Aliens: Fireteam Elite Review

Initial release date: August 24, 2021

Developer: Cold Iron Studios

Mode: Multiplayer video game

Composer: Austin Wintory

Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows

Publishers: Cold Iron Studios, Focus Entertainment

Genres: Third-person shooter, Role-playing game, Adventure game

"Review Copy Provided By Focus Entertainment"

The Aliens franchise has had a lot of video games over the decades ranging from the excellent Aliens: Isolation to the godawful Aliens Colonial Marines and while Aliens: Fireteam Elite doesn’t fall to the depths that Colonial Marines did, it doesn’t reach the heights of Isolation either and fits firmly as a by the books third-person looter shooter that doesn’t really do anything new or reinvent the wheel. Produced by Cold Iron Studios and published by Focus Home Interactive; Aliens: Fireteam Elite is here on all next generation platforms; the question remains if it’s worth your time given that this is a budget title. Let’s answer that question.

STORY

Set 23 years after the original Aliens trilogy, you step into the boots of a Colonial Marine onboard the UAS Endeavor that is sent out to an abandoned orbital refinery known as Katanga. You’re tasked with finding and evacuating Dr. Tim Hoenikker who is a Weyland-Yutani scientist. As you progress in the story, you’ll come across a deeper plot involving a lot of cover-up, failed experiments, and corporate greed.

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay is essentially your standard cover-based looter shooter affair that is most like Outriders with an Aliens setting. The point-to-point action is no different than the traditional third-person shooter that employs some scripted events that tie into the missions that you will be partaking in that will eventually shift from go from point A to point B to being an all-out horde mode. The scripted bits are pretty cool with how they progress the story basically come down to you needing to “survive” for a set amount of time against the xenomorphs while a countdown finishes up. These moments can go between being incredible to downright frustrating depending on if you have people playing with you or if you are playing with the AI.

If you’re playing with other people online, then the experience can be pretty awesome and can be exhilarating with how you end up mowing down xenomorph variant after xenomorph variant. As a team, you’ll need to work together and play to each other’s strengths to be able to get through each mission with one character being focused on heavy fire while a second character is back up gunner and focuses on placing stationary drones and traps to slow down the xenomorphs while the last character on the team focuses on defense and recovery.

If you’re playing with the AI: all that goes out the window as the AI is incredibly dumb and constantly dies forcing you to tank a lot of damage just to revive them. Even if you give your AI companions orders they will still do some of the dumbest things or get stuck in areas or just overall ignore your orders and get killed.

Aside from the mission-based level structure; the games customization with weapons and the different ways you can customize them from the colors to the attachments and more.

Is there a lot of depth to this game? Well….no not really, however, that’s not a bad thing when you play with friends. I personally would’ve preferred the game to have a first-person perspective as I feel it would’ve made the dark and dank environments feel ever more claustrophobic. The atmosphere is really good yet after awhile everything starts to look the same or feel repeated.

GRAPHICS

Graphically, the game is decent and looks like a last generation title similar to what Terminator Resistance looks like. The create a marine gives you some barebones options for your character and doesn’t match up to the characters in the game.

AUDIO

How’s the sound? Well, the xenomorphs all sound as they should, and the voice acting is pretty solid overall. Outside of that I can’t say much more is stound out or impressive.

THE WRAPUP

All in all, Aliens: Fireteam Elite is a fairly decent third-person squad-based shooter that is a ton of fun with friends and randoms online. With the AI not so much and in general the single player mode is not much fun. As a budget title with a big-name license, Aliens Fireteam Elite is a nice title to sink your teeth into with some solid cover-based shooter action and horde-like situations with the xenomorphs. Is it for everyone? No. And even the few people it is for; I’d more so recommend waiting for a sale to get this game unless you’re a diehard Aliens fan.