My investigation of the refinery was going well, until I descended underground. The maze of tunnels and warehouses was the perfect hideout for the xenomorphs in Aliens: The Dark Descent, and my Colonial Marines had been plagued relentlessly by H.R. Giger's phallic nightmares since the break-in. Now they are trapped. Huddled at the end of a narrow corridor, three Marines are burning ammunition to hold back the aliens' advance, while a fourth is working on hacking the control panel to open the door behind them. But there are too many xenomorphs, not enough time, and no way to avoid them in this narrow steel tube.

And also there is no way to avoid Sergeant Kurtz's shotgun.

Just inches from the deformity, Kurtz fires a buckshot from close range. He was unable to kill the giant Praetorian that had charged in, but he stunned it, giving Tecker McDonald enough time to crack the door code. My squad passed through the opening, and I instructed Corporal Sainz to fill the passage behind us with purifying fire. The xenomorphs still rushed forward, screaming as they burned. But a grenade from McDonald's pulse rifle finally knocked them down.

It is a miracle that my Marines survived this encounter. But they will not survive the next one. They are exhausted, acid-burned, out-equipped, and so frightened they can barely shoot properly. We have only a few minutes to complete the mission, but we order them to retreat anyway. Tomorrow, I will return with a new unit to complete the mission. The deformities will be stronger, but that is a risk I must take.

Many games have tried to recreate the slow, tense, chaotic action of "Alien," but "Dark Descent" is the first game since Monolith's "AvP 2" to do so successfully. Developer Tindalos Interactive has thoroughly thought about how to maximize James Cameron's film in the virtual world, resulting in an eye-popping real-time tactics game that blends stealth, strategy, and gripping gunfights.

"Dark Descent" will play its weakest card first, so do the same and outplay it. The game takes place on the xenomorph-infested moon Lete, owned by OG tech startup Wayland Utani, where the Colonial Marine frigate U.S.S. Otago has unfortunately crash-landed. The cause of the crash is explained in detail in an elaborate, story-driven prologue that also serves as a tutorial. Tindalos Interactive has a decent cinematic eye, and "Dark Descent" captures the aesthetic and soundscape of both Scott and Cameron. But the script lacks wit and subtlety. Cluttered with forced confrontations and awkward dialogue, the script is like a parasite lurking in the chest of a game, waiting to burst with clattering dialogue and disproportionate emotional outbursts.

But once you are left behind in Lethe, the narrative you create more than makes up for the narrative's shortcomings. Each mission of the linear campaign sends a team of four Marines to a location around Lethe to remedy the situation and investigate why the moon is riddled with bugs. The first mission takes them to a colony named Dead Hills, which is modeled after Hadley's Hope. It has a bar, an armory, an infirmary, a command center, and a winding mining tunnel beneath it.

Unlike most tactics games, you control your entire squad simultaneously, moving them with the right mouse button and interacting with the environment with the left. This seems odd at first, but it makes sense once you realize how vulnerable the Marines are when isolated. As you sneak around missions, explore buildings, and highlight interactive items with the shoulder lamp, a motion tracker in the lower right corner of the screen tracks your every move within a 60 meter radius. Whenever possible, you want to avoid the white spots it highlights. Not only because the deformity is an intensely bad hang, but also because any time you encounter it, it will be worse than the last time.

When the xenomorph finds you, the hive stirs, goes into hunting mode, and homing in on your location. Your squad will automatically fire to keep the creature at bay, but that is rarely enough to stop the creature. Pressing the space bar opens a more elaborate skills menu. Suppressive fire slows down aliens that invade in broad cones, while grenade and shotgun blasts help eliminate specific threats. However, using these skills requires command points, which are only three by default. Command points are regenerated automatically, but at a slower rate.

Thus, the basis of dark descent tactics is to deploy these abilities effectively and to know when to stick and when to twist. Nevertheless, no matter how well the aliens are repelled, the battle will have a lingering effect. With each attack, the aliens' aggression increases, as indicated by the ticker in the upper right corner of the screen. As this gears up, not only will more aliens be hanging around the mission area, but they will also send swarms your way.

However, these attacks increase the squad's stress level, causing them to fire wildly and consume more ammunition. Stress can be reduced by taking naproleve pills or welding room doors shut. However, both consume significant resources.

All of this combines to create a thrilling roller coaster ride of tension. A single xeno wandering into a room can lead to an intense, protracted battle that can frighten, maim, abduct, or even kill your Marines. And all of this is before you even think about achieving an objective as multi-layered and uncompromising as fighting an xenomorph. In "Dead Hills," for example, the command center must be located, and the command center must be used to locate the six missing settlers and convoy them from their respective hiding places to the Ark. It is vast, unforgiving, and probably more exhausting than one could ever finish. In fact, a key element of Dark Descent is figuring out when to abort the mission and retreat to Otago to heal wounds and send a new force back the next day.

Back in Otago, Dark Descent becomes like an XCOM clone, managing the Marines using a basic replication of the game's strategy layer. Here, you can treat soldiers' wounds (both physical and mental), promote them and unlock new skills, supply them with better weapons unlocked with resources collected during missions, and research new technologies using xenomorph samples. it's lightweight compared to XCOM's strategy layer, It is far more derivative than the way the missions proceed. But it serves important purposes. Most importantly, the level of Lethe infestation increases with each passing day, so that every time you take a Marine off duty, there is a risk that when they return, the danger level will have increased.

This is a fascinating mix of ideas and creates a massive emergent conundrum. This occurs both on a small scale, such as choosing where to fortify defenses when an alien onslaught is imminent, and on a large scale, such as using a day to return to a previous mission to pick up additional resources or recover a broken sentry turret that has been left behind. There are a few minor issues as well, such as Marines occasionally getting stuck on the world's geometry and the squad barking being very repetitive. However, the only significant drop in quality is in the storytelling.

Is "Dark Descent" the "Isolation" to "Alien"? I can't say that the execution is successful, but it's not far off, and even with its narrative flaws, it's the most enjoyable and authentic Alien game I've played.