Aliens: Dark Descent is more than an XCOM clone – and feels surprisingly true to the movies

For some reason, despite the fact that I rather like the Alien film franchise and absolutely bloody love the squad-based tactics best exemplified by XCOM, Aliens: Dark Descent wasn’t really on my radar. After a hands-off demo of the game, however, it’s rocketed into my most-anticipated list.

I’m not sure why I wasn’t on board before. It might have been because the Alien franchise has a fairly checkered history in games, and recently also in film – though of course, it also gave us Alien Isolation, so I shouldn’t write the franchise off without due diligence. Maybe, though, it is because XCOM is just so damn good that every time I see an XCOM-alike, I wonder why I’d play it over the strategy genre perfection put out by Firaxis in the form of XCOM 2.

But like I said, seeing this demo of Aliens: Dark Descent immediately drives home why I should shelve that attitude and give this game some love. There’s two key reasons – first is simply that it just looks really good. The second, however, is just as important: this game is much more than an XCOM clone with a movie license.

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