Aliens: Fireteam Elite is a video game that is coming out soon, and it is… actually alright? Not bad? Maybe even quite good?! The question marks are question marks of surprise, obviously, because the whole Alien and Predator double-franchise (and maybe also its 80s-action-close-cousin Terminator, too) doesn’t have the best record as far as game adaptations go. Or some of the films, for that matter.
Aliens: Fireteam ElitePublisher: Cold Iron Studios, Focus Home InteractiveDeveloper: Cold Iron StudiosAvailability: Coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series 24th August 2021
But: Fireteam Elite! It’s a tad naff on the surface, sure, but it works. It’s three-player online co-op, PvE, Left 4 Dead-style against hordes and hordes and of xenomorphs. You start on a kind of hub spaceship, pick up a mission from an NPC, jump in with friends or some less-than-great AI (which are at least represented quite funnily by actual in-universe AIs). You can pick up a little bit of loot like weapon attachments or consumables on a mission, plus a bit of reward currency – one for gameplay upgrades like weapons, one for cosmetic stuff like hats. You can pick up the odd bit of lore left lying around the mission attached to a spanner or whatnot, and listen to a tale back at base. And then it’s on to the next.
Crucially, though, there are silly weapons and there’s a silly sort-of story, there’s character customisation, there’s an impenetrable layer of mods and whatnot, and there are flamethrowers. Fun! We played it as a three – because I tried it solo and it was functional with those AIs, but very dull – and so we thought, for a change, let’s write it up as a three, too. Here’s what we thought.
Chris: Right, first things first, this is very much an game, and not an Alien game. As in, it’s all James Cameron’s peak-80s action movie and not at all spooky Ridley Scott body-horror. There are so many aliens on screen at once, everywhere, and I love it. It’s all-in on the oo-rah stuff. The dialogue and voice acting performances are, surprisingly, kind of perfect, channelled straight from Private Vasquez’s sweaty bandana, and there’s some proper anti-corporate parable detail about the Weyland-Yutani corporation, if you take a second to listen to the quest givers. It’s great!