In 2021, Cold Iron Studios released Aliens: Fireteam Elite, a cooperative third-person shooter set in the Aliens universe that had players facing a variety of Xenomorphs. Five years later, the team is looking to recreate a similar experience with its sequel, Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2. During Summer Game Fest 2026, I got hands-on with the upcoming shooter. During my time with it, not only did I fight for my life in tight areas, but I also learned that Xenomorphs aren’t the only threat that I should be afraid of.
As someone who’s a sucker for having interconnected stories, I learned that Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 takes place five years after the first installment and 28 years after the film Aliens. On top of that, the general plot has a group of Marines fighting for their lives against waves of Xenomorphs, Synths, and other robots.
“It’s important to us that you experience a story that is on brand with the Alien Universe,” studio art director Nicholas Stohlman tells me. “It was one of the things that we tried to make sure that we were doing, which was presenting a really cohesive story from beginning to end. So our hope is that it comes through and that it’s a strong element to somebody’s experience.”
Story beats aside, the game is packed with new content. One of which is having a fourth player. A feature that many in the community had been asking for since the first one. Although I didn’t get to toy with it at all, I was informed that there was a lot of customization you can do with your Marine.
Not only can you change their clothes, gender, and ethnicity, but you can also make unique classes. Before I started the level, I had the option to pick from the following classes: Duelist, Hunter, Machinist, Marauder, and Medic. Each with their own perks and abilities.
Even though it wasn’t in the build, I was told that the Specialist class allowed players to create something truly unique to their liking.
“The Specialist class allows you to take some of the abilities from the other classes and combine them into your own class. In addition to the specialist class, it has its own perks that are unique to it, so you can sort of build your own Marine.
So, if you love the rocket launcher from the Marauder, but you don’t love its secondary, you can make a difference in secondary from your class. If you do like, maybe, like, overclock from the medic, you put those two things together and make your own Marine.”
Ultimately, I chose Machinist because it let me deploy turrets whenever I needed extra firepower. After that, I was finally able to jump into a close-quarter area swamped by Weyland-Yutani robots and Xenomorphs alike. Which came in handy as I progressed through the demo.
As a horde shorter, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to learn that my teammates and I got overrun almost immediately. Even though I knew that, the one thing I didn’t expect was that some of the robots would be shooting back at me. It wasn’t just standard human-like ones either.
During these fights, other robots would enter, crawling around like spiders, and if they got too close to me, they’d end up blowing up. If I weren’t dealing with that, I was trying not to get blown to pieces by a Bulwark. A heavily armored cawler that was armed to the teeth. As surprising as it was to get into firefights, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. If you were wondering, yes, I did ask if we would be getting a Michael Fassbender synthetic skin. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like we will, but one can hope.
This was largely thanks to all the natural cover thrown my way. There was never really a moment when I felt exposed or out to die. That feeling only sank in when I found myself fighting Xenomorphs. That’s because I wasn’t fighting them at a distance. More often than not, they all just ran straight at me in large numbers.
The interesting part, too, is that running away wasn’t always the best thing to do. Whenever I did, I often found an Alien hiding behind a crate or table waiting to jump on me. As you might expect, that happened almost every time I did. Whenever I got swarmed, my best bet was to stand my ground and hope for the best. Which was a lot of fun because, when I was doing that, it gave me a nice power trip and truly made me feel like an elite soldier capable of taking down whatever stood in my way.
Even though I was only able to play one level, a lot of different Xenomorphs were thrown at me. Of course, I went up against the standard iconic one we all know and love from the films. But I also went up against Spitters who spit acid, Sirens who love to call for backup, and Exploders who have massive foreheads and blow up when they get too close to you. No one fight ever felt the same.
A lot of the fighting was fast. There was a handful of moments in which I ran out of ammo, and I was forced to use my melee weapons against whatever was in front of me. Or if I wasn’t doing that, I was trying to barrel roll into cover. A lot of the combat was extremely fun, and I always felt like I was on the edge of running out of ammo and dying. But knowing that I had three other allies to back me up gave me all the more confidence I needed to hold my own until we found an ammo stash.
One of the main takeaways from Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is that it is the perfect game to play with your friends on a Saturday night when you want to catch up and turn off your brain. It’s a great addition to the horde-shooter genre, and I can’t wait to see what it has to offer at full release later this Summer on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Source link
#Aliens #Fireteam #Elite #Preview #Bigger #Battles #Xenomorphs #FourPlayer #Chaos
