My deep, almost unending well of love for the Aliens franchise is going to make this review a little difficult to write, but here goes. Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 reminds me of that one friend who does a really, really good impression of a specific celebrity, and so you’ve heard it so many times that it’s become more of an annoyance than a party trick. Every time you see him flexing his gums and mumbling to himself you know he’s about to bust out the Michael Caine Italian Job line again, and you start looking for a suitably heavy ashtray with which to end his, and your, misery.
See, like Aliens: Fireteam Elite in 2021, the sequel does a damn good impression of the Aliens universe. It’s got all the guns, all the sound effects, all the ambience and imagery, and all voice lines. Unfortunately, it’s now the exact same spread of guns, sound effects, et cetera, that we’ve played through a million and one times. Yeah, it’s great, but we’ve quite literally seen it all before, even with the semi-welcome addition of “special” aliens that do what the Left 4 Dead special zombies do, and either absorb bullets like osmosis or exist purely to pin you down until one of your teammates rescues you.
There was an opportunity here to not just set it on another identical grey, windy planetoid with identical grey, industrialised architecture. There was an opportunity here to not have your marines – who now have the benefit of experience dealing with xenomorphs – to run into every encounter wearing fucking T-shirts. There was an opportunity here to not just make Aliens: Fireteam Elite again and call it a day.
Main additions come in the form of new weapons, classes, and Xeno strains, as well as a billion cosmetics, which, to the credit of Cold Iron Studios, are unlockable by finding items and currency in-game rather than in a real-world storefront. Sadly, this new stuff slots so neatly into the same exact shell the first game used that you won’t even really notice it. Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on your viewpoint, I suppose.
Once again, the story is that we’ve lost contact with the colonists on LV-Blah-Blah-Blah and we’re to go down and investigate. We already know it’s Xenomorphs going in, but Weyland-Yutani is still the corporate-dystopia version of the kid who eats paint and has developed zero countermeasures to deal with the threat. We send in squishy marines perfect for the alien to impregnate, instead of, I don’t know, any of the hundreds of combat synths they have, led by the advanced AI synths we’ve seen in the show since Ian Holm’s Ash in 1979.
This time there’s a weird pathogen loose in the lab and Wey-Yu have been experimenting on people, a fact everyone just shruggingly accepts like a bad smell in a public toilet because it’s just what Wey-Yu do now. It adds little to proceedings but some new threats that are dealt with like the old threats. Of course, you’ll also engage in prolonged shootouts with hostile synths, who are as numerous as the xenomorphs.
The saving grace in Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is the minute-to-minute action. And while I talk shit like I’ve got a mouth full of it, the fact is the repeat of the M41-A Pulse Rifle or the purr of the Smartgun still gets my hairs standing on end, as does the beep of the motion tracker as the xenomorphs close in. The problem here though is how mad it gets in seconds. One heartbeat there’s a blip on the motion tracker, the next you’re overrun with scores of the little shits and fighting for your life. At this point it almost always becomes a frantic mess as you fight to survive.
Maybe I’m expecting too much, but going into standard missions as a noob when someone activates a challenge card is like putting your face in a blender to see what happens. I found it maddeningly frustrating to fight off a horde of Xenos when just one is enough to slaughter an entire room of soldiers in the established canon. But Fireteam Elite 2 cares little about canon, reducing the xenomorphs to a pack of big rats. Yes, the first game did the same, but it felt somewhat novel then, and if it was this ridiculously frantic this fast then I don’t remember it clearly.
All that being as it is, Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is still a very fun game to play with friends. Communication makes it an easier experience, and having a little camaraderie for when the physics go on the jank or the alien picks you up and starts stabbing your face like its licking an ice cream, there’s someone to chuckle with. And time has shown this universe to have strong legs, after all.
The classes, too, are quite fun. From the Medic with their group heal that fills everyone up with “temporary health” to the Machinist equipped with a turret and a drone, or the smart-gunning marauder who can yell “Let’s Rock!” and unleash a torrent of hell on the approaching xenomorphs, everyone has their place and most combinations of classes will get the job done. You could also opt to try the new Specialist class, which allows you to mix and match elements of the other classes to create a unique playstyle. It’s an interesting idea that adds another layer of experimentation and customisation.
As you use an upgrade grid to modify and improve your skills, and pour requisition credits into buying optical lenses, enhanced magazines, stocks, and sights for your weaponry, each class will also get stronger, their arsenal expanding as you play through the 15 missions over and over with different modifiers. The missions themselves are largely uninteresting. Some require you to rescue and NPC, others to clear an area or destroy a signal jammer. Smaller objectives within them are similarly also-ran, most falling back on the “crescendo moment” trope popularised by Left 4 Dead. In between missions, you’ll return to your mothership and engage with the cast of support characters, most of whom think they’re in a Marvel film and do nothing but quip at you. They unironically refer to you as “Hotshot” and it all feels so Saturday Morning Cartoon-y, which simply doesn’t fit the universe. They even do it in missions, and having a guy constantly make bad jokes at you while you’re trying to enjoy the tension of the universe is nothing short of maddening.
Sadly, it’s also an incredibly buggy experience, and not just because of server lag. Characters slide around the world, the aliens react in strange ways and get stuck on the scenery, and occasionally the physics just go nuts for no apparent reason. There’s a fun game in Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 for sure; just don’t expect an ounce of originality in the entire package.
