Aliens: Fireteam Elite (2021)

We have the firepower, but they have the numbers!

I realized that once unlocked, skills can be attached to any marine class. It raises our gear level and enables us to maximize our play style. For instance, I recently started playing the Gunner and used some of the Demolitionist's perks to boost his Pulse Rifle fire rate and mag size. I beefed up my marine and have gone fully Gunner. I found a pretty cool rifle too but most of the really good weapons are locked behind a price tag. Quite a lot of credits for me now.

Locations are really well-designed and it is amusing to read those who complain about it. Claustrophobic space station corridors, where aliens ambush us from vents or shafts, are contrasted with more open spaces of foreign planets.

Having a good team is important on higher difficulty levels (on the lower ones too!). One thing I really liked was the sense of urgency the game makes you experience. You constantly feel there’s a threat around you. Imagine you fought off a wave of enemies, you linger a bit to restock and sooner than later they start coming after you again out of every possible crack. It makes you always want to stay close to your teammates as you’re easy prey to those hunters. We have the firepower, but they have the numbers!

​Aliens FE has some balancing problems, in my opinion. I was a bit surprised when I played the first campaign mission on standard difficulty and we could not complete the final wave of enemies. The gear score recommendation was 150. I was 440 and my two random teammates were 155. Maybe we weren’t AMAZING but consider that: a) it was standard difficulty (and the first level!) b) all of us had gear score above the recommended c) my gear score was 3 times the recommended (I should have melted them like snowballs on a sunny day)

Out of sheer curiosity I checked the higher difficulties. More acid damage, stronger and deadlier grabs by aliens and friendly fire being on will definitely make you think twice about what you are shooting. Altogether, that is something Aliens Fireteam Elite does really well: makes you feel cornered, insecure and relentlessly assaulted... until you get a flamethrower.:)

As for the storyline, we learn a lot about Weyland Yutani and their work to obtain the Xenomorph. Even though the story can be treated as an excuse to start spitfiring bullets, there’s a lot of lore that Aliens’ fans will most likely enjoy delving into. I did not expect that from a looter-shooter!

All in all, getting a platinum trophy or 100% achievements might seem like a stretch. Challenges like Trigger Discipline (play on intense difficulty without anyone accidentally shooting each other), or All My Personal Friends (raising ALL your weapons to 4 stars) seem like an overkill. I guess the queen of looter-shooter genre will still be The Division for me. Massive (The Division devs) also had problems with loot drops and balancing but they fixed lots of major issues over time. At present, Aliens Fireteam Elite does not offer rewarding loot and it seems like Xenomorph will grind all of its teeth before I will come back to grind mine on their skin to get some decent weapons.

Fun enough and free on Gamepass. I like it better than Back 4 Blood. It nails the sound and the aesthetic of the Xenomorph world along with the marines and their no-nonsense-just-tell-me-where-to-shoot attitude. But overall it definitely feels more content light. There is only a single hidden cache collectible on each level and thus there is not much point in extra exploration of the levels.

As typical for a heavy co-op game the fun factor relies on how well your teammates work together or just want to mess around.

Yeah, if this is for free and some of the many game passes flying around nowadays, grab a friend and play through. The Aliens license is carrying the game pretty well actually. There is one level in the game where you don't shoot Aliens and the whole game immediately falls apart.

Don't spend 40€ like I did, though.

Some more thoughts just to order my memories:

• Revisiting Sevastopol is great. It's called differently (Katanga) but it's clearly meant to follow up to the events of Alien: Isolation. (Ah, Alien: Isolation <3 maybe I should have just played Alien: Isolation. In my book, there is only Alien 1 and Alien: Isolation. Everything else is fan fiction)
• these fuckin' difficulty spikes and endgame nonsense! As we finished the last mission - and we clearly had a lot of fun! - we were like "ok, actually I wanna play more of this game" but playing through the exact same levels again, with the enemies being at the same spot, exactly knowing what you in for? That's like the opposite of the Alien experience ...
• There are only four worlds with three levels each. They look stunning (and actually way better than Outriders and quite better than Destiny) but in the end, it's too little.