Aliens Fireteam Elite (PlayStation 5)
Official GBAtemp Review
Product Information:
- Release Date (NA): August 24, 2021
- Release Date (EU): August 24, 2021
- Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
- Developer: Cold Iron Studios
- Genres: Third-Person Shooter
- Also For: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Game Features:
Aliens, the 1986 sequel to the 1979 classic, raised the bar for movies in that golden era. Never before did we have such a cohesive universe, such iconic dialogue, and robust characters, and such an extreme view of the hivemind horde xenomorph portrayed through the lens of an action movie as opposed to that of horror. Aliens captivated me at a very early age, I was for all intense purposes barely half the age required to watch the film when I first fully watched it, and I vividly and lovingly remember the impact it had on me back then. I had all the toys, I had the 5-foot poster on my door, and I had a new appreciation for the cold gothic biomechanical art style of H. R. Giger.
Aliens Fireteam Elite picks up the mantle of previous Aliens games such as 2014's stunningly atmospheric Alien Isolation, 2013's ill-fated and buggy Colonial Marines, and even the rather good Alien Trilogy from way back in 1996! Fireteam Elite builds on the Alien universe by adding a plethora of new, yet familiar settings, and a whole army of new Xenomorph types and enemies. 11 species exist in this iteration, with classes such as the iconic egg, face-huggers, drones, spitters, bursters, prowlers or "jumpers", warrior, and eventually Crushers, Praetorians, and the Queen herself. Each one posing more of a challenge than the last, but gradually getting more imposing and tougher to combat through each stage of the game. With 12 missions (Four acts split into three sub-missions) there is plenty to sink your teeth into as you breach and clear the superbly detailed environments. You begin initially on a space station, searching for a Scientist called Dr. Timothy Hoenikker in the hopes of solving the mystery of the distress calls made by outer colonies, and eventually, you venture deeper and deeper into the Alien hive. It's a tried and tested formula, you kind of know what is going to happen and what the outcome and collateral damage will look like, but that's fine, there is gratification in the homages, and a pure joy to the feeling that you know what you're doing because you have witnessed this time and time again via previous video games and watching the Anthology time and time again; at least it feels like that for me and I really enjoy it.
Whereas Aliens Isolation made the Alien a singular, solitary threat that was indestructible, akin to the original film creeping horror approach, Aliens Fireteam Elite jumps in gung-ho with a clear vision, much like James Cameron's, to mow down Xenomorphs as fodder, hoards of them easily vanquished with just a few rounds to the head, exploding them in a satisfying spattering of acid on the grated flooring. This vision is my favorite version of the Alien saga, Aliens was all killer, no filler, and to get to play something of that ilk is right up my street. Alien Isolation was more true to the original, but this is more aligned with the far superior firepower of the sequel, which easily ranks up there in my top 3 films of all time. Fireteam Elite plays in the third person, and so has a devised cover system that allows you to quickly assume a position, crouch behind, jump over, or blind fire around any obstacles that you can use to defend yourself, but ultimately you see the entire game over the shoulder of your individually crafted marine. Choosing male or female at the beginning, selecting from one of five classes; Gunner, Demolisher, Technician, Doc, and Recon (unlocked later), molding them with a range of customization options is great, and leads to some very interesting members of the bug hunting USMC group being conjured up for you to empathize with throughout your adventure. I opted for gunner class so to enjoy the game casually and crafted my character to be as close to resembling Hicks as I could possibly get with the limited options. Locating blueprints for guns throughout the game you can get weapons freshly 3D printed for your pleasure, and with plenty of weapon upgrades and unlockable perks you can truly build a unique skills tree and outfit your badasses with the latest greatest nukes, knives, and sharp sticks (Read muzzles, scopes, and magazines), as well as this season's colour schemes and livery. AFE also mixes up the formula a little, ironically confirming to other games modern mechanics, by throwing in challenge cards for you to buff or nerf your gameplay. With cards that force you to only reload when your clip is empty, or jamming your weapon periodically to really shake things up and earn serious experience points and bonus credits to spend on your marine.
Visually AFE is pretty much perfection. It captures the selectively paletted, action sci-fi moments of the second Alien movie by drawing from it heavily and encapsulating everything in that exact nostalgia. The OSD and HUD look absolutely legit, the overlays on the xenomorphs resemble the aesthetic used in the mighty arcade game Alien the Gun, and the overall feeling is that of the 80's vision of the future. Remember the scene in Aliens when they're all backed into a room and Hudson's motion tracker is indicating that the Xenomorph threat is right on top of them, and yet they're nowhere to be seen, but looking up into the ceiling void they find a writhing black mass of limbs and teeth scaling towards them. They come at you in droves, crawling, sprawling, and climbing over and across every surface to the point that you genuinely feel overrun and I genuinely love those moments where you can pick out which scene has been used for inspiration for the set pieces, it is absolutely a love letter to James Cameron's visionary movie. Vents pop open, busted computers spark, pipes hiss and spew steam, shafts of light punctuate the darkness and strobe across the action as you forge forward in your mission to retrieve something, or open the next cargo door to gain access to the next area. It's captured and portrayed so well in this game that wandering around and admiring the scenery can totally distract you from your objective. I noticed places that looked familiar as I scaled down the mega-industrial staircases and became confronted with a completely flooded, submerged floor. Ah yes, I thought to myself, Newt might have been down here at some point. Some small part of me also hoped that we would be going for a swim, Far Cry Style, with all the tension of having to battle aquatic Xenomorphs ala Resurrection, but perhaps it's best to skim over that one and continue on with the 80's neon and pre-fabbed concrete ideology of Weyland-Yutani's better-built worlds and the larger than life Marines. Later levels hark back to the other films, and quite prominently the Prometheus events, bringing back the engineer's holograms and hieroglyphs for you to admire whilst your blast militarised synths and other highly exotic beasts.
The acid blood is a neat mechanism, biologically and in the world of video games. This time around, the textures or shaders used to convey this are simply fantastic. When an enemy is dispatched and a huge volume of the day-glow yellow gore is spilled on the flooring, you see its bubbling and fizzing for a few seconds before settling down into a permanent scar on the flooring. running through it while its yellow causes you damage, so take a moment to appreciate the effect before hot-footing it onto the next waypoint. The motion tracker is the star of the in-game gadgets for me, thanks to its ability to make you freak out and spin around out of control when you hear that increasingly higher pitched beeping. All it takes is one beep and you instantly zero in on your surroundings, you slow it down a little, make a fist in the air and tell your compadre's to hold position and STFU so you can focus on which direction you're going to need to defend yourselves from next. Out of nowhere you get leapt at by a prowler and a QTE battle ensues that see you hitting buttons to fend off CQB attacks; it's actually brilliant to break up the shooting a little with these microcosmical battles. If I had one bone of contention under with the game it was that the bodies vanished. I simply wanted to enjoy the carnage a bit more, to add to the realism, and make it more atmospheric and engrossing.
Sound effects and the musical pacing are superb, with the pulse rifle sounding pleasingly accurate to the movies, though a little less punchy, the drone Xenomorph trumpeting screams are there in full effect and sound superb when mixed with the same background music. I noticed a simple, single, musical note played along with a successful headshot, denoting that it had occurred, and I really like that, it was as though the soundtrack was dictated by the flow of my gameplay and it really spurred me on to crack more skulls open and build a better combat rating for myself. When not in battle and able to explore the areas where you can upgrade your weapons or talk to others for reconnaissance; you hear the James Horner and the London Symphony Orchestra sounding main theme for Aliens tinkling in the background, or something very similar, and it definitely exposes a sense of emotive relatability between AFE and the evocative movie. Simply put; it's beautifully done.
Being a cooperative three-player game at heart is great, but the oddest of things happen when you attempt to play it by yourself as a single-player. The first oddity being the 60-second wait while you sit in match-making, knowing that you and two AI players will be taking part in a private match... which may as well be offline... I still don't understand why there is a timer there.... it's all ready to go... just let me click start to bypass it or something! Beyond this you'll also have to adopt two AI bots named Alpha and Beta, who blindly follow your every traversal of the scenery, and sure, they aren't anywhere near human-level AI but it does get worrying at points when they run directly into the line of fire, gormlessly stare at you whilst being mauled and lackadaisically follow commands you set out for them to follow. My advice is to definitely squad up, as you will feel the camaraderie more, and become a more cohesive unit. Alpha and Beta just back you up with raw firepower, and often massively outgun you in terms of kills in the stats break down at the end of each mission. Missions vary in length and can each be completed in roughly 25-30 minutes, meaning just five hours of hauling ass, but for completionists who wish to locate all the hidden caches you could probably extend this out to a far more casual eight hours of gameplay.
As a fan of the series, I feel a little roughed up with this one. Cold Iron Studios have produced a perfectly feasible world, packed it out with interesting and canonically pleasing species from the movies, comics, and previous games, and have draughted in a fantastically idealistic idea of how a team shooter should work, with is an absolute blast to play through once or twice, but it somehow all falls a little flat for replayability. The creatures aren't scary in the slightest, and that's fine if like me; you view them as fodder to churn through in order to get at something bigger, however, the AI driving these creatures is questionable. In some scenarios, I noticed waves of drones spawning from just two or so spawn points, when there were heaps of other avenues they could have been invading from, which meant it felt like the end portion of an on-rails shooter, where you enter a set piece that you have to buckle down into and take on the droves that are thrown at you. In most cases, I was just pointing my pulse rifle at just two spawn locations in order to dispatch wave after wave of critters and waiting for it to subside. The AI behind some of the more complicated Alien types also faltered and, at points, left me chortling to myself. Rounding a corner during multiple bug hunts allowed me to find enemies that had got stuck in corners, or simply not reacted to my presence, though satisfyingly gruesome to blast a big bad boy in the face and take it down with ease, this was not the point of the game. Adversely in some scenarios, you simply get overrun with massively overpowered variants and you get torn to shreds before you can even think about calling for backup. Let's clear one thing up: this game is amazingly fun, especially when played with pals, and it is undeniably less shonky than Colonial Marines was, and I'm sure no mistakes have been made similar to the "Teather" faux pas made all those years ago by Gearbox, but all the same, it feels a little sub-par considering this is the main crux of the title. Perhaps with patches and community feedback, we can shape this further towards the Aliens game we need it to be.
Verdict
- Fantastic level of detail that ties the game to the films
- Intense, fun, action-packed gameplay and camaraderie
- Plenty of perks, guns, and 43 trophies to obtain
- Hopefully a years' worth of DLC to come!
- Sketchy AI in places
- Just 6-8hrs in length
