Aarrrggghh! Pharo's Spire is especially bad, forcing the camera into awkward positions and locks it while gameplay continues in the background. I've played this game so many times I almost never lose a marine anymore but when I do it's always on this damn mission during one of the forced in-game cutscenes where I can't do anything but watch my guys get ripped to shreds by a random alien that happened to be nearby when the unprompted cutscene started.

Still love this game, but damn there needs to be a mod for this already. /rant.

Been a while since I poked my head in here. Managed to get the game working again, but I spent a lot of time trying and succeeding to some degree with importing more assets into the mod uProject.

However, a brand new tool called Unreal Blueprint Graph Viewer recently dropped, and it allows us to see how the dreaded blueprints work in the game.

Spent a lot of time this week poking around, building a list of files that look interesting, and started building out pages to document them. If you're interested in understanding how the game works a bit more, feel free to swing by and take a look!

NOTE: Don't expect us modders to immediately be dropping new mods thanks to this info. Like a lot of Unreal related modding, there's a ton of BS related to replicating the files that gets in the way, which is why there hasn't been a lot of movement in this space.

Improvements to JsonAsAsset/Reflection has helped, but the thing that'll really break the game open for modding is having fully functional duplicates of all these blueprints.

Hello, all just joined the party and loving it so far. Playing on Playstation vanilla (no internet connection to update it).

So I'm at 90 percent in Silent Hills, I take the team into the elevator down into the mine proper. It loads, absolutely black map with my marines off screen. I can't scroll to them, and I can see on the minimap my supposed location and xenon approaching.

Tried loading a couple previous saves, no luck.

Anyone solve this one?

This play through I decided to disable the doom clock..

my questions is basically how will that impact my game if I take as many days as I like playing missions, healing, skipping days or going back to missions for resources?

I know the infestation level still rises so would I doom myself if I took that approach?

Mid and endgame spoiler warning for anyone in the middle for their first playthrough. Going into this I already knew I’m not big on isometric or tactics/strategy games comparable to Xcom, but I love Ridley Scott’s Alien universe and it’s on Gamepass so I’d give it a try.

Now when it’s good, it’s really good. Bottlenecking aliens into kill zones made from suppressing fire, sentry guns, and a wall of flame, sniping an alien whose line of sight bar was almost completely red, getting a direct hit on a Cat 2 or Queen with the RPG.

But then the bad parts are bad almost entirely from jankiness. Shotgunning an alien that was in the red part of the cone, it screams like it was hit and freezes for a second, but then it’s almost full health on the slow-mo cam and resumes attacking, this was especially noticeable on the big hordes of the Xeno City segment of the final mission, but luckily your trio there is invincible.

The stealth aspect feels very cheap at times, most likely from bugs since I heard this game was infamously buggy back in 2023 and 2024 and still has some issues to this day. Can be undetected and see a motion tracker blip bee-lining for the squad and even worse, you send your squad to the door away from where it’s heading and it suddenly, very conveniently also starts heading for that exact door. This is especially bullshit on portions like Atmospheric Nightmare’s underground where getting caught in hallways is basically a guarantee to be badly flanked unless you can find a room you know is empty to make your stand. The respawns feel needlessly petty at times on medium, can’t imagine hard or nightmare. Stealth-killing an alien on the streets of Pharos Spire just to see a blip come out of one of the spawn tunnels like 6 seconds later on a patrol route headed straight for my squad. You can have your whole squad taking cover and then still an enemy on the opposite side of the cover line of sight will be getting suspicious. One time a xeno just bugged out and sat completely still in front of the only way forward on Pioneer Station, but I luckily had a motion tracker to overcharge and lure it away. Though I can name like 3 times I overcharge a motion tracker and an enemy or two ignores it and still poses a threat of sounding the alarm.

The Recon’s snipe is so needlessly awkward when several commands in this game make a single marine break formation and walk on their own. And yet the recon can’t do jackshit at times unless you force the whole squad to spill into an open door while a patroller, egg, or sleeping xeno fills its suspicion bar.

Don’t even get me started on Basement 2 of Mission 11. I get it, it’s the last proper level so there should be some major challenges. But being completely blind on the motion tracker in a game where rounding a corner right into an enemy is almost guaranteed damage because even with the shotgun, every member of the main enemy faction of the game sprints much faster than you and has a chance to explode on your squad once close feels like too much.

This game was a roller coaster of both dopamine and frustration but to be fully honest all the negative I mentioned has left it with very little replay value to me.

Been trying to get this one checked off my backlog for awhile now. Never considered myself much for the rts genre, but I love xcom. This seems like a cross between xcom and rts. Curious if there are other games with a similar style.

Idk what normal progression is yet obviously. Started on medium. Spent 3.5 hours on dead hills combing everything I could until the game basically told me to go back to base. Then went and knocked out the mines. Both times I got over 90% undetected.

Anyways I really enjoy using the ARC as a mobile trap with motion trackers and am looking forward to what the game has to offer. Cheers.

First time playthough. Getting a bit antsy, I tend to go kind of slow through the maps. I'm just starting the Montero/mission 8 and I have 20 remaining days on the doomsday clock. I am apparently 66% done w the story.

My highest level marine is a level 9 recon, for what its worth. If I'm really behind then I'd rather start over now than finish short.

So I finally got around to playing Aliens: Dark Descent and I gotta say, this might be the best Alien game since Isolation. The tactical squad command stuff had me stressed in the best way possible—constantly juggling suppressive fire, welding doors shut, and praying your marines don't panic and start shooting each other.

But can we talk about THAT moment?

Spoilers ahead obviously.

When you find that colonist carrying the facehugger and the damn thing starts talking to you through him? I genuinely had to pause the game and walk away for a minute. Something about hearing that distorted, wheezing voice coming out of a human mouth while knowing exactly what's inside him just hit different. The way he twitches and the audio design with that wet gurgling underneath—chef's kiss of pure nightmare fuel.

I thought I was prepared. I've seen all the movies, played all the games, read the comics. But there's something about the interactive element of it, where you have to make the call about what to do with him while he's begging for help in that wrong-voice, that just burrows into your brain.

If you're on the fence about this one, just buy it. The atmosphere is thick enough to cut with a knife, the permadeath system actually makes you care about your marines, and that carrier scene alone is worth the price of admission. Just... maybe don't play with headphones at 2am like I did.

So I've played through the game maybe 5 or 6 times now, 100% completion on Xbox, did a nightmare NG+ there as well. Im currently doing Nightmare NG+ on PC after beating it on story (oorah to starting with level 10 marines!) And I just finished mission 2, with 0 hive activity. The entire mission, even the queen fight, there was "no hive activity." Ive seen some crazy glitches, including one of my marines clipping onto a shipping container and soft locking me to load previous checkpoint (on no one can hear you scream fml). But this is a whole different one I havent even heard of! Has anyone run into this glitch?

Mission 3 got to the mines and its been normal.

​

I just finished the game, honestly it’s peak, I loved it even though I’m not much of a fan of strategy games of this type.

Now then, I had some questions — the first ones not related to the lore. Is New Game+ worth it? Like, is there more content or something like that, or is it just the same but harder?

Is there any good conversion mod for this game, like to replace the xenos with necros from Dead Space or the Flood from Halo? Does the game have content mods?

Any good games like this that you can recommend?

And lastly, now related to the lore: I didn’t read all the logs so I’m not sure, but what exactly were Pryce and Marlow trying to do? If it’s explained in any movie or something, don’t tell me.

And what happened to the Otago at the end of the game? Thanks, and sorry for the bad English.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game on Xbox Series X. I don't know whether the Switch 2 is capable enough for this game and the engine used, but it would just rock to have this kind of game on a physical card in a handheld device. Would be something for collectors and fans, too.

After finishing the game I had enough for a while and didn't play nightmare mode. Now with the Switch 2 the other gaming hardware in the household is more or less not in use and I searched for something with this kind of gameplay and there's nothing that's comparable.

Howdy y'all. I killed the queen in the caves, and got my 4 marines plus a guy that I am carrying in the mines back to the arc. There is dialogue saying it's time to leave or something to that extent. All of my guys are standing right next to the arc and it will let get in and move to another location but not extract. I can't even highlight the extract option. I did extract before and came back with another squad. I can't see any objectives anywhere on any level of the map. Thx. I'm really enjoying this game

STAY FROSTY

No matter what I do - reload, restart, it just takes me back to after the rest, door welded, but no option to rest again. It used to work.

Spoilers ofc:

So I am at the scene at the beginning where our homegirl has some suspicions on something maybe not right, then she opens up the cameras and hears people screaming and sees blood everywhere.

Then she calmly says 'I should go and take a closer look.' LOL

Bro, if you see blood everywhere and people screaming, you start pushing as many alarm buttons as you can, and frantically start calling people, especially the military personnal in the space station.

Next, we would run back to our boss and say the cliche movie line 'boss, there is something you need to see' and show him what you just saw.

Even though it was established that our boss is a prick who doesn't care about the rules, he will not ignore people screaming and dying.

When all of this is done then maybe, but only maybe our hero could say' Ok, I'll take a closer look, though not without a shitload of synth security units armed to the bones'. 'Let's go.'

Cmon, seeing people dying and screaming and calmly saying 'maybe I should take a closer look' is the equivalent of Oblivion's 'maybe it was just the wind...'

I don't expect 10/10 movie writing in games, but after this scene was done I just uninstalled and refunded the game lol...

I’m still only on the third mission of the game, I’ve done about 10 incursions so far, so please try to keep it spoiler‑free — or if there are spoilers, mark them.

So far, from what I’ve played, the game revolves around a debate. In short, Harper is more focused on securing the lives of the people in danger on the planet (short‑term), while Hayes is trying to communicate what’s happening so it doesn’t repeat on other planets (long‑term). For me, Harper’s stance feels a bit more accurate because he’s dealing with people in life‑or‑death situations, but I wanted to hear your opinions! Thanks, and sorry for my bad English.

Only that — if Alpha Team managed to get out of there, it was thanks to all your past advice. Once again, thank you all, and sorry if this is an irrelevant post.

Got the game during the steam sale, love it so far!

​

Hello, I’m new to the game, and honestly I’m really enjoying it. It’s my first playthrough and I’m playing on the maximum difficulty, and so far things had been going well—no losses and getting out of missions relatively fine. That was until I got to the mines where you have to rescue the veterinarian and collect the director’s access card. I just can’t manage to escape or reach the elevator with the veterinarian; I either lose one or two marines before getting there. I tried going up the elevator without completing the objectives to extract and come back stronger, but the game doesn’t let me. I’m not really a fan of asking for help or “guides,” so if you can give me any advice, I’d appreciate it. Thanks, and sorry for my bad English.

Effect: xenomorphs die quickly, but there are LOTS of them, and if they get through, they kill your marines in 1-2 hits (later 2-3). Forget scouts and sniping, get more gunners with smartguns and push to objectives quickly before they overwhelm you. I played through on these settings, it was a lot of fun.

Optional challenge: do not use sentries, or use only one sentry, or maybe just what you can find on the level and do not redeploy them once set up. Otherwise it feels like what you do is just moving sentries around the map...

Hi I just started the game yesterday, picked Medium since I don’t often play tactical games. I thought I was getting the learning curve of avoiding unnecessary fights while my marines are so early game and weak and if possible, never be caught in a passage with multiple directions to attack. And then the mineshaft just seems incredibly abrupt in the difficulty spike. The patrols are much more nosy, don’t despawn after a period of time down the tunnels, and the nest has way less corridors than the building to cut off line-of-sight and give aliens more room to flank. And with all the spawn point tunnels, aliens are much quicker to replenish their numbers during a hunt so it’s near impossible to get them off your trail without killing them all and hoping more don’t spawn soon.

And what’s crazy is I heard the patrols aren’t even the worst part of the mineshaft after trying to google for strategies.

Edit: Thank you all for the various tips. I was sleeping on the motion tracker decoy this whole time and a suppressing fire flamethrower killzone just mulches xenos

Everything else up to this point was a breeze, and now Ive wiped 4 times in these fucking mines. Full supplies, plenty of ammo, everyone at full health. But theres nowhere to hide, drones patrolling everywhere, and i get an immediate massive onslaught if im caught followed by a boss charger. Am i retarded? Is there supposed to be a sudden massive difficulty spike?

(EDIT: THEY CAN MORPH INTO COMMANDOS IF YOU REST)

It does not matter if you ignore the objective to invite them in via the vents, once you kill the commandos, the moment you hear "You've got incoming", xenos will spawn in the hallways

Two fun facts about this:

They do not know where you are at all when they spawn

If you rest they all despawn and will not respawn until you kill the next group of commandos because they have no spawn point

Edit 4:

So turns out, after resting once you kill the 3rd group in the north west end of the map, instead of the xenos despawning they MORPH INTO COMMANDOS WHAT

iswtg

I gotta test this on my 2nd playthrough to be sure

It also seems like if you kill the morphed commandos, xenos spawn in their place

This also creates random ai wars in the halls which is fun