I came out of my Summer Game Fest preview for Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 impressed and excited for the full release. The first game had its moments of fun, but ultimately lacked enough polish and variety to really cement it as a classic for the franchise. What I played in the preview showed a lot of promise and I was hopeful that the final release would be hiding even more secrets and ideas to uncover. The IP and concept of a co-op shooter playing as the marines trying to fight these grotesque abominations is just so perfect that I want to see this game succeed. Now with the final build in hand, let’s dive into this hive and see how they did.

In Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 you play as a Colonial Marine in the the Dagger Company tasked with investigating the strange disappearance of another squad. To no one’s surprise, we find out that the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is up to their no good deeds once again. What was once assumed to just be a standard Xenomorph outbreak turns into something much more. While the majority of the game is your pretty standard Alien story with serviceable missions that essentially just help push you to the next battle arena, it did have a decent ending and setup for a sequel. By the end of the story it wasn’t even about stopping the Xenomorphs, but stopping the Corporation from their next big goal beyond the Xenomorphs.

What is Weyland-Yutani Corp up to?

The entirety of the story is hit or miss with some interesting bits of story and lore thrown in, but it definitely isn’t what kept me playing. There was definitely more of an effort put into Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2’s story compared to the first, but sometimes I found that to be a little grating. The developers were boasting over 10,000 lines of dialogue, but so much of it is extremely cringey or just poorly written. Once I got the gist of the mission brief, the rest of dialogue I quickly skipped through because it was that bad. However, overall I liked where they were heading with the story, I just wish it dove into it sooner so it felt less like I was retreading the same stuff from the first game.

Luckily, the gameplay remains the strong point here, and there are some good additions and slight tweaks to the formula. At its core Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is still a straight forward co-op shooter: choose a mission, pick a class, tinker your loadouts, and shoot hordes of enemies while going zone to zone in a linear level. The change to four player co-op is a very much welcome addition, in a increasingly three player co-op world. Having that fourth person allows for a much more well rounded team, and allows for the new reworked classes to be more specialized.

I went with the Hunter because I wanted to have the concentrated damage for the large enemies.

The Marauder is the successor to the Demolisher, Duelist is the reworked Gunner, Machinist evolves the Technician, the Hunter updates the Lancer role, and the Doc role is now the Medic. All of them have been reworked and refocused for squad composition, as well as, customization and personalization with the Perk system.

The perk grid system is arguably Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2’s most interesting new update to the gameplay systems. As you level up the class you will unlock perks that you will need to Tetris fit into a grid to unlock their benefit. Leveling up the class unlocks more space allowing for more perks to be equipped which gives an opportunity for unique perk stacks that synergize by being adjacent to each other. Instead of merely accumulating increasingly powerful bonuses, you’re effectively solving a small loadout puzzle. Do you dedicate space to making an ability recharge faster? Improve its damage? Alter what the ability actually does? Invest in weapon performance? Build around survivability?

The perk grid is definitely one of the better updates they did for this game.

Guns can be customized with attachments and additional upgrades as well as special ammo like Fire and Electricity. This give some strategy to your builds and teams depending on what mission you’re going on. If the mission is primarily Xenomorph heavy, you may want to bring some fire ammo and fire mines for the extra damage. This isn’t a huge change or upgrade here, but it has been expanded on.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 also comes with a new Horde side mode that is wave-based survival. I’m glad this is in here, but I’ll be honest I didn’t play too much of it. The main reason it didn’t pull me in was because it felt too much like playing the regular campaign. The campaign itself is already heavily designed with almost every encounter to be wave-based survival. This just felt like more of the same, but without having to move through a story. Which isn’t a bad thing if all you and your squad wants to do to is focus on continuous fighting.

Some later level designs open up a bit more and allow for some more interesting battles.

What the Horde mode really pointed out to me, and my biggest issue with Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is the inconsistent mission structure. I absolutely loved the missions where it truly felt like we were up against the wall and we were battling to escape or having to hold down the helipad until the chopper got to us. However, there were just too many times when the mission would just sort of end and fade to black and then we are back on the Endeavor ship with no big climax or needing to get back to a helicopter or anything.

There were a few missions that stood out due to the level designs. Having some more open space outdoor missions was welcome here. It allowed for some big battles and navigating through dangerous crossfire. Then it would just plop you right back into a boring facility that looks like we’ve been through the same thing ten times. It got repetitive a bit too fast because of it.

It’s a shame that the more unique stuff only comes in towards the end.

It wasn’t until closer to the end when things got more interesting with the introduction of some mutated Xeno’s, but even those still felt similar to fight. Speaking of new enemies, Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 does come with some new enemies to take down. The Exploder, similar to the Bursters, but these will blow up in proximity to the player with a much larger radius. The Siren will use its scream to summon in more enemies, the Warden is a heavy build Xeno that will brute its way through your squad and spit acid as well. The Harbinger is a special mutated creature with four arms and a massive mouth that will pursue and immobilize you. Then there is the Bulwark, the heavy armored spider tank made by the Weyland-Yutani Corp.

The added enemy bosses do add some more flavor to the encounters which was definitely needed from the first game. However, combat still feels light and floaty. Something about the movement of the Colonial Marines just feels off, and I think they need to be a bit more heavy and grounded. They don’t need to be slow, but I feel like if everything had some more weight to it, almost like a Gears of War, it would make the combat and enemies feel a bit better. But having the added enemy types helps add to the chaos, and increases the need to work as a team and utilize each classes abilities to their fullest.

Big momma coming in! A nice ice beam blast to slow her down will do the trick.

Visually, Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 isn’t exactly a stunner in a pure graphical standpoint. I can’t even say that there is even a noticeable upgrade over the first game. Character models and animations are stiff, environments lack fine details, and level designs are just too similar. However, there is some good lighting, so when it is all clicking and you get that nice lighting with the smoke, and flickering lights, and the Xenomorph silhouettes show up, it can look cool. There are moments of the atmosphere and dark environments that evoke that feeling of what makes the Alien’s movies so tense. But when you’re seeing the same facility hallways over and over, it gets visually dull.

That being said, at least the Xenomorphs are still an absolute standout. They remain one of the coolest designed creatures ever made and that continues here. All of the enemy types are designed really well, from the Synthetics, Xenomorphs, and the Mutated Xenomorphs. I have no issue with the designs, it’s just the animations and how jerky they all are that needs work.

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The audio design is a bit all over the place also. Some of the weapons sound pretty weak and lack that good punch effect, but the Xenomorph screeches are fantastic. Unfortunately, the voice acting is pretty bad, and the writing is not helping in the slightest. What makes it worse is the constant repeated dialogue lines throughout the levels for everything. They did not write enough unique dialogue so each character on the squad will repeat the same damn lines over and over. Luckily the soundtrack is really great and the saving grace here, composer Austin Wintory (Journey, Abzu, The Pathless) did an excellent job bringing the cinematic qualities of the franchise to the game.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is a frustrating sequel because its best qualities are exactly what make its shortcomings so obvious. The shooting is satisfying. The Xenomorphs are fun to fight. But the campaign is repetitive, the story doesn’t get interesting until too late, and there just isn’t enough of an upgrade to the visuals and gameplay feel that the sequel needed. For a group of friends looking for an evening of blasting Xenomorphs, that’s probably enough. However, for anyone that was hoping for a bigger upgrade to the gameplay feel and overall mission and level design, it’s still not quite there.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is available now on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.

Reviewed on PC with an i7-12700kf, RTX 5070, and 32gb of DDR5 RAM.

A copy of Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 was provided by the publisher.