save point. not everyone can do that. Sure you can "manually" save by spending your precious resources when you wouldn't need to otherwise, but that breaks with the "doing well tactically" requirement of the game. But even that isn't universally available.
For a game dedicated to making good tactical decisions, there is no excuse for lack of control of your squad, bad cinematic choices, random marine upgrades and potentially useless skills. No saving is just a frustration point for anyone with time constraints or children.
But you may not care about those specific things and generally the game is still worth it despite them for me, but I am a huge aliens fan.