Reviews
[Review] In Chaotic Shooter ‘Aliens: Fireteam Elite’ It’s Cooperate or Collapse
For a franchise with such inconsistent efforts as a movie series, one would have to call the Alien video games “on brand” for being just about as unpredictable over the years. Aliens: Fireteam Elite has the unenviable task of coming after a broken mess of a shooter in Colonial Marines and a beloved horror that deserves a sequel it isn’t getting in Isolation. But Fireteam Elite stands on its own, free from both the comparisons to Colonial Marines and the looming shadow of Isolation thanks to its own hellishly fun pacing and moody levels that combine for a worthwhile, if somewhat shallow, co-op experience.
In Aliens Fireteam Elite, there’s no Ripley, no Dallas, no one like that at all serves a starring role. Instead, each player will design their own character, assign them a class with unique skills, weapons, and cosmetics, and work to level them up mission by mission, xenomorph by gunned-down xenomorph. Played in third-person, Fireteam Elite is designed for three-player co-op. In fact, should you try to play with fewer, bots will automatically fill out your team.
The bots handle their own well enough when called upon, even if they’re not ideal. Still, you’ll be glad someone’s got your back, because Fireteam Elite is enjoyably tough as nails. The game’s 12 levels are split across four campaigns and each unfolds at a similar pace. These 30-minute chapters feel roller coaster-like, with steady climbs and intense slopes trading off every few minutes. Those highs can be brutal at times, with dozens and dozens of xenomorphs scurrying on the floors, walls, and ceilings at once. Among them are always a few special kinds of Xenos too, like a Prowler, which stalks from a shadowy corner and pounces on players, or a Burster, which charges at players and explodes like an acidic kamikaze.
These specially-classed enemies aren’t new, and in fact, you’ve probably seen a few of them in different forms across half a dozen other co-op horde shooters over the years. Nonetheless, I found their inclusion a welcome ingredient in the chaos, though they’re not as easily identified, as they lack adequately distinct screams and gurgles like fans of the genre may be used to, helping them plan for their attacks. Levels mostly play out in an A-to-B fashion. Board this spaceship and get to the end where you’ll extract a VIP. Head into these ruins and rescue this group of scientists who were stranded some time ago.
In these moments, the game’s AI director can react to play styles. It seems to especially love throwing more waves of xenomorphs at any players who stick around in one area for too long. The game wants you to keep moving–until it doesn’t. The best parts of each level are the scenes where players must hunker down and get ready to fend off waves upon waves.
Conveniently, these scenes are always staged in rooms with spare health kits and unlimited ammo crates, and you’re going to need everything you’ve got. Placing turrets and traps, applying special ammo, and using your skills on cooldown are all pivotal to surviving these change-of-pace gunfights. They’re by far my favorite parts of this game because they’re relentless. In a lot of co-op horde shooters, teamwork is stressed but not actually required. In Aliens Fireteam Elite, those who play selfishly will doom their teams every time. The waves are just too overpowering and the aliens too numerous–end-of-level stats routinely put body counts around 500+. If you don’t have the group’s wellbeing in mind above all else, you won’t get far and you’ll bring everyone down with you.
That element is extremely satisfying. Since successes reward much more XP than aborted missions, the game will quickly make a team player out of any would-be lone wolf. All that, however, is supplemented by an unlock system that delivers enticing upgrades with diminishing returns. Your career and class levels are split, and it’s clear, according to both game and achievement design, that Cold Iron wants players to stick around and continually level up multiple characters, unlocking everything they can for each class by playing the same 12 levels over and over, in any order once they’re each beaten once.
While this is a modern idea and will capture some number of players who can’t resist endgame content, the allure of daily and weekly challenges fades fast due to the game’s costly time demands. I loved leveling up my first character, a medic. But I didn’t care nearly as much to jump back in and do it all again with another class of Colonial Marine. With just the 12 levels, the six-hour campaign falls shy of its target of becoming a compelling grind.
While barely present story content and the absurd number of downed xenomorphs in each level combine to betray some of the franchise’s staples–three people can take down 600 xenomorphs?–others are kept better intact. Namely, the music is excellent. It’s so authentic to the franchise that I thought it was taken from the movies. I only happened to catch sight of an interview with Austin Wintory that revealed to me the brilliant composer is–yup–still brilliant.
Along with that, I love the variety in levels and scale in Fireteam Elite. The first of four acts takes place on board a dark, claustrophobic ship, not unlike those we often see in the movies, but the game doesn’t keep players there. Instead, eventually, players will explore impossible caves that open to reveal gorgeous vistas, fight off aliens and synthetics alike while the whole battlefield is overshadowed by a bust of an Engineer, and more. Fireteam Elite regularly pays homage to the storied foundation on which it’s set, and while it doesn’t add much at all to the universe, it’s still a bit fun to seek out collectibles so you can unlock more easter egg-heavy dialogue back at your base of operations.
The long line of Left 4 Dead successors continue to struggle with keeping players around, even as each team tries to resolve that issue with a different set of rewards and challenges. It’s odd since Left 4 Dead itself didn’t really offer anything of the sort and is still played by many today. But a modern audience expects modern mechanics, and Fireteam Elite‘s intentional loop of meaningful upgrades and new cosmetics doesn’t have the legs of some games like it because its missions don’t feel as repeatable. It’s certainly a game I loved seeing through, and with a dedicated team and at least a year of support already planned, your post-campaign mileage may vary, but in an increasingly crowded genre, Aliens Fireteam Elite feels like one that genre fans will play, enjoy, and quickly move on from.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite review codes for Xbox provided by the publisher.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite is out August 24 on Xbox One/Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and PC.
It’s a day of the month ending in Y, and that means it’s time for another killer shark film. Why? Because they’re inexpensive to make, play into an easy fear, and keep finding audiences willing to give them a spin. The Bay is the latest entry in the shark attack subgenre, and while it’s noticeably better than last month’s Chum, it still struggles to barely stay afloat.
Emma (Francesca Eastwood) and Lani (Dani Oliveros) are best friends who’ve traveled to Thailand for a destination wedding, and a chance encounter at the buffet table leads to an unexpected adventure. Mandal (Alexander Wraith) is a friendly, knowledgeable transplant who connects with nature and makes a living by offering boat tours through the area’s scenic waterways. The trips culminate with the opportunity for tourists to witness a shark feeding with local tiger sharks. The tourists aren’t meant to be the food, obviously, but sometimes accidents happen.
The Bay checks off most of the subgenre’s expected beats – an attractive location, an iffy ensemble of characters, a series of poor choices – but it does a few things differently along the way. For one thing, while we see plenty of sharks in the build-up, the first attack doesn’t happen until past the film’s midpoint. Writer/director Phil Volken fills the time leading up to that attack with engaging enough character beats, some genuine suspense, and an abundance of dialogue about how sharks aren’t typically a threat to people – or threats like people. “Sharks hunt,” says Mandal, “humans kill.”
It’s a bit of foreshadowing, perhaps, but it’s also the film’s presiding theme. Sharks don’t want to hurt or kill humans, but “mistakes happen.” Mandal offers up numerous eco-friendly spiels about the role sharks play in the environment, how overhunting could lead to disaster, and how humans are the ones invading their territory. “Don’t act like prey,” and you won’t be bitten, eaten, digested, and shat out by a shark. Pretty simple, if you think about it.
Trouble starts when they toss a chunk of meat into the water attached to a chain and a large female tiger shark gets caught up in it. Mandal’s sidekick, a local man named Ruhan (Ta’imua), panics and starts stabbing at the thrashing creature. He has a history of being bitten by a shark and is clearly frightened, and as the situation worsens, he becomes a far more active threat to the others’ safety than the actual sharks. That character type is pretty common in these films, but it’s a curious choice to make the film’s sole indigenous member of the ensemble the morally weak link.
To be clear, Ta’imua is playing a local but isn’t actually Thai. He is, however, Hawaiian, and The Bay was filmed off Oahu, meaning he’s the only indigenous representation on both counts. The other three characters, all Americans, are brave and willing to risk their own safety for the group, leaving only Ruhan to put a face to the cruel, selfish humans mentioned earlier in the film. It’s certainly a choice!
His performance is somewhat stifled by the desire to make him seem menacing, but it’s passable. The others are equally okay as performers, but it’s only Oliveros’ Dani who stands apart as a spirited individual worthy of viewer fist pumps. Cinematographer Helge Gerull delivers some attractive landscape shots destined to make you consider a Hawaiian vacation, and composer Gad Emile Zeitune finds some effective aural backdrops for the film’s teasingly emotional moments.
Then there’s the sharks. A major drag on the subgenre these days is the use of cheap CG effects (including the abysmal use of A.I. in Chum), but The Bay sidesteps that problem for the most part. There are real sharks here, lots of them, but they appear to be solely present via stock footage edited into the film. Some CG is used here and there, too, with shots being comped together to tighten the proximity between humans and sharks. Most effective, arguably, are the practical effects used to create fins cutting through the water near the characters.
There’s a sense of grounded reality to the shark kills, and while they’re less showy, they’re weightier as a result. Wounded bodies drift away, and the moment where shark nibbles turn into ferocious feasting feels more inevitable and affecting than sudden or scary. The sole exception to the general quality of those kills is the film’s final shark encounter, which doubles down on the poor choices by pairing a silly CG beat with some poorly matched stock footage.
Pretty much every shark attack movie lives or dies on its presentation of the sharks themselves. There are exceptions, of course, with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws being chief among them – everything about that film, from the writing and acting to the directing and editing, helps make it a masterpiece despite the mechanical shark looking goofy as hell outside of the water – but The Bay isn’t Jaws. It’s not even Jaws: The Revenge. Its live sharks are mildly effective, though, and give it a subdued realism that will likely appeal to viewers averse to CG intrusions. Will that be enough to win them over, though?
“When you enter the ocean, you enter the food chain… and not necessarily at the top,” says an opening onscreen quote from Jacques Cousteau, and something similar could be said for shark attack movies in general. When you make one of these movies, you enter a well-trodden and densely populated subgenre… and you’re all but guaranteed to not be at or even near the top. The Bay is closer to the ocean floor than the water’s surface, and while that still puts it above the bulk of the genre, it’s probably not enough of a reason to step foot in these waters.
The Bay opens in theaters and on demand on July 17, 2026.
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