Coming summer 2021 to Xboxes, PlayStations, and Steam from Cold Iron Studios, Aliens: Fireteam is a co-op survival shooter set 23 years after the original Alien trilogy. Turns out those pesky H.R. Giger critters are still a huge problem, and it’s up to the Colonial Marines to feed them. Or exterminate them, I guess.
My first impression of Aliens: Fireteam after watching a special Discord presentation run by developer Cold Iron Studios last month, is that it is indeed an Alien game. Teams of up to three players (or a single player with AI teammates) scour overrun facilities, abandoned colonies, or alien landscapes, hunting and killing 20 different types of enemies, from the titular bugs to Weyland-Yutani Synthetics. The aliens come at the player’s fireteam from all directions, bursting into pools of acid when killed.
This is the James Cameron Aliens experience, all machine guns and flamethrowers and desperate team-based action. Players choose from one of five classes—Gunner, Demolisher, Technician, Doc, and Recon—customize their characters, and then take on a series of repeatable campaigns. It’s the sort of game where you might have to survive waves of enemies while waiting for an elevator to descend. To keep things from getting stale, there’s a Challenge Card mechanic that modifies each campaign mission with special modifiers, challenging players to do things like clear an area using only headshots. Fortunately, xenomorphs are giant dickheads.
Aliens: Fireteam is coming to Xbox One, Xbox X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC this summer. It looks like exactly the sort of game I think of when I imagine a co-op third-person Alien shooter.