For the hardcore strategists who ain't got time for soft ass stories:
👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkrZpwkaXz0&list=PL-ivRSmJp1MQarocgNzfeWdQGD7-1RUFb&index=1
For lovers of immersion it begins and ends here:
👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK5BCIBU7Zw&list=PL-ivRSmJp1MRi1Fw0nRB8x-qKyKwRPbac

Dark Decent was begging for a DLC which never came.  I hope we get a sequel.

Dark Descent gave me such a ptsd that when I was at the supermarket and heard the cashregisters pinged accidently in just the right order to make it sound like the proximity sensor from the game, and I frozed up and stopped breathing.

Ah this game is so overlooked, it’s the second best Alien game. Atmosphere is so frikkin good. One thing I love is that the rising alien threat meter means you are always the underdog, so it stops you from being able to clear levels of threats and also forces you to keep moving once shit hits the fan, or things will only get worse. My main criticism is it’s actually too long. But there are so many unique ideas and mechanics in this game, it deserves a lot of credit.

To say that this game captures the atmosphere of Cameron's movie is a gross understatement.
To this day, it blows my mind that someone actually thought: Hey, what if we made an "Aliens" game, where the player's POV will feel both like if they were sitting in an APC, monitoring his squad's health, stress, and ammo levels, and as if they were the squad leader, issuing commands in real time out in the field, keeping his face glued to a motion tracker, all at the same time, AND make it work? On top of that, you'll be manage your "economy" between deployments, evac whenever you feel like it, and each time you redeploy to the same mission, you'll even gain the option to chose where the drophip will land, as long as you've secured that area earlier.
I could literally go on for hours to hammer in the point that this game is absolutely seething with passion and attention to detail when it comes to core mechanics and aesthetics, and I still probably wouldn't give it the credit it deserves.
Yes, the voice acting is bad, the narrative is even worse, some mechanics are janky, and the linear mission progression doesn't really incetivise you to start the game all over and try a different approach once you finish it for the first time, but the immerision is so damn good you just don't care about it anyway.
You can deploy well armed, skilled, talented, equipped, and rested squad with all the confidence of ultimate bad-asses ready to conquer and kick-some, and still, if you make one wrong move or blink at the wrong time, your marines can get abducted, lose conciousness, or slowly start bleeding out, forcing you to make decisions that'll really make your heart beat faster and make you pray that you'll make it back to your APC before it's game over, man!

Finally got around to playing Dark Descent mid 2025, and blown away by how great it is, so underrated. Captures Aliens perfectly.

This game combined Command and Conquer with my favourite franchise.  Total win.

This game is amazing.  I’ve got about 350 hours in it. I’ll put it down for a while then come back.  Been through it probably 10 times.  I want  a part 2 so much.

Dark Decent has both an Unmatched Atmosphere that perfectly captures the essence of Aliens (2) but also game breaking bugs that can have you stuck in the Tutorial as no one bothered to patch UI bugs since game launch.

Isolation is an incredible game.  Beat it with VR and it probably took a couple of years off my life.

One of the best things about the game is that you can be walking along with a squad that's armed and armoured extremely well, having taken the mission in your stride, and then because you got overconfident end up losing 25% of your troops to an alien that surprised you and took a marine out. You then end up desperately backpedalling while trying to save the poor soul who's now being dragged away by the aliens for cocooning, all while you're realising that the constant gunfire is about to raise the hive alert level to a point where you're going to have to deal with a swarm as well.

Those moments, where you do have your sentry gun and try to find a good defensive position and create choke points with mines and flamethrowers, are the best recreation of the movie mood I've ever played.

DD understood something that really flew over the heads of the fire team elite devs and that’s level design. The industrial ships and LV colony style locations are a critically important character. The first episode of fire team was the great but then locations changed drastically never returning to the iconic visual style. In a perfect world we’d have a game that merged the two where you have the guilt of poor command and mgmt choices layered with the ground level first person fear of dealing with the consequences.

Very cinematic presentation,  I will watch this video more than once.
My respect.
It's a masterpiece in editing ❤😊

The sniper upgrade saved my ass too many times

This game also pays a lot of homage to the Dark Horse Aliens comics (which aren't canon but did introduce some really great ideas and interesting story elements). That alone gives it a major bonus from me.

Criminaly underrated. Ppl got hung up that it was not a shooter or survival horror and dissmissed it.

Isolation captured the essence of the first movie, Dark Descent of the second one.
I really enjoyed Aliens DD, played around 600 hours.
Is such a shame that Fox\Disney didn't renewd the rights to the dev team for delivery more contents \ patch :/

ALIENS is my favorite film and to have a game like this where it's basically an ALIENS simulator with you as Gorman was everything I'd hoped for. Really wish it would get a sequel or a movie tie in DLC on Hadley's Hope.

I was hooked onto Dark Descent the moment I saw its gameplay reveal. I do agree with other comments here, saying it’s the 2nd best Aliens game (although Fireteam boosted itself up after content updates), and I ran into SO many bugs, that it did make it infuriating to continue through, but it goes to show how amazing the gameplay loop is because I ALWAYS kept coming back.

Every time the game reset all my squadmates’ classes & customization, I would get sucked back in and do it all over again because the game is THAT good. It is a shame that the bugs are so prevalent that common audiences would look past it; however, I will forever remember this title as one of the best concepts executed for the Alien franchise. Great video!

My brother wanted to customize his own squad of marines during my run, Commander Shepard based off of Mass Effect alongside 'The Lightbringer' flamer unit and other named marines which really grew on me, I had to make sure to proceed through the game without losing any of them, doing that on the Nightmare difficulty had me feeling pressure and tension like nothing else!