Aliens: Fireteam Elite Review (SuperFly)
Your 3-man fireteam of Space Marines takes the fight to the ALIENS in this canonical "tactical" wave shooter.
The narrative successfully marries the franchise with its somewhat disparate entries from the 20-teens, and puts you in the middle of the interstellar shenanigans that befall Weyland-Yutani & fellow Corpos after the USCM got wind of their illegal experimentation on colonist faces.
Third person perspective with multiple classes & cosmetic head, body, and weapon color/decal options.
The campaign is four Acts long, with 3 "Campaign" stages in each. The levels are chosen from a central hub aboard the USS ENDEAVOR spacecraft.
As you progress you will encounter various Intel drops which give access to new NPC interactions that flesh out the setting in extraordinary ways. It has been a long time since I gushed about a game to friends -- and the writing in this game is top-tier, which elevates a slightly mid-budget experience to new heights.
Once you've completed the campaign with your default character, you will unlock a new ('Recon') class, as well as the ability to create and play single-life rogue-like 'Hardcore' characters.
One big con is that the game has no chat functions outside a single limited "emote" wheel.
While it's a blast, events & encounters are essentially scripted through the game, which eventually impacts replayability. When the same waves spawn from the same locations after running the same gauntlet of corridors, ad nauseum, for 60 hours, things get long-in-the-tooth. . .
Sadly, no procedurally-generated campaign levels or the like exist, here.
To spice it up, the game offers some additional modes/standard wave-shooter survival fair -- as well as a 'Challenge Card' system, which are chosen at random at the start of a match & can vastly alter gameplay/visuals/enemy behaviors.
Something I found worthy of complaint is the way in which switching your weapon-firing shoulder was added seemingly as an afterthought. . .Instead of organically modifying the model's position, the character instantly returns to the default right shoulder for reload animations,etc.
Further, sprinting should be a function that the player can choose to toggle or hold -- because once you begin sprinting, you cannot interrupt or slow back down, without halting completely! This is lazy.
Otherwise, the menus and controls are more-or-less intuitive, and you'll get the hang of how lobbies cycle fairly easily.
(Some PRO-TIPS):
- Don't move if being healed or resurrected. It interrupts the action & could spell life or death.
- Maps have points where the players must essentially trigger the next spawns -- and in public lobbies, this would be where a knowledgeable player may go AFK for a bio break -- keep that in mind before launching your next phase prematurely.
- Hidden Caches make a distinct humming noise that you can use to identify their presence, and locate them.
- Apply yourself & be a good sport, and people will respond in kind.