Thanks to just coming on Xbox Game Pass I was able to spend a bit of time with Aliens: Fireteam Elite on the Xbox Series X. Now, there are actually way more good Aliens games than there are bad ones. I would say that Aliens: Fireteam Elite comes really close to being almost great!
How to Download Aliens: Fireteam Elite
You can download the game for the PlayStation, Xbox console, or for your Windows machine. Click on the Download button and make your choice. Check out also our review of another fantastic Alien game – Alien: Isolation.
The Game Review
The setting for the game is a little over 20 years after Ripley gave her life to try and stop the Xenomorph threat. That did not work out and now you are playing as a colonial marine and you are being sent to try and prevent the Xenomorph infestation on LV-895. There are three campaigns to play through and I thought that was pretty neat.
However, the story never really goes anywhere. Instead, we have a very shallow, meathead kind of action story where you do not really care about the characters. I think this was a bit of a missed opportunity as the Alien franchise has some awesome lore, I would have liked to have seen that explored more here.
The gameplay is that of a 3rd person shooter and it is 100 percent action! You pick from one of six classes, gunner, demolisher, doc, technician, recon, and phalanx. Each class has a few different “special abilities” which makes them unique. However, the progression is very light and there is not much in the way of deep customization, but to be fair I am ok with that.
You can play Aliens: Fireteam Elite on your own and you will have two AI teammates joining you. I found the AI of your teammates to be pretty decent, they fought well and would revive me, use their special abilities, and so on quite well. The real fun though is to be had when you are playing with two other people.
Now, as I write this Aliens: Fireteam Elite has been on Xbox Game Pass for the better part of a week. I have had a bit of trouble getting into a game with other people so I do wonder how the player base will be. To be fair, this came out a few days after Halo Infinite was released on Game Pass so more than likely that is what most Xbox owners are playing.
The 3rd person shooter action on offer here is a lot of fun. You have a decent selection of weapons to use and there is something so satisfying about blasting a Xenomorph with a shotgun! The Xenomorphs are relentless and come at you in waves, with a bigger more powerful one stepping up every now and again.
This is a game where your finger is always on the trigger and I enjoyed that. You can try and work out different strategies, but just trying to survive and kill anything that moves is the best strategy! A few chapters in as well as Xenomorphs, you have to start dealing with synthetics and then the game turns into a standard 3rd person shooter. I get that they were added for “variety” however, I would have preferred it just be Xenomorphs.
While Aliens: Fireteam Elite is a fun game, it can also verge on being a frustrating one. The game is very, very challenging and the checkpoint system is not good at all. They needed to have some kind of saferoom or something like that. It can be very frustrating to die about 40 minutes into one of the chapters and have to start from the beginning.
The presentation of the game is fantastic. If you are a fan of the Alien franchise you are going to get a huge kick out of the locations. From industrial-type areas like seen in Aliens to open outdoor areas like in Prometheus, the locations are really fun. I think that there is a nice amount of fan service here and I appreciate that kind of thing.
I went into Aliens: Fireteam Elite with a pretty open mind and I have been impressed with what I have played so far. If you are a fan of the Aliens series and you like action-packed 3rd person shooters, you will love this. It does have a few flaws that prevent it from being a truly great game, but overall, this is a game you can have a lot of fun with.
