There’s a moment in 1986’s Aliens movie, where Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley meets up with the Colonial Marines. At this point, audiences are face to face with the biggest ass-kickers in the galaxy, a motley collection of misfits who are armed to teeth and have veins full of piss and vinegar as they excitedly prepare to go on a bug hunt. And then… pretty much everyone dies in a horrible and gruesome manner. Director James Cameron pulled the rug out from under audiences who were expecting a straight-up action film, and instead got an intense race to the survival finish line, reinforcing the idea that a colony of Xenomorphs were more terrifying than anything mankind could throw at it.
And that’s the theme that continues in Aliens: Fireteam Elite, albeit with slightly increased odds of survival, as players take part in three-person raids on Xenomorph dens and ancient alien ruins.
At its core, Aliens: Fireteam Elite is about discovering that bravado of kicking ass and taking names as you move forward through enemy territory, before reaching a point where you’re in for the fight of your life as you find yourself surrounded by an army of Xenomorph runners, prowlers, and Praetorians. It is pure aggression wrapped up in multiplayer live service elements, and while that may sound like the franchise is being done dirty, it’s actually a surprising and deep blend of action and tactics.
In a world where Creative Assembly’s Alien Isolation felt like the true successor to the original 1979 film, Aliens: Fireteam Elite is easily the kinetic attitude of the first sequel turned up to 11. For the first time since Rebellion took a stab at the Aliens vs Predator franchise so many years ago, when it added a Colonial Marine campaign to that game’s design, Aliens: Fireteam Elite comes out of the gate swinging. It blows Gearbox’s massively-panned effort out of the airlock with an experience that plays like Gears of War going up against a never-ending army of acidic-blooded penis-head monsters.
The beauty of the game’s structure boils down to how Aliens: Fireteam Elite gives players a selection of loadouts to invest in, each one capable of shooting bugs apart with the game’s chunky arsenal of high-impact death-dealing weapons. What makes each class truly fascinating is a combination of unique skills and perks that can be unlocked, each one having immense strategic significance depending on how you play. Recon marines for example start out with a drone that highlights enemies. Invest some time and effort into this skill and it’ll become an orb that weakens the opposition and provides buffs to your team.
Prefer to go in all guns blazing instead? Well, then you can grab the Demolisher, who’s armed with an almighty Smart-gun that picks targets for you and rips entire swarms apart so that the rest of your team can focus on bigger threats coming towards them. The rest of the game’s crew of playable soldiers all bring a varied selection of handy skills to the table, such as the Technician’s turret, the Gunner’s ability to unleash bullet hell with their Overclock ability, and the Doc’s useful collection of medical paraphernalia that keeps everyone fighting longer.
The other question though, is how much game is packed into Aliens: Fireteam Elite? The answer is subjective, but at the bare minimum, there’s more than enough content stuffed into the frame of Fireteam Elite to keep things interesting for a few weeks. Straight out of the gate, the game kicks off with a story divided into four acts. Each act has three missions, and each mission will take you anywhere between 25 to 30 minutes to complete.
Once that campaign is done, a horde mode cuts the narrative fat off the meat and tasks players with seeing just how many waves of escalating danger they can survive before the odds overwhelm them. There’s a hidden cache in every level that rewards players with cool cosmetics, as well as plenty of audio logs to discover throughout your deepening journey into space horror. Factor in “Tactical Opportunities” that challenge you to kill X amount of specific enemies or play certain missions in exchange for cold hard credits, and you’ve got enough content to get invested in for a few weeks.
One other interesting wrinkle that Cold Iron has thrown into the mix is challenge cards, which seems to be this year’s hot-ticket gameplay item. Challenge cards shake the game up tremendously, providing either extra challenges or added incentive to finish a mission depending on your preference. Some exotic cards will hand out triple the experience points for example if you finish a round, while others will have you swearing at your friend for activating a card that cuts your reload speed in half.
If you’re feeling truly mental, you can even play a card that turns regular Xenomorph runners into explosive acid-bombs, spawn a challenging warrior that will stalk you in every single room that you enter, or make your entire party play a round using nothing but your peashooter sidearm. The choice is up to you, you absolute mad bastards.
It’s worth noting that developer Cold Iron has committed to rolling out at least a year’s worth of content for the game, which will include free gameplay season updates, free next-gen console upgrades, and no microtransactions or loot boxes. That’s not bad for a game that costs $40 on launch day.
And if Aliens: Fireteam Elite can keep that momentum going, I’ve got a feeling that we’re in for a good time. It’s obviously the kind of game that works best with friends, and while I did play a few chunks of it with the capable AI bots available, nothing beats seeing one of your buddies mauled by horrible space monsters, or risk having their faces molested by scuttling vagina monsters. There’s no denying that the game’s success is going to be entirely dependent on the online crowd and how it grows from its starting point.
Because admittedly, Aliens: Fireteam Elite feels like a paradox. What it has to offer, feels fantastically complete. Every gun has a unique character and looks like it came straight out of the films; facing off against a horde of Xenomorphs requires keeping an eye on all corners as they do indeed come out of the walls; and the versatility of every character’s skill-tree provides some wild opportunities for customization. But, at the same time, there are some areas of the game that feel like they could do with more polish.
Every member of the colonial marine corps is apparently a ventriloquist because you’ll never see them move their lips ever, and the game’s story is barely there. Admittedly it’s awkward to focus on the narrative when your position is being overrun, but it’d be comforting to delve deeper into the unique galaxy of Alien without having to scroll through mountains of text that are only discoverable by finding fiendishly well-hidden audio logs.
Likewise, the lack of crossplay could really hurt the game in the long run, as AI teammates just cannot compare to real-life friends. A proper ping system that doesn’t require bringing up a selection wheel in the middle of a battle would be handy, and an in-game voice chat would also be superb. Otherwise, you’re going to have to get used to setting up a Discord for you and your friends. Plus, the game references Prometheus… Oh, sweet Engineer, why did it have to remind me about a film in which incredibly smart people do incredibly dumb things?
The meat and potatoes, though? Aliens: Fireteam Elite feels like a very snackable game to hop into between breaks for a quick session of shoot ’em up action. Missions run just long enough to never outstay their welcome, the challenge escalates brutally depending on which difficulty setting you’ve chosen, and the game is, on a visual level at least, an absolute treat for longtime fans as it contains numerous Easter eggs that reference the film franchise.
Spaceship machinery falling apart, sudden bursts of steam, and Engineer architecture that looks as beautifully gross today as it did several decades ago, it’s all there and just waiting to be explored – provided that you don’t get your face ripped off by some hissing bastard in the corner.
| Aliens: Fireteam Elite review | |
Aliens: Fireteam Elite is a game that looks and feels great. It wears its inspiration on its sleeve and there’s no denying that mowing down seemingly endless hordes of Xenomorphs makes for a fun experience. At the same time, the game accurately captures the moment of fight or flight panic with an escalation in danger that perfectly emulates some of the best moments from the Aliens franchise. If Cold Iron can keep translating its enthusiasm for the series into a kickass action experience, then the end result is going to be a gut-buster of a good time in the months to come. |
8.5 |
| Aliens: Fireteam Elite was reviewed on PC | |