After the initial showing of Aliens: Dark Descent, you’ve probably got a lot of questions: is the game a sequel? Is Aliens: Dark Descent multiplayer? Can you play it only in single-player? When is this new Aliens game coming out? Well, after a hands-off session in Gamescom, Germany, we can at least help you out with the answers to a few of these burning questions.
First up, Aliens: Dark Descent is single-player only. The title is a squad-based, single-player action game that lands somewhere between Diablo and XCOM – at least to my eye. Playing through an original Alien story (set sometime after Alien 3, we’re told), you will command a squad of marines in real-time combat against the Xenomorph threat. You’ll need to think about troop placement, the terror levels of your crew, and how long your traps and tools can hold up before needing repairs.
The setup is this: there’s a prelaunch screen where you’ll have an overview of your crew before every deployment, and once you’re done, you’ll be able to rifle through the various bits of detritus you’ve found to see if there’s anything particularly meaningful that you can salvage. Enter systems like item rarity, equipment slots, and such. But the actual meat of the game – the amount of time you’ll be exploring Moon Lethe with your (probably doomed) crew – that’s set at about “anywhere 20 minutes and an hour”.
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