Aliens Is Back, Fireteam Elite Drops On August 24th

It Has To Be Better Than Aliens: Colonial Marines, Right?

Taking the Aliens movies and transferring that world from the big screen to a computer screen seemed like an easy thing to do well.  Indeed the first few games, up to the first incarnations of the Aliens Versus Predator series were indeed quite fun and the 90’s version of Aliens offered an incredible multiplayer experience, with a somewhat decent single player campaign as well.  Since that time the games, with the exception of Alien: Isolation and it’s unique game play style, have ranged from poor to abysmal.

A serious decline in quality over the lifetime of a series has not stopped game developers from developing new games in the past, and Aliens is no exception.  On August 24th Aliens: Fireteam Elite will arrive on Steam and we will get a chance to see if the series has somehow been revived successfully or if this is another example of how not to design a game.   This time it will be a three person co-op shooter, which seems to be at least partially a third person cover based shooter, with the possibility of first person play implied by the trailer over at Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN.  It is rather difficult to tell from the trailer as it spends a lot of time showing video which is obviously not representative of gameplay … unless there are a lot of quick time events in the game.

You will be able to choose between five classes, including the Gunner, Demolisher, Technician, Doc and Recon though we have little to no idea who does what; it’s unlikely the Recon class is the one with the flamethrower.  In addition to classes will be a Perk Board to improve and specialize your class abilities, and a Challenge Card system will do something as well.  In case you aren’t yet worried, only about half of the things you battle be Aliens and you will have 30 moddable weapons to chose from and upgrade.

Let’s hope that they spent a bit of time designing a decent game to play in between all the aforementioned extras.