Developer: Cold Iron Studios
Publisher: Cold Iron Studios
Release date: August 24, 2021
Available on: PC, PS4 (reviewed), PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
The Alien franchise has long been ripe for adapting to games, and James Cameron’s film Aliens has especially influenced the action in games like the Gears of War series, the Mass Effect trilogy, and Dead Space. The 2013 game Aliens: Colonial Marines left a bad taste in fans’ mouths, and while 2014’s Alien:Isolation did the film franchise proud, it was more survival horror than the outright chaotic action so well depicted in Aliens. Cold Iron Studios, along with Focus Home Interactive, seeks to bring that action forth as it should be in their new title Aliens: Fireteam Elite. So, how well did they succeed?
For the most part well, and yet, while it’s a game that wipes away the bad taste of Aliens:Colonial Marines, it’s still not quite there in delivering a game akin to the top notch Alien: Isolation. It does have a lot right. The varied xenomorphs, some not shown in the films, all look and move fantastically, and are appropriately dangerous. The moment your motion sensor begins beeping, you know there’s going to be trouble for you and your two companions (be they AI bots or actual human friends). The xenos swarm out of ducts and across walls and ceilings, and every encounter begins a tense game of shooting as fast as you can before you get overwhelmed or one of the big nasty warriors shows up. The guns all sound great, especially your trusty pulse rifle, and pack a good punch. The action is fittingly chaotic, and once you survive one encounter, you won’t have too long to catch your breath until more trouble arrives.
And that in part is one problem with the game. Make no mistake, Aliens: Fireteam Elite handles the action solidly and whether it’s being swarmed by xenos or synths (or both at the same time), each encounter puts you in a fight for your life, taking down your health bit by bit until it’s “Mission Failed”. It’s Horde Mode ramped up to 11, and it pervades through all four interconnected campaigns (each containing three missions) and the multiplayer mode, which is of course Horde Mode. The fact that outside of the areas you’re in or what enemies you’re fighting is the only change you see doesn’t stop the game from becoming repetitive fast. Horde Mode 24/7 wears thin, and even what threadbare story there is may not be enough to keep all players engaged for long. The game is sorely missing some variety, and something else other than move to point A, get swarmed, survive, move to point B, repeat would have been welcome. For fans it is nice that the story, a follow-up to the first Alien trilogy, also does include touches from both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. But Cold Iron Studios really missed an opportunity here to give us that full Alien experience that the fans want. Some exploration would have been a nice way to mix things up, as what there is between encounters is brief and shallow. Even the exploration aboard your base ship, the USS Endeavor, is severely lacking. The action can be fun, but even an amusement park filled solely with high speed rollercoasters can wear thin after a while.
As far as gameplay, what’s there is solid. Players choose between four classes- Gunner, Demolisher, Technician, and Doc (a fifth, Recon, opens up in the final campaign)- each with their own type of loadout and perks. While you can get by with everyone being a Gunner (something you have no real choice in if that’s your preferred class but you’re playing with bots), teams can be better served by mixing things up. Being able to do so is the main advantage of playing with human cohorts. The AI bots are for the most part pretty competent, but they can be reckless, putting themselves in need of rescue when you may need them most (this ends in, needless to say, mission failure). Between each mission you can return to the base ship, where you can use the military scrip to gain new weapons, accessories, and extras like sentry guns and mines. You also have respect as your other currency to get you outfits, emotes, and challenge cards to add little twists to each mission in an attempt to keep things fresh. Sadly, that currency can be hard to come by, and you may have to resort to repeating missions or focusing on daily challenges to earn enough to buy what you want or may need to ensure your survival. It would have been nice to have more ways to earn money so you could outfit yourself better. Finding hidden caches, which contain some goodies, helps a little, but the whole system feels more stacked against you.
Ultimately, how much you really get out of Aliens: Fireteam Elite is going to depend on just how much you enjoy Horde Mode. Once you finish the 8-10 hour campaign, there’s the multiplayer Horde Mode, and that’s it. There’s both private and public matchmaking (nice if you’re not crazy about playing with strangers that you can invite only your friends), but no local co-op. The bane of many shooters, loot boxes and microtransactions, are happily missing here, so you won’t have to shell out extra for new stuff. The voice acting for the NPCs is decent, but the character creator is pretty bare bones. There’s a nice weapon variety, and you’re bound to get comfortable with a couple of favorites. Daily challenges, if you’re so inclined to do them, do offer incentive to play as different classes, and the challenges do offer up their own rewards in addition to those you get completing a mission (you get challenge rewards upon completion of a challenge, whether you die in the mission or not). The game runs well for the most part, though I hit some major frame rate issues at the end of the second campaign on the PS4 when the action got really nuts. Oddly, the game has no way to quit out of it- you have to simply just close the application.
In all, Aliens: Fireteam Elite is a serviceable and, at least for a while, fun shooter set in the Alien universe. It’s repetitive nature, however, will wear thin with some players, and while the story does contain some nice lore, it’s missing any depth or personal connections to draw you in. The game looks good and sounds better, but missed opportunities for a more varied experience may leave some only a little satisfied. But it is a step in the right direction. It remains to be seen how much Cold Iron Studios will support the game, if they will add more modes and give it some variety through future DLC. For now, it’s fun blasting away while on bug hunts above and within the planetoid LV-895, and that may be just enough to make some happy Colonial Marines.
7/10 stars
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