The Alien franchise is, to me, unique in the media industry because it features both psychological thrillers, and action adventures in the same story. It’s old hat, I know – Ridley Scott’s Alien vs James Cameron’s Aliens taking the same beloved Xenomorph and twisting it to the filmmakers vision, and then subsequent movies (and now series!) morphing the original premise even further. Some might say this is a bastardisation of the franchise. Those people should not play Aliens Fireteam Elite 2 – the latest game instalment that brings the franchise experience to something on par with the likes of the Resident Evil arcade cabinet.
Aliens FE 2 takes every opportunity to remind you that its story is here simply to set you on a path from A to B, for the purpose of blasting as many enemies as you can while surviving various situations such as horde waves, room clearing, and defence setup. An in-depth narrative, you will not find here – you’ve got the most basic tropes including the ever-popular “evil scientist experimenting with hubris” and the tried and true “Elite Team went missing in the field, go forth and recover them”. Colouring this lore is a cast of characters wielding conversations so foreign to the world of Aliens that it sticks out sorely. I would never have thought to engage in conversation with Colonial Marines about home cooking, dad jokes and respecting boundaries.
Much of your time, then, will be spent slaying your foes. Enemies aren’t just hordes of Xenomorph drones and warriors – you also get a bit of Prometheus’ proto-Xenomorph “Pathogens”, a few facehugger encounters, some exotic variants of Xenomorphs that seem to take a page out of Left 4 Dead, and a surprisingly vast army of synthetics. Though each enemy grouping has the same base system – a lot of swarmy folks, a few pouncy folks that pin you down until your teammates help, some brutes that take a lot of punishment, and some area damage enemies that you don’t want to let close. There’s even a final boss fight that brought my nostalgia back to the original Unreal in 1998.
The wave system is enjoyable with the AI director being a step up from the last game, and the four-player co-op action is a welcome increase for this sequel. During my nightly sessions in Oceania, queuing up for public matchmaking resulted in my running into genuinely helpful and communicative players, some of whom were quite happy with some new content to expand upon the thousands of hours they apparently had spent in the first game. I do worry with these kinds of games that the longevity of matchmaking is important – playing with the default bots is ok, and there are certain perks for solo play, but this game really earns a lot of forgiveness with the cooperative action.
Unfortunately, for all the strange writing in an entity of the Aliens IP – which doesn’t detract significantly from the experience of blasting Xenos – the game, as I played it, is packed with the wrong kind of bugs. From the very instant of the first unlockable cosmetic, my carefully designed Michelle Rodriguez-inspired xeno-crushing marine was rendered hairless with all customisations reset, and with no option to change character features once locked in, I have been running this blank character for the remainder of my playtime.
Add to this the fact that my character’s head is seemingly invisible to me while playing, and it’s not hard to imagine that any immersion I may have felt was gone. In gameplay, there were often issues with first-aid kits being unable to be picked up by some players, then working in the next zone – a fatal issue at higher difficulties. Various network struggles caused repeated voice lines, rubber-banding characters, and sometimes teleporting enemies, coinciding with some heavy game freezes which I suspected were caused by my connection to the host.
This all pains me to write, because the underlying game is fine. I wouldn’t say it’s groundbreaking, but if you love your Alien(s) franchise and blasting waves of enemies with friends, the game has enough entertainment and unlockable features to keep you going for dozens of hours – especially if you have a likeminded group. A variety of classes, weapons, and attachments for said weapons, as well as a skill tree that effectively allows for subclasses, comes together into a package that rivals the best of theorycraft-able games. The challenge card system allows for the group to determine the difficulty of each run if they so choose; boons for the group such as more ammo or shorter cooldowns reduce the rewards you get at the end of the run, whereas choosing to spawn more elite enemies, or perform a run with no HUD interface, significantly increase your rewards.
It is a pity, then, that the issues at launch have seemingly marred the success of Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2, because as is often the case with these games – unless you have friends willing to take the dive with you – matchmaking is going to be a pain point; Already, trying to find a group for a specific map can take up to 5 minutes. If Daybreak releases some post-launch patches, which they claim to be working on, and my marine gets her hair back, then I believe the game could keep or even grow a dedicated player base of which I would gladly be counted amongst.
Reviewed on PC | Review copy supplied by publisher
Great
- Blasting waves of enemies feels fun and frantic
- Enemy pathing and logic is a step up from the first game
- Playing with randoms is an enjoyable experience
Not great
- Prolific launch bugs
- Story is functional at best
Australian live-streamer and indie-gaming creator, Kymothy “Zigarot” Kennedy has been into gaming and its creative process since his very first PC build, reconstituted from scraps of military hardware in order to play the likes of AngbandTK and Scorched Earth.