Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is video game fast food. It’ll briefly satisfy you while you enjoy it, but it’s not particularly great, and you’ll forget about it almost immediately after the experience is over.
That’s the verdict after a launch-weekend run on PS5, and it stings a little to write. The original Aliens: Fireteam Elite was a guilty pleasure co-op game of mine when it hit Xbox Game Pass in 2021. A brief hands-on with the sequel at Summer Game Fest in June had me curious about how Cold Iron Studios would build on that formula.
Then it launched to negative user reviews on Steam. It has since worked its way up to a Mixed rating.
The Steam crowd wasn’t just mad about the port
Plenty of those reviews zeroed in on technical problems with the PC version. But others pointed at a weak story and a rough-around-the-edges feel, and having played it, I can see they had a point.
I’ve played worse co-op shooters. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League comes to mind. There are also genuinely clever ways this sequel improves on its predecessor. I just don’t expect to put anywhere near the hours into it that I put into the original.
Fifteen missions and a Horde mode to keep you busy
The story-driven campaign runs 15 missions, each landing somewhere around 20 to 30 minutes. Once you’re through it, meta-progression systems for every character class and a Horde mode exist to pull you back through the same levels.
Squads now hold four players instead of three. It’s a natural evolution rather than a reinvention, and it works.
You will start button-mashing through the dialogue
Check this one out for the gameplay. The narrative is nowhere near its strong suit.
A fringe group of Colonial Marines investigating what happened at a mining facility abandoned by Wayland Utani is a decent setup. Any interest I had evaporated the second somebody opened their mouth. The writing tries very hard to be funny and isn’t, and before long I was skipping conversations with the most annoying characters and ignoring the plot entirely while I ran and shot my way through levels.
The guns, at least, feel great
Shooting has a nice crunchiness and impact, and the new elemental ammo types turn firefights into a visual spectacle. Where things sag, as with so many flawed co-op games, is level and mission design. You’ll frequently do little more than walk from point A to point B so you can hold down the square button on a computer or a door.
The fun lives in the shootouts between those errands. I had a good time experimenting with the weapons and classes, including the new build-your-own multiclass Specialist. Pairing easy access to the Machinist’s turret with the Hunter’s enemy-slowing stasis bolt tore through hordes, and that combo worked even before the Specialist perk board was fully unlocked.
The connection drops cost me dozens of minutes
In its most chaotic stretches I’d remember exactly why I liked the first Aliens: Fireteam Elite. Then a dull story beat, a lame objective or an online connectivity issue would show up and take the feeling away.
Technical problems didn’t seem as bad on PS5 as they were on PC. Still, I hit more frame rate drops than I’d find acceptable in a new release, and I ran into connection issues during matches several times, even over a wired Ethernet connection. Each one cost me dozens of minutes of progress.
Cold Iron Studios has committed to addressing some of this, which helps. It didn’t help my launch weekend.
Who this is actually for
Co-op shooters are a dime a dozen right now, and there’s nothing heinous here. I still wouldn’t recommend it unless you specifically want to trade the legally distinct aliens and androids of something like Helldivers 2 for Xenomorphs and Synths.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is out now on PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X. The original, meanwhile, is still on Xbox Game Pass, and it’s the one I’d point you toward first.
