Aliens: Fireteam Elite Review
Though I consider myself a big fan and consumer of sci-fi, I’m a bit of a blasphemer because I just can’t make myself care about the Alien franchise. This isn’t to say that I think they’re bad movies, I just can’t muster any strong opinion about any of them, good or bad. The only exception would be Prometheus but I know at least one person who is a fervent Prometheus advocate and I don’t want them turning on me. I know a lot of people say Alien is one of the best sci-fi horror movies of all time, Aliens is supposed to be this powerhouse sci-fi action film, and no one talks about any of the other movies, but I’ve watched them all and I just don’t get what everyone else sees in them. In fact, if it hadn’t been for my need to play a rootin’ tootin’ shootin’ action game after last week’s review, I don’t think I would’ve given Aliens: Fireteam Elite a second glance.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite recruits players as a Colonial Marine serving aboard the military vessel UAS Endeavor. Set 23 years after the events of Alien 3, the Colonial Marines now serve primarily as defenders of human colonists as humanity continues to spread among the stars at the dawn of the 23rd century. After receiving a distress call from the refinery satellite Katanga, the Marines are dispatched to rescue anyone left alive on board. This being an Alien property, the marines quickly discover the presence of the titular xenomorphs, as well as the involvement of nefarious mega-corporation Weyland-Yutani who are hatching another one of their dangerous plans and only the Marines can stop them.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite is the latest entrant into a genre of games that include Deep Rock Galactic and Payday 2. These are shooter games meant to be played with friends, repeating the same levels or missions over and over, unlocking new gear and abilities to play in new ways to take on higher difficulty settings. And Aliens: Fireteam Elite has a plethora of new toys for players to earn and blast alien scum with. The first and most prevalent of these is the armory players will amass as they play. At the start, players will have access to four weapons, one of each of the four weapon classes: rifle, handgun, close quarters, and heavy. After successfully completing any level or uncovering a hidden weapons cache in a level, players will receive a new weapon as well as one or more attachments for those weapons. Each weapon can be customized with up to three attachments. Unlike most other games, no attachment is better than another, instead each is powerful in their own way. There are, however, attachments that are far cooler, such as my current favorite: a shotgun magazine modification that has a 25% chance to cause whatever it kills to explode. Every weapon class has a variety of guns that each fill a unique niche and can be tinkered with to such a degree that I can’t imagine anyone won’t find a weapon they enjoy using.
Another creative way players can adapt their characters to fit their play style is the perk grid system. Each of the game’s five character classes has an eight by four grid into which can be inserted Tetris-style blocks that will augment some part of the class’s abilities. Some of these perk blocks will be class-specific, unlocked by leveling up that class. These include effects like increasing how much the medic class can heal the other deployed Marines. Because no other class can heal, that particular perk block can’t go into the grid of any non-medic class. Other blocks have less specific effects, such as improving the range or duration of any ability. Each class has a few of these that will be unlocked by leveling up the classes, but others will become available as the player gains experience across all classes. Most of the perks aren’t that interesting, but what I liked about this system is the unavailable chunks of the perk grid. In the beginning, a grid will only have access to 12 of the 32 grid spaces available. These chunks slowly become usable as the class levels up, meaning players have to be choosy about what perks they equip as their character evolves. Though the end result of this is similar to a more typical talent tree or character sheet, the implementation is creative and fun to puzzle over.
Though there are quite a lot of things for players to unlock and experiment with as they play, I don’t think playing the game is all that fun. Unlike the other games in this genre that I previously mentioned, Aliens: Fireteam Elite isn’t very replayable. In a game like Deep Rock Galactic or Payday 2, playing the same missions repeatedly is fun because aspects of those missions change each time you play them. The main objective will always be the same but important aspects such as security badge locations or level layout will change so no one strategy will work every time. In Aliens: Fireteam Elite, nothing changes on repeated plays except for the location of hidden weapons caches and the small “intel” Easter eggs. This works better for a more story-focused game like Fireteam, but it hurts replayability, something this game is heavily relying on for players to unlock and use new gear. Worse, I didn’t find any of these missions very fun to play more than once, as most of them only ask players to move to a location while fighting small groups of xenomorphs and then push a button and stand still while fighting bigger swarms of xenomorphs. It isn’t until the last two missions that any new mechanic or interaction is introduced.
I have previously advocated for Deep Rock Galactic and unfortunately I’m here to do so again. If you’re a big fan of the Alien franchise, then this game will probably have what you want. It’s got the official sound effects, the phallic aliens, and the weirdly wet spaceships. But if you’re not a franchise devotee, I can’t think of a reason you should run out and buy Aliens: Fireteam Elite. Though there’s nothing technically unsound about it, it doesn’t do anything better than its competitors. If you want to shoot bugs in space with friends, get Deep Rock Galactic, or if you’re more criminally inclined, pick up Payday 2. But if you’re tired of those games or you just want to try out the hot new thing, see if you can’t get Aliens: Fireteam Elite for less than $40.
Buy this game on sale
It’s worth playing, just not at the price they’re asking
