Previews
[Preview] ‘Aliens: Fireteam’ is Taking Players on Another Bug Hunt
While Alien: Isolation did help scrub the unpleasantness of Aliens: Colonial Marines from Xenofans minds, there’s always been some regret that we didn’t get to see a really good modern multiplayer game with all the Aliens trimmings.
Cold Iron Studios is trying to change that.
Aliens: Fireteam is a third-person, 3-player cooperative survival game that sees a return to a world of Colonial Marines and Alien swarms, but not quite as we know it. Set 23 years after the events of Alien 3, the Xenomorphs are no longer the secret they once were, and outbreaks of the chitinous buggers have become a common occurrence.
This is where you come in. As a fresh-faced member of one of the Colonial Marines’ titular fireteams, you’re sent to human-inhabited locations on four different planets where the Xenos have invaded, and are tasked with being a glorified pest controller.
Freed from the connection to Ripley and her story, Fireteam is putting the player into the world of Alien with a fresh start. You’ll begin by creating your own personal Colonial Marine, with customizations and upgrades to them and their gear remaining a key factor as you play and progress. There are 5 classes to pick from, which give you a specific job to do in tandem with your other two squad members. Want to be the Marine that patches the squad up? Hacks terminals, doors, and systems? Or just obliterates swathes of drooling Aliens? Chances are, Fireteam has the job for you.
During the preview, we were given a brief taste of the game in action with a late-in-the-mission siege scenario. Cold Iron Studios noted that each of the four campaigns has three overall missions with some manner of variation in encounters and smaller objectives occurring each time you play, so this siege could easily have turned out differently.
As it was, the three-person team cautiously navigated the pipe-laden corridors of a refinery, heads always on a swivel, and rightly so. Xenomporhs leap from the shadows in various directions, (handily they’re outlined faintly so you’re not just in an inky black nightmare) seemingly catching the team off guard on several occasions, leading to jolting bursts of pulse rifle fire and that familiar hissing screech as insectile bodies explode in showers of bright yellow/green acid.
That acid will be something to worry about, especially on higher difficulties where the consequences get to be a lot closer to what you’d expect from fighting the Hive. On those higher difficulty settings, Cold Iron Studios say that acid splashes will burn, friendly fire will be deadly, and getting surprised by a facehugger will prove more final if you fail to stop it getting intimate with your poor Marine’s mouth. The game will be a challenge, but the sliding scale of difficulty will allow for a more forgiving time with far fewer unwanted death kisses from those egg-dwelling bastards.
As the demo continued, the squad reached an elevator door, and yep, you guessed it, there’s gonna be a bit of a wait for the elevator itself arrives. So begins the siege as the squad sets up shop for an incoming Xeno onslaught. One Marine had a shock trap to stun the oncoming horde, another had an automated sentry gun akin to the one seen in Aliens, and this kit helped keep the Xenos at bay as the clock counted down toward the elevator’s descent. Once the elevator door opened, the squad hurried to get in whilst still holding off the Aliens. Unfortunately, one member was downed just outside the door, but he managed to crawl his way into the elevator whilst his buddies continued to defend the slowly-closing door. By the skin of their teeth, the squad makes it.
Just a taste of what Aliens: Fireteam could be, but it certainly gave a fair indication of the mood Cold Iron Studios is going for. This is undoubtedly the Aliens to Isolation’s Alien in terms of action and style. It’s comforting to see the San Diego-based development team know that longevity will be important to the game’s chances, and with 20 enemy types (11 of which are Alien types including an acid-bombing variant known as the Burster), customizable Marines, and variance to the set missions, it seems to have a strong start ahead of it.
As with Alien Isolation, it would be great to have more fresh stories and visit new places in this universe. While the narrative doesn’t appear to be quite as much of a focus for Fireteam as it was for Isolation, there are undoubtedly fresh places to visit, and perhaps an interesting look at a world of Aliens outside the cycle of Ripley.
I think the key to Aliens: Fireteam working will be in the Aliens themselves. Thankfully it’s not looking like it will be just a mindless swarm and the odd boss fight, as there’s other types with their own behaviors. The developers noted the Drone Alien will effectively play hit and run all throughout a level, constantly popping up to surprise you at the worst possible time unless you take them out early. When quizzed on what the toughest enemy is, the developers said that the lowly facehugger has the most potential for ruining your day with their small stature making it hard to spot them in the dark and the chaos. As such, player tactics should be more than just point and shoot.
Horror-led multiplayer games look like they’re having a big year, with Fireteam joining the likes of Evil Dead: The Game, and Back4Blood. The competition will likely mean one doesn’t stay the course as long as the others even if all turn out well, but having a choice of horror shooters like this is very welcome indeed.
Aliens: Fireteam is out this Summer on PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam.
The gaming world owes so much to David Lynch. “Twin Peaks” alone has inspired the premise and setting of so many games, from Deadly Premonition to Alan Wake, and its dreamlike tone is one that’s perfect for an interactive medium.
Silver Pines, the upcoming title from Swedish-based indie developer Wych Elm, is the latest in the lineage of Lynchian games, this time presenting survival-horror-style gameplay from a 2D perspective. While I’m not traditionally as hot on 2D games, after spending time with the demo, available now on Steam, I can’t wait to see more of this intriguing new world.
It starts out simple. After a brief, narrated dream sequence, you wake up in an empty diner in the small American town of Silver Pines. There’s a quick tutorial sequence that teaches you the game’s mechanics as you escape from the diner, followed by a phone call that sets up the premise of the game. You play Red Walker, a private investigator on the hunt for a missing musician named Eddie Velvet. It’s an elegant bit of exposition that’s delivered with a slightly dreamlike vibe, setting the tone for what’s to come.
As you begin to explore the titular town, you find it eerily abandoned, thanks to an evacuation order that’s caused the majority of the residents to take the ferry out of here. Empty streets and vacant buildings bring to mind Silent Hill, which is a great start in my book. There’s something really unique and special about small town horror like this, and Silver Pines is able to capture it immediately without feeling too much like a tribute act.
Navigating the Unique 2D World of Silver Pines
One of the things that impressed me immediately was how easy I found it to navigate the 2D space. Much like the indie classic Lone Survivor, you have a map that represents the space, and you turn down streets and hallways by pressing up or down at certain openings in the background to “turn” on the map. It seems like it should be incredibly difficult to follow directional shifts like this, but it becomes immediately intuitive, especially with the addition of diegetic signage that guides you without feeling out of place and handholdy.
I usually associate 2D games with more dynamic jumping and movement mechanics, but Silver Pines keeps things grounded, managing to find ways of creating navigation challenges without resorting to platforming tests that would feel out of place in a narrative like this. The map is particularly excellent in this game, as you can use a camera to add photos to it to help remind you what’s there. I love it when main characters mark up maps with locations of puzzles or items, and putting that power in the player’s hands was an interesting mechanical wrinkle that felt helpful and unique.
The other thing that gripped me from the start was the art style, which uses a slight cel-shading technique for the character models that makes them look hand-drawn. They really pop when compared to the backgrounds, which have a slightly different, but complementary, style to them. Wych Elm also shows off a masterful understanding of lighting, creating a shadowy look that’s never too dark to understand what’s going on.
The way the various layers of background and foreground give a parallax effect as you walk adds so much depth to every moment, making the imagery feel more dynamic. This game is treading familiar ground, with abandoned hotels and empty small town streets, but the unique look sets it apart enough to justify it among its peers.
Puzzles Balance Logic and Surrealism
Aside from just navigating the spaces, you’ll need to solve a variety of puzzles in order to progress. Many of them are just finding keys to open doors or figuring out which item is helpful in which situation, like an adventure game, but there were a few in the hour-long demo that gave me a level of satisfaction in actually figuring something out. Like the best survival horror games, the puzzles are an equal bit grounded in reality and slightly surreal, adding to the tone of the game. One of them gave me a Silent Hill vibe with its logic, asking me to win a BB gun shooting range mini game to get a pool key (which also teaches you how to use weapons).
While the game isn’t crawling with enemies, there are more threats scattered throughout the levels than I expected. Early on, you get a blade to defend yourself, which also acts as a key to cut through doorways blocked by cloth, and it’s just the right balance of effective and clumsy. There’s a surprisingly useful dodge that lets you slip past enemies. With the right timing, it’s not too difficult to survive one-on-one encounters, but it’s also not so easy that you can go on autopilot. Once multiple enemies get into the mix, it starts feeling more desperate, forcing you to make smart use of your stamina and weapon durability to survive.
A pistol gets introduced late in the demo, and that also felt surprisingly punchy, but its power was balanced smartly by limited ammo. One of my favorite gameplay elements of survival horror is ammo management, and it seems like Silver Pines is going to make that a core part of its combat experience, asking you to think carefully about which enemies are worth your precious bullets. This is further complicated by the fact that your gun can also be used to shoot padlocks to access previously locked areas, making it an even more valuable resource.
Enemy Design is the Demo’s Biggest Question Mark
Ammo and tape will be crucial to the continued use of your gun and knife, respectively, and there’s a quick little minigame for reloading and repairing that adds some tension to encounters. In addition to scavenging for resources, there was a vending machine I ran across where I could spend money to buy ammo or health kits. Be careful, though, the money is what you use to save at the payphone save points, so you don’t want to spend it all. It’s a clever variant on the classic Resident Evil-style ink ribbon system that makes your resource for saving a more abundant currency, but one that is used for more than just saving.
There were a couple of mementos that I ran across while exploring, and these can be equipped to provide specific character modifiers. I’m not entirely sold on the system yet, as there weren’t enough in the demo to really be able to craft a meaningful build, but with the surprisingly fun combat I’ve seen so far, I’m hoping that they will allow you to shape your playstyle in a way that’s tuned to how you like it. Any new wrinkles on combat are welcome, as it will need to find ways to keep fresh if it wants to stay compelling throughout.
As much as I think the combat is responsive and interesting, I think the enemies might be the weakest part of the game’s identity. This could also be a symptom of just seeing the early game, but so far, they are a bit more indistinct than I’d like, consisting mostly of shadowy people and bugs that didn’t have much going on. There was a boss fight that had a bit more of a menacing design, but I don’t know enough about the full shape of the narrative yet to see if the enemy design is in sync with the tone it’s trying to achieve. Right now, they just feel a bit generic, but I’m hoping things improve as it goes on, because they are pretty fun to fight for a survival horror game.
A Strong First Impression
Back to the opening thoughts about Lynch, the part that has me most interested in this game is the narrative. It’s simple so far, but there have been some surprisingly effective surrealist sequences that make me think this story is going to be something that will sink its hooks into me. One of the coolest moments of the demo involved turning off a light switch and being transported into an entirely different space, one dripping with dreamlike vibes. Even the choice to have the person you’re searching for be a musician adds a nice bit of texture to the narrative, putting a thematic focus on the game’s music in an important sequence involving a performance.
The cutscenes shift to a distinct painterly style, making them stand out without having to animate them, and it’s all brought to life with great voice acting. There’s even a little show you can watch in bits on TVs you pass, feeling a bit like a nod to Alan Wake II’s “Night Springs”.
I’m going to be honest, watching the initial trailer for Silver Pines had me feeling a bit sceptical. Not everyone can nail that Lynchian vibe, and when you try for that tone and miss, it can leave you with a narrative that’s either confusing or pretentious. Based on my hour with Silver Pines, I’d say they are on the right track, ready to deliver a surrealist narrative that draws from its inspirations while still carving out its own identity.
No word on the release date yet, outside of a vague 2026 timeframe, but I’ll be there day one to check it out.
Silver Pines is scheduled to release on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam.
You must be logged in to post a comment.