Aliens: Fireteam Elite review: Finally, a cooperative action worthy of this franchise

2013 Aliens: Colonial Marines was arguably the last great video game to focus on the “Aliens with an S “side to all that is xenomorphic. Between the flashy trailers and the reputation of Gearbox at the time, fans of the series were hoping the 1986 James Cameron film would finally inspire a modern shooter well worth an oorah, not so much.

This week the letter S returns to PCs and gaming consoles with much lower expectations in the form of Aliens: Fireteam Elite. And I have to say that the success of this three player cooperative game makes me angry with Colonial Marines to start all over. While wasting hours in the faithful, no-frills fun of this new game, I envisioned Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford sitting next to me. Between missions, I’d ask him why his development teams couldn’t get past the lite excuse of a little-known independent studio to fire machine guns and flamethrowers with friends.

Yet a real pleasure Aliens the game is better late than never. And it’s a lot better.

No need to swear on one Commitment

To be fair, Aliens: Fireteam Elite begins with softer aspirations. This game barely exceeds its price tag of $ 40 in terms of content and variety included, albeit with all the production value and series-appropriate exhilaration you could hope for. And nothing here suggests a caliber of cinema Aliens entrance with famous cameos and Cameron caliber sets. (Note: stabbing at such nostalgia does not always work for the Aliens-verset, so maybe that’s a point in favor of Cold Iron Studios.)

Instead of, AFE opens with a single cut scene suggesting the Marines were given nasty clean-up tasks involving Weyland-Yutani, decades after the original trilogy ended. From there, you create a generic Navy, choose from four classes of soldiers, listen to the cannon-filled mission briefings, and get to work.

This work will sound familiar to anyone who has played modern cooperative shooters like Left for dead. Squads of three Marines, played by friends or by the AI, must traverse dimly lit environments, all riddled with a staggering number of air vents and ramp holes – no Weyland-Yutani carpenters on duty. ? – and kill monsters on their way from point A to point Z. All of this happens via third-person combat in pre-built levels, which range from basic industrial chrome interiors to lush, Prometheus-like excavations on planets.

Xenos and Joes: quantity over quality, with solid “supers” in the mix

The first thing that stands out is how AFE trains players in a tight, authentic combat endorphin hit against swarming, evil xenos. [Editor’s note: “Xenos” as shorthand for the Alien series’ most famous monsters is a contentious topic, we know.] The game immediately fills your ears with a full orchestral score, usable radio chatter, familiar follow-up beeps, and disturbing 3D-mapped sounds of xeno hopping. The surroundings, as rendered in Unreal Engine 4, are bathed in tantalizing lighting, the kind that typically sculpts any path or hallway with alternating bursts of bright highlights and dark contrasts.

And the xenos themselves are terrifying for good reason. They operate in a philosophy of quantity over quality, since it is Aliens we speak. Each of the game’s four classes is equipped to mow down waves of xenos that advance in relatively short order. The first advantage of enemies is their ability to appear from all sides, usually in formations that come out of holes in walls and ceilings in all directions, and they crawl in your direction in a convincing way. AFEThe xeno animation cycles are on target, and it’s great to watch them sneak up on every surface imaginable. The worst visual aspect of the game is that the xenos are bathed in a yellow sheen if they are targeted. Seems inappropriate in screenshot form, but in the midst of swarm-filled fights, it quickly becomes essential.

A little like Left for dead, AFE mixes up his weaker xenos with a few “supers”, and these come with a mix of stronger “exoskeleton shields”, distant acid-spitting powers, kill-blast abilities, and sneak attacks tackle and pin. I would have liked to see Cold Iron Studios have more leeway to create some more “magical” or atypical super xenos, but the variety here is still pretty solid.

Things really escalate at the enemy level once Weyland Yutani’s line of spooky Working Joe androids enter the mix. At first, the Joes appear relatively underwhelming, as their silliest grunts remain like easily sniped cannon fodder. Ultimately, Cold Iron’s level design offers some fantastic combat choke points where the Joes will converge on your position on one side, while the xenos surround you on the other. At this point, the Joe side of the fight was graced with his own “supers” – grunts of rush and explosion, bullies holding a shield, flamethrower guards, and pesky snipers.

Sometimes when the two types of villains converge, the xenos and Joes focus on each other. It’s always nice things to see in action, but the laughs don’t last as enough villains show up at this point in a fight to target your team as well.

Decent depth in classes, tactics, and badges

Survivor AFEDifficulty spikes often boil down to how you and your teammates juggle your list of tactical abilities. Even on the first start, the differentiation between the four classes in the game seems solid, and it only gets better the more you play the game.

The gallery above breaks down the four classes, which will seem familiar to anyone who has played an online team fighting game or MMO in the past 15 years. There is a versatile commando, a gadget specialist, a medic and a heavy. Some classes have a weapon overlap, but generally each has its own unique loading path, and each has at least one powerful, impactful weapon to focus on. Medics can still meaningfully intervene by relying on a slow, powerful pistol like a magnum, while the sheer brutality of the Demolitionist’s automatic rifle and flamethrower is counterbalanced by their ammo intensity.

Even the weakest machine gun is fun to shoot, at least, thanks to a sound design that elevates the classic gun sound from the original movies. You know it when you hear it: that vacuum-like chirp, which resonates in higher frequencies as splashes, screams and “splosions fill the rest of the air.” Beyond weapons, each class has rechargeable abilities, and many of them activate temporary bonuses for your teammates or benefit from physical proximity to your teammates. Your team should generally stick together, lest a xeno divide the party, but “come back here to get my meter to recharge faster” is a nifty organic nudge to keep that attitude in the minds of players.

As you accumulate experience points in each class, AFE opens a list of upgrade opportunities. Instead of skill trees, AFE offers a series of “badges” that can be affixed to each class’s ability screen. These appear in a physical grid, so they must touch other badges to activate and do not necessarily fit together perfectly. This translates into spicy “ugh, not quite perfect” decisions to make to sort out each class. And the more you play, the more this combination of badge variety and grid size expands, allowing you to choose your preferred playstyle as you come to terms with yourself and your teammates’ fighting preferences.