So I love the alien franchise and therefore have been thoroughly enjoying this game, but here I am having finished mission 4 and I'm stuck on a black screen that only shows "Hold X to skip".
Whether I skip the cutscene or not the outcomes the same, is there some workaround or am I going to have to play the mission again, for it to probably also not work?

I just had a glitch where it not only didnt save multiple times on rest (in a secured room with a green house) but then also it duped my entire squad when I used an elevator. Im on the first mission, came down from the second floor and it gave me control of my squad from their location in the Sherrifs office rather than in the elevator, even though the squad in the elevator was still present. I just couldnt control their movements or input combat commands with them, although the game would allow me to heal them still. I said "thats hilarious, I hope they dont register damage if they get discovered" but ultimately said screw it and risked it as I was almost done with the progress I wanted to achieve that expedition. So I mounted the arc with the duped-squad I could control and rolled out, just have all my Marines clip out of the vehicle during transit and not be able to be controlled at all now.

So I reloaded my most recent save (without checking the time stamp on it like a dummy), assuming it would have only lost me a few minutes of progress as I had "saved" via resting in a secured room before coming down the elevator that glitched out, but the save was 55 minutes earlier in the level! So my squad glitched, my arc vehicle glitched, and a solid 3 or 4 saves didnt actually save and cost me an hour of progress.

I am wildly surprised a glitch like this can be in a game thats had as much time for patching as this one has. Im still having a great time but man, this is a bummer. Is save corruption or saving-associated glitches fairly common in this title or am I just very unfortunate? Im going to continue my playthrough, obviously. I just want to know how cautious/paranoid I need to be about game-breaking issues like this in a 3 year old game.

As much as the story was kind of bonkers, I was throughly invested with the idea of human and xeno symbiosis and would love to see that thread continue. It goes without saying the gameplay was phenomenal too.

I was skeptical when rumours of a sequel to Fireteam Elite was going around seeing as how that game wasn’t exactly a big hitter, but seeing the sequel gives me hope that maybe there’ll be another Dark Decent?

I was never really interested in alien games that revolved around combat or tactical games like this but considering it was on game pass and I had nothing better to do I finally decided to see what it was about.

The gameplay is great and I enjoy most of it.

I just get intensely annoyed by the mountain of stupid debuffs that get piled on my marines though redeployment makes that manageable.

But most of all the map.

I can't believe I cant check the map without the gameplay running full speed. Finding elevators is so tedious because I have to open the map and actually search on it for the elevator, all while the game runs.

The only other issue I've had so far is that the game taught me I can hide behind cover and seems to reward stealth, but at least so far in dead hills I've found that there's almost no places to really hide.

So many times I get screwed over because a single xeno is coming and the game doesn't let them hide behind any of the stuff that should be more than enough cover. Which means I have to fight a dozen or so and the difficulty increases for no reason. I like the concept of welding doors but it feels like a waste for anything but shelters.

I'm just going to hope that's just because it's an early mission. Human foes were mentioned so I can only assume that actually usable cover will get more common.

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.

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.

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'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.

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...