Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 Review

Another change that I do find to be an overall improvement is that all the classes have been reworked. I first took to the Marauder class, which replaces the Demolisher and wields heavy weapons and a rocket barrage attack that has a rather quick cooldown, allowing you to use just how often as you should. The Duelist replaces the Gunner and even gives a melee sword like an unpredictable badass. The Machinist takes over for the Technician, relying on gadgets, traps, and turrets. The Hunter takes over the Lancer with plasma and freeze weaponry and talents. Lastly, the Medic takes over for Doc, which remains largely the same except it’s better in every regard to keep your team healthy throughout the entire mission. Once you level up two classes, you gain access to the Specialist class, a way to combine to classes into a super class of your own making. For me, I combined the weapons of the Marauder with the turrets from the Machinist that felt great, and as time goes on, will be the only class you’re likely to see.

On storefront pages, the game touts “xenomorphs that overwhelm you”. That certainly sounds great on paper (webpage?), and it does work in practice, even. However, where it falls apart is the realization is that more xenomorphs of any size is diametrically opposed to what “Alien” and moreover, “Aliens” is about. Fireteam Elite 2 also continues the trend of sending dozens of dog-like swarms of xenos that are easy to dispatch until the larger, Queen-like ones start to emerge. It’s so overwhelmingly oppressive, that the xenomorphs just lose all their specialness when coming at you in droves. Though they aren’t the only ones, as there’s plenty of synthetics to combat, too. Cleverly, the xenomorphs don’t care about the synthetics, and vice-versa. You’ll certain fight both throughout the campaign levels, sometimes both at once, ad nauseam.

The solo experience in Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is an equally viable as it was the first time. Going in solo means you’ll be accompanied by artificial intelligence in the form of said synthetics. The first game’s Alpha and Beta return, and with the expanded roster, Gamma now joins the fight with you. Consistent irrespective of online or off, the trigger scripting for all enemies is very bad. You can walk into almost every room and get the drop on xenomorphs that haven’t activated yet. Worse examples are having enemies spawning in front of you, and being immediately swarmed with no room to escape. Fireteam Elite 2 relies on tight, indoor spaces to convey its horror to hit the vibe, but the locales are too samey without any variation.

Playing online has been a conflicting experience. When matchmaking for the next mission I wanted to play, everyone had marked themselves as ‘Ready’ and the game just still waits for the timer to expire before loading into the mission. The larger issues emerged being what had to be 20 minutes into the mission, and experiencing bouts of extreme lag. There would be times where my character could barely move, if I did a diving somersault in a direction, everything would return to normal for whatever reason. While it was only a few times, it happened more than once, and that was being fully disconnected from a match and not able to return to that game, losing progress for that entire mission. It wasn’t enough to make me quit in a fit of rage, but I wasn’t motivated to continue if were to keep happening.

There’s a healthy amount of customization here. From character design, to paint schemes for weapons, to the aforementioned classes. For some reason, the classic pulse rifle is not the starter weapon for most of the classes. In fact, it’s replaced by a standard is an unlockable. It’s not until rank ten when you’re able to use the classic pulse rifle, and even then, it sounds like it was recorded underwater. Ribbons return, allowing you to apply bonuses to your character based on certain skills for the chosen class. More space is opened up as you rank up, but now the system requires linkage in order to stack bonuses, reducing any creativity as you unlock new ribbons that you want to quickly rearrange or swap out. Challenge cards also make their return, and offer positive or negative variations that really impact your mission. My favorite negative one is “We Pissed Them Off” where killing 50 enemies will introduce an elite variant of that enemy into the fray. Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 has its moments, but they are too few and far between.

This sounds like a YouTube title, but equipping cosmetics made me bald. Now this is a buggy game, but I’m astonished at how many issues there are at the present. So yes, simply changing around cosmetics made it so all the hair on my character came off, and then when trying to fix it, my head became entirely invisible until I restarted the game. I hit a strange snag on Linux: the cutscene immediately following the prologue froze the game every time. Switching to Windows allowed me to clear the mission and bypass the lockup. Since then, every cutscene on Linux has been smooth since then. There’s so many issues with this game, that will likely get fixed in future patches: out-of-sync facial animations, unable to pick-up items when you should, the fact the game doesn’t load the mission when everyone is ready.

I first thought that that the stark visual improvements was a move to Unreal Engine 5, but in fact the game runs on Unreal Engine 4.27, over an earlier version of Unreal Engine 4 from the first game. Graphically, it does look a lot better than its predecessor, but it’s an unoptimized and hitchy game. I did play the majority of my time on Linux, but even on Windows to get past the first cutscene, I was still experiencing framerate drops and lag spikes when playing in online coop. For some reason this version of the engine really suffers during combat, and considering that’s the bulk of the Fireteam Elite 2 experience, it’s a problem. Framerates barely stayed above 100fps with everything set to max and DLSS enabled, but it’s an unreasonably hefty game that needs some optimization passes.

If you’ve played Aliens: Fireteam Elite, you’ve already played Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2. It’s nearly the same game down to mission structure, only prettier but with 200% more story and dialogue you do not want to hear. Once the campaign ends, there’s no real endgame content to speak of, leaving you with nothing to do but replay levels on higher difficulties where the core gameplay fails to hold interest. Charging $10 more than its predecessor for an experience that recycles the same formula where you’re retreading previous areas is uninspired. It offers a few hours of mindless action if you just want to turn your brain off, but ultimately, Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 simply isn’t enough to justify the price tag.