Alien Review: Fireteam Elite – They’re Everywhere

One thing this game has done is absolutely great and I would say it is on the best level we have ever experienced in intruder games: causing that jaw drop and a wave of fear and despair when you look up and see the ceiling you will meet myriads of monstrous monsters. Fireteam Elite will set you up against an authentic stream of xenomorphs that will flock to you on the ground, walls and ceiling in a way that will reliably stun you – especially on higher difficulty when you can’t afford to let intruders in. your body in general.

• Platform: PS5 (review). PS4, X1, XSX | S, PC
• Publication date: 24. 8. 2021
• Producer: Cold Iron (USA)
• Genre: 3PS co-op game
• Czech location: yes, subtitles
• Multiplayer: up to 3 players
• Data to download: 30 GB
• Game time: 10+ hours
• Availability: 16+
• Sales version: box and digital
• Price: 949 CZK (Xzone)

Armed conflict or pursuit?

The year is 2202, an emergency call will take the Marine crew of the UAS Endeavor military cruiser to the planet LV-895, where a suspiciously silent ship from the Katanga oil refinery awaits them, whose problems, apparently, are connected with the activity of Weyland-Yutani on the surface of the planet, hiding suspicious alien ruin. Once you and your squad board the Nostromo-like refinery, neither the music nor the acid-damaged deck will leave you in any doubt as to what happened here. The question is, have you brought enough ammunition, because in the bowels of the darkened ship you will find a nest full of hundreds of intruders.

While Aliens: Fireteam Elite is primarily a co-op game, it also functions as a single-player story game. You will be assigned two so called competent AI androids as escorts (sometimes they kill something and if you fall they try to revive you so you forgive them for being stuck in the door) and you have to set a reasonable out of five difficulties because the AI ​​just isn’t enough for the higher ones. Also, put up with a more modest setting – the game has one intro cinematic, the rest is decided in the form of dialogue, in which the characters do not even have animated faces (at least FaceFX could be here for some crap). However, the game is full of dialogue and hidden entries, which rather amusingly mixes not only old and new films about the invaders (including Prometheus and Covenant), but also other resources, such as Alien: Isolation and its androids. “Working Joe”.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite also works as a single player story game.

It’s also much easier to focus on the story in one, because character dialogue that is spoken during missions can easily fit in when you’re immersed in the game with one or two friends. On the other hand, in cooperative online multiplayer, the intensity of the action will stand out because depending on the difficulty set, you will always have enough work to do, and attackers often attack from several directions at the same time, so there is a natural space for the role. This is also reflected in the relatively large differences in weaponry and abilities of individual professions, such as the Destroyer (operates a legendary homing smart gun), the Medic, or the Technician, who carries only a pistol but can build his automatic fire tower anywhere. . Of course, it’s ideal to play with friends, but if you don’t have that option, the game has a random selection of players.

Remember short doses

Fireteam has surprisingly good controls and a menu system for budget games. When your armored sailor moves, you can feel the weight of his weaponry, but you can also aim relatively quickly and accurately with the remote control. All menus are perfectly legible, with strong fonts (mostly borrowed directly from the movie’s template, including sound effects) and the most important information clearly marked. The only pity is the Czech translation, which will fulfill its function, but in places it is comically bad (Colonel Shippová, for example, is translated as “Colonel’s Ship”). Good controls and user interface can be taken for granted, but the reality is that games with a much larger budget have burned out on that front. Fireteam Elite impressed me with a solidly slick and well-tuned shooter that can be a little repetitive, but is a joy to play. This is further aided by the ability to modify and upgrade weapons, build “buildable” characters in an interactive ability tree, or the relative variety of alien enemies (including specialized mutations). On the contrary, there are clearly humanoid enemies in the form of androids, which spoil the peculiar pace of battles with much more interesting swarming monsters.

Unfortunately, what really disappointed me was the music. At the same time, the wonderful composer Austin Wintory stands behind it, but this genre probably did not suit him very well. If in the first campaign on board the refinery you can still find inspiration from films, then from the second episode the music turns into a completely crazy cacophony, which clearly does not make sense. It’s a pity, because it was the cult music from the films that gave these Aliens: Colonial Marines a decent atmosphere. But here I would recommend turning off the music, because otherwise the sounds taken from the films are great – from the cadence of a pulse rifle to small things like the whistling of intruders’ claws. Also, a certain weakness of the game is its brevity (the campaign doesn’t take you more than ten hours depending on the difficulty, only higher difficulty or horde mode follows), but perhaps it’s better than if it were stretched out. needlessly, as happened to some extent with Alien: Isolation. In any case, thanks to the Season Pass, we are waiting for bonuses to DLC, so if you want to spend as much time in this universe as possible, you will have more options.

Second Opinion: Jakub Maruszak

As a big fan of Aliens University (and especially the second part), I’ve watched the development of Aliens Fireteam Elite with suspense. I kept my fingers crossed for the developers at Cold Iron Studios to make sure their project works better than the previous game about rude boys and girls from a colonial wharf. And I can safely say for myself that it worked. The budget price and production quality make it clear at first glance that the developers were not aiming for the title of the year, but nevertheless, Aliens Fireteam Elite is a great co-op game for several long evenings in the company of friends repeating the legendary rumors from the films. and mow down hordes of intruders in the style of a true macho cheer. I was very pleased with the audiovisual style, referring to films and previous games (hacking takes place under the stylish knock of old computers, and the M41A pulse rifle still has its bewitching scream). On the contrary, the music was somewhat disappointing (but even it can surprise, for example, with an interesting composition every time you kill one of the intruders in a shootout), rather weak animations of the marines and incomprehensibly absent facial expressions during the interview. A number of different soldier classes, weapons, and multiple difficulty options (including modifier cards) ensure that the game doesn’t get tired even with fewer cards before the creators start uploading new content. God, I don’t want to be a prophet, but maybe it won’t be seventeen days.