The Aliens franchise has proven to be a versatile concept in the world of video games. There are survival horror games, action shooters, Metroidvanias, and even light gun arcade machines all set in this universe, and they all feel like they work perfectly in concert with the themes and tone that the movies set forth. Looking at the Aliens in particular, it feels like the easiest fit for the movie should be applying this to a co-op shooter along the lines of Left 4 Dead, Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2, throwing you and your friends against waves of xenomorphs.
Five years ago, Cold Iron Studios released Aliens: Fireteam Elite, a three-player, third-person, co-op shooter that took you on an adventure in the iconic setting. It was a solid effort, but aside from the Aliens coat of paint, it didn’t seem to have a unique hook that set it apart from other competitors in the genre. I only ran a few missions of it with some friends, and we all agreed that it felt like a good start and hoped that Cold Iron would get a chance to improve with a sequel.
After some time with Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2, which came out last week, I think the follow-up lands more in the more-of-the-same camp, as it manages to still be solid fun without breaking the mold in any meaningful way. There’s still a lot to like here for fans of either co-op shooters or the Alien franchise, but I wish it was more ambitious with the formula of both.
The biggest change the game gives you is more options for your character creation. Everyone plays a unique Colonial Marine, allowing you to customize your cosmetics, loadout, and build how you see fit. The class system has been reworked, with new options that fit into standard archetypes. Each has its own special ability that can range from buffing other teammates to placing a powerful turret. None of the five primary classes feel like they are the “right” option, and each player ends up with an important skill to bring to the squad.
The coolest innovation is the inclusion of an extra class called the Specialist, which is a completely customizable class that can draw from any perks that you’ve unlocked across all classes. It’s clear that this is meant for players that have invested more time into the game, as you have to rank up two classes to a specific level in order to access the Specialist, but it’s a nice inclusion that can add variety to subsequent playthroughs.
The Pulse Rifles Feel Great But The Enemies Don’t
Returning from the first game is the clever grid-based perk system that adds an extra dimension to leveling up. As you level up your specific class, you’ll unlock new perks that are placed on a board. More spaces are added to the board as you level up, and each perk you place takes up a certain number of spaces. Some of these perks also need to be connected to another perk they are modifying, so it gives you a fun little spatial puzzle that you need to optimize in order to arrive at the build you’re looking for.
In general, each has access to a primary weapon, which is from a shared pool that all classes can choose from, a secondary weapon, which has a smaller pool specific to your class, and a sidearm, which has infinite ammo for when you find yourself in a bind. More guns are unlocked as you level up your account overall, and others are made available to purchase via currency earned within missions. The look and feel of the guns is strong, capturing the signature sounds of Aliens perfectly. Wielding the iconic pulse rifle while seeing your teammate mowing down xenomorphs with the smart rifle truly makes you feel like you’re right in the middle of a cinematic bug hunt.
Stats on these guns can be modified by purchasing various gun parts that have their own pros and cons, but I found this to be a bit more fiddly than satisfying. Categories of gun parts are slowly unlocked as you progress, which felt like an odd decision that prevented me from getting too invested in this subsystem. They do have a tangible effect when used properly and add to your overall combat rating, but looking through options for gun barrels and magazines wasn’t the most compelling use of my time between missions.
While the tactile feeling of the guns is there, the enemies felt spongy in a way that robs shooting of some of its impact. There’s a decent variety of enemies, from neat Xenomorph variants to synthetic soldiers to more Prometheus-influenced creatures, but there are too many of them that take way too much firepower to take down. Watching a teammate get picked up by one of the larger Xenos is initially shocking, but when I can unload an entire clip into it without it reacting to my gunfire in any visible way, it becomes more tedious than tense.
The different enemy types give the game much needed variety in its encounters, even if it probably could have used a bit more. I like that there are different types of Xenomorphs, but for the most part they all act pretty similarly, differentiated by weak points or minor tactile changes. They feel perfect for holdouts, as their vicious hunting behavior seen in the movies translates well to fighting mobs of them, but there’s not enough tactical variation to make encounters feel distinct.
It’s the introduction of the synths that helps change things up a bit, making it more like a traditional cover shooter where you’re caught in gunfights with other soldiers as they attempt to flank you or flush you out. Even better is when you run into both of them at the same time, occasionally coming across them while the two camps are battling it out among themselves.
The Best Aliens Locations in the Series
Even if the encounters feel pretty similar, the thing that makes missions feel distinct from each other is the variety of locations that you visit throughout the game’s fifteen missions. These are classic Aliens fare, dropping you in an abandoned colony, a Weyland-Yutani spaceship, and an underground mine. There’s even a series of missions that let you explore an Engineer ship, with some of the most striking visuals in the game. Obviously these are all stylistically borrowed from other Aliens media, but the recreations of the spaces are impressive and always a joy to explore.
The wonderful score of the game doubles down on the Aliens vibes, evoking the classic 1986 film with its music. It brings the locations to life, creating a moody atmosphere for exploration and a thrilling tone to the encounters. The game’s biggest advantage is being able to believably place you into this beloved setting, and the music is the cherry on top that brings it all together.
What really drags the game down for me is that you don’t really do much in missions. You go from place to place, usually interacting with a terminal that moves the story forward a little, but only after you fend off wave after wave of enemies. It’s definitely a horde shooter at its heart, but I want more than just a series of holdouts in neat locations. Reflecting on other co-op shooters I’ve enjoyed, the most exciting missions require you to do some other piece of business during these sections to give you variety and keep you moving around the space.
There’s a memorable mission in Back 4 Blood where you’re defending a bar, and you need to keep the jukebox active throughout the mission, giving you something else to focus on while you mow down zombies. GTFO has great examples of this, requiring you to shout out passwords to someone manning a computer while creatures bear down on you. As much as it can be fun in Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 to prep an area with turrets and mines, I spent too much time standing in one place blasting a shooting gallery of enemies that pop up around me.
While you each have specific roles on the team, the game rarely felt like it required a level of coordination that made the co-op feel collaborative and satisfying.
Four Players, But Not Four Jobs
One mission gave me the coordination I was looking for, but it only made me wish for the complexity to show up more. At one point, you’re trying to break into a place that’s full of synths, and there’s a series of turrets that are raining bullets down on you. In order to disable them, you need to fight your way up to terminals that turn them off. It’s the most tactical encounter in the game, requiring you to cover your teammates as they make their way to the terminals before the team can collectively proceed. Cold Iron showed with this mission that they were capable of executing more complicated ideas, but nothing else in the game gave me the collaborative spirit that I wanted from the game.
Another significant change Cold Iron made was adding a fourth player to the squad. One of the things I ran into with the first game was that my co-op shooter friend group was four people, so it felt a little awkward to figure out who didn’t get to play. The extra player is a move that will likely satisfy more people who were in the same situation, but I don’t know if the design of the game actually calls for the fourth person.
Since you don’t really have tasks to split up during missions, it’s mostly just about having another marine in play to deal damage, and the spaces don’t really feel like they are laid out to accommodate the extra character. Most of my time was spent playing with random players online, and we were constantly stumbling over each other and getting in each other’s way. Maybe once I get together my crew to try this out, that will change, but it felt like they just added a fourth player but didn’t try to think of any ways that they could use the higher player count to make it more dynamic.
An Aliens Story That Gets the Job Done
Throughout the ten-hour campaign, the game tells a decent little Aliens story, but nothing we haven’t heard before. There’s a mad scientist at the center of the narrative, and her plot involves elements from both Aliens and Prometheus, weaving together strong parts of the franchise into one cohesive tale. Unfortunately, the delivery of the plot can be a bit of a drag. Between missions, you need to chat with a series of NPCs who have dull or annoying dialogue, and the amount of talking really drags. You’ll get some audiologs during missions that feel a little better delivered, but they usually stop everything for you to listen, which messes with the pacing.
On top of that, the quips your characters say are incredibly dumb and repetitive, often just blatant references to the movie without any appropriate content. I know references can sometimes be a nice little burst of nostalgia, but hearing my character say “I am the ultimate badass” multiple times during one mission gets old fast.
I felt satisfied with my playthrough of the campaign, but it’s clear that the game is built for you to replay it. I focused almost entirely on the Machinist class, who was able to use drones and turrets, and I didn’t even fully unlock everything for them. To get through all five classes fully, you’ll have to go through these missions over and over, and their mechanical simplicity doesn’t provide the variety that would make me want to revisit them.
Final Verdict: Fun With Friends, Forgettable Next to the Genre’s Best
Obviously there are a few difficulty levels, and they will definitely provide a different experience, but I don’t think it’s really in a way that meaningfully changes how you play. Fireteam Elite 2 introduces the idea of Challenge Cards, which can be selected at the beginning of any mission, and these provide the most compelling way to mix things up. These alter the game in different ways, either making things more or less challenging for you, or providing different levels of rewards.
These can range from more ammo to less health, but others are a little more interesting. My favorite one that I ran across was one that made both the player and the enemies do 75 percent more damage, which alleviated some of my issues with the enemy sponginess and made things feel faster and more lethal. I don’t think they are a reason to replay the game, but they certainly will make it more interesting if you choose to do so.
The problem with Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 isn’t that it’s a bad game. It’s pretty fun when you’ve got a solid team that’s effectively synced up. However, the game doesn’t stand out from the pack in a meaningful way.
There are definitely more interesting co-op games that add more mechanical complexity to the missions, and there are also better Aliens that capture the spirit of the franchise more accurately. Much like using the classic pulse rifle, confronting Xenomorphs always works best in short, controlled bursts, and games like Alien: Isolation or Aliens: Dark Descent have figured that out more effectively.
If you know three other Aliens fans that you can convince to play with you, you’ll definitely be able to get several nights of fun out of it; just know that it doesn’t have the depth required to make it the forever game it wants to be.
Review code provided by publisher. Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is now available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store. A Nintendo Switch 2 version will launch later this fall.
