Fans of the Alien franchise should have their radar tuned to all things Aliens: Fireteam Elite.
The upcoming sci-fi title from Cold Iron Studios aims to drop 1-3 players into action-first survival scenarios that are absolutely dripping with franchise mythology. The co-op shooter on rails offers a lot of variety in how you approach each mission within each story campaign, so even if the stories and set pieces themselves don't change much at all on repeat playthroughs, your experience almost certainly will.
Our recent preview of the current build of Aliens: Fireteam Elite showed us just how forgiving (or, in most cases, brutal) the new Alien game can really be. Here's the official synopsis:
Set in the iconic Alien universe, Aliens: Fireteam Elite is a cooperative third-person survival shooter that drops your fireteam of hardened marines into a desperate fight to contain the evolving Xenomorph threat. Face off against waves of terrifying Xenomorph and Weyland-Yutani Synthetic foes alongside two players or AI teammates, as you and your fireteam desperately fight your way through four unique campaigns that introduce new storylines to the Alien universe. Create and customize your own Colonial Marine, choosing from an extensive variety of classes, weapons, gear, and perks, battling overwhelming odds in this heart-pounding survival shooter experience.
You can get a good look at what the gameplay looks like thanks to this recently released trailer:
Gameplay
Grab your gun, set your gear, and get to work exterminating all kinds of aliens in pursuit of your mission goal. You're a Colonial Marine, after all. What else is there for you to do on the edge of habitable space?
Luckily, the scattered NPCs throughout the spaceship Endeavor will reinforce the military rah-rah to get you pumped up for battle against hordes of Xenomorphs. (Occasionally, they'll also drop a bit of non-corporate lore, like the existence of black-market shopping set up on the ship itself, or a scandalous snippet of anti-Weyland-Yutani propaganda to add some color to the story.) You don't absolutely need to listen to every NPC's story, just like you don't need to scour the ship and the various mission locales for every scrap of lore and intel, but it's there for you to find just the same. But what the overwhelming number of folks who pick up Aliens: Fireteam Elite are looking to do is elminate the alien menace with extreme prejudice. I'm happy to say that's exactly what the current build of Aliens: Fireteam Elite allows you to do. For a while.
You can jump into action solo with one of five classes: Gunner, Technician, Demolisher, Doc (Medic), and Recon; the Recon class wasn't available for this preview. Pick your preferred class, tweak your loadout (which will get more and more varied as you progress through the game and gather upgrades), and team up with either the AI soldier bots, Alpha and Beta, or one or two of your pals. From there, you'll be thrown into the corridors of a derelict orbiting refinery, the not-so-natural caves of an alien planet, and other hostile locales pulled directly from the Alien extended universe.
Along the way to completing your mission, which will be anything from simple intel gathering to escorting a high-value target and sometimes just surviving, you'll be assailed by all sorts of Xenomorphs: Runners, Spitters, Prowlers, Bursters, Warriors, and more. (Yes, there are chest-bursters, though I didn't encounter any in my preview ... thankfully. Same goes for the synthetic enemies you'll also face.) They come out of the woodwork, or, I guess, 3D-printed plastic and carbon alloy-work, as it were. Vents are not your friends, the corners might not kill you but what's hiding there almost certainly will, and wide-open spaces are grand for line-of-sight but also prime for being mobbed by the endless hive of Xenomorphs. It's a super-fun experience the first few times through a campaign, especially with buds, doubly so for fans of the franchise.
But even when the corridors get familiar and you're able to time the drop of that Xeno from the vent or those Bursters from around the corner, Aliens: Fireteam Elite offers plenty of variety in how you play the game. Casual and Standard difficulties allow new players to learn the basics of the layout, the combat mechanics (expect to hear lots of comparisons to Left 4 Dead and the cover-based combat of Gears of War), and the flow of the game; higher difficulties and Challenge Cards (more on them in a minute) are the real tests for gamers.
These tougher difficulties offer what Cold Iron Studios call the "true Alien experience" with tougher enemies and an overall more grueling grind through the shooting gallery. They're meant for hardened marines who have a loadout that's been tweaked and refined over the course of their time in the game, not the basic starter package, which will get you absolutely shredded at anything over Standard difficulty. (I've got 10+ hours in the preview and my Classes are not even close to where I want them to be.) And at the Insane difficulty setting, you'll need a full three-marine squad synced up over third-party comms if you want to stand a chance at clearing even the beginning missions.
Multiplayer Co-Op
While my first few hours with the game were all solo (with all due respect to Alpha and Beta, who were serviceable synths for their part), the co-op with a couple buds was way more fun. Fun is subjective here. Was it fun to step in as the Doc and help to keep my pals alive as they learned the ropes and did their best to clear waves of aliens? Yes. Was it fun to watch them metaphorically crap their pants the first time a Xeno dropped onto them from a vent or a Prowler or Warrior absolutely carved them up in a quick QTE? Yes. Was it fun to carry the team through the endless hordes (and I do mean endless; Xenos will keep coming if you don't progress through missions quickly enough) while my teammates wandered off to explore? Not exactly, but sometimes a Demolisher's got to do what they've got to do.
Multiplayer is both where Aliens: Fireteam Elite shines at its best and shows cracks at its worst. On the bright side, it's a blast to run-and-gun as the bog-standard Gunner; turn up the heat with the Demolisher's heavy weapons like the flamethrower, Smart Gun, and rocket launcher; control the battlefield with the Technician's handy automated turrets and pinch-point-creating shock grenades; or keep the party going with the Doc's* healing circle and combat stim. Whichever class you choose, there are plenty of fun ways to play the game. The most fun is in seeing how the synergy among your teammates (or lack thereof) plays out.
(*Personally, I think the Doc still needs a little work. They're hamstrung by a limited HP gauge for their healing AoE, which only regens if you pick up more medpacks. They also can only carry a primary and handgun in addition to their standard-issue sidearm. Perhaps a bump to passive HP regen for teammates within a certain radius of the Doc would be most helpful.)
However, with multiple players comes more opportunities for the game to show some instability. For what it's worth, in my 10+ hours of playtime, I didn't crash once, and I'm running on a room-temp potato of a PC. But in multiplayer, the person who forms the team through invites acts as the host, meaning that the game gets real squirrely if the host doesn't initiate each mission; as long as the host initiates things, you should be good to go.
The enemy spawns, however, seem to react wildly differently depending on your team loadout and if you have live players or AI teammates with you. I managed to clear a "base defense" mission just fine solo and with a team of two live players, but when one of our friends had to drop out and an AI was swapped in, we not only just barely failed the mission, we got overrun by twice the number of enemies. It was an unwinnable situation that was, quite honestly, laughably difficult at that point. Balancing and scaling may need some tweaks in the coming weeks before launch, but other drawbacks are more systemic: lack of obvious indication of enemy weak points, a weird short-range damage gap where enemies can somehow take shelter inside your CQW, a limp-wristed melee attack that does nothing but tickle even the most basic Xenos, and a missing "oomph" factor to really feel the weight of both enemies and the weapons you wield.
I'm able to overlook most of these shortcomings due to the work-in-progress nature of the game (though I'm hoping they're addressed) mainly because I'm having a blast playing with buds and even working my way through the campaigns solo. That's thanks in part to an investment into my own Colonial Marines and their customizability.
Customization
If it wasn't for customization, your marines would have a helluva time making their way through the campaigns on any difficulty level. There's some fun progression to be had here and plenty of opportunity for gear grinding for those who partake. Each class gets a primary and secondary weapon as part of their loadout, each with three mod slots (usually muzzle, magazine, and sight) and a weapon tier progression system (use each weapon and get certain achievements to get weapon XP and level them up), alongside a custom paint job and decal system from a catalog, which you'll collect as you go; classes also have a standard sidearm.
Additionally, your character not only has a customizable appearance that can be changed at will or as you gain cosmetics during the game itself but also a set of character perks that can be unlocked and applied as you level up. The personal perk system is ... interesting. It's sort of a Tetris-based approach to perks, with core perks taking up a 2x2 block you'll insert on your character grid and 1x3 modifiers that can "plug" into those core perks to amp them up. But your space is limited, especially early on in the game, so you'll have to make tactical choices to apply your perks and/or get your level up to open more space.
This is all to say that Aliens: Fireteam Elite offers a lot of customizability when it comes down to your Colonial Marine and the five classes. Your character is almost certainly going to look, shoot, and survive in a drastically different way from your buddies, which adds to the fun. So even though the missions, the layouts, and the order and flavor of swarms that assault you may quickly get stale, there's plenty of variety to play around with. And if you need yet more variety to keep you playing, that's where Challenge Cards come in.
Challenge Cards
Let's say you've cleared every mission in every campaign on every difficulty in the game. Let's say you've done so by unlocking every weapon, mod, and perk for your characters across all classes. Let's say your buds have done the same. We get it, you're badass and you can handle anything the game throws at you. Now, try Challenge Cards.
I strongly encourage new players to avoid Challenge Cards (which you have to earn through playing the game anyway). These consumable modifications to gameplay offer a variety of rewards for related risks. New players should focus on learning the game and beefing up their loadouts ... or you can be a cocky dumdum like me and choose "Turn All Basic Enemies Into Bursters" if you want to usher in a speedy death for your team.
Challenge Cards exist to give elite players and teams an added challenge for increased XP or currency, or other rewards. Since these players will likely be maxed out, or well on their way to being so, the Challenge Cards will probably be more about the challenge aspect than the reward itself. So if you're an ace at Aliens: Fireteam Elite, try having all of your weapon damage reduced to 33%. Or holster both of your main weapons and use only your sidearm. Or enter a mission with a fraction of your health that steadily drops by a given percentage, only replenished by kills or the few medpacks scattered throughout. Or try getting through a given mission without anyone on your team taking a knee. There's a lot of fun to be had here, though, again, I'd advise holding off on these until you're more than comfortable with the game itself.
This is all to say that there's a lot of game packed into Aliens: Fireteam Elite and its $40 price point. Yes, it feels a lot like a glorified arcade cabinet shooter, and yes, the repetition will wear on some players faster than others. But for fans of the Alien franchise, boy oh boy is there a lot to love here, spanning from the looks and sounds to the lore dripping from every vent and conduit coil. Combat-wise and action-wise, you can probably find a tighter experience out there in the video game world; cover doesn't really mean much in Aliens: Fireteam Elite even though options (and prompts, so many prompts) to take cover are absolutely everywhere. Graphically, it's more impressive than most of the also-rans in the franchise, or similar shoot-'em-ups like the flash-in-the-pan Predator: Hunting Grounds, though it's not going to blow anyone out of an airlock with its visuals alone. But there's something about this game that keeps me coming back for another round; it's the best I've felt about the Alien franchise in quite some time, and that's saying something.
Cold Iron Studios' Aliens: Fireteam Elite is scheduled for release in North America and Europe on August 24, 2021 for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Steam. You can currently pre-order either the standard or deluxe edition, if you choose to do so, though the standard $40 price point may just hit that sweet spot for day-of-release buyers.