Aliens: Fireteam is a co-op shooter set 23 years after the Alien trilogy
Game over, man! Game over!
The 1986 film Aliens is one of the primary reference materials for an embarrasing number of video games (up there with Buck Rogers and King Of The Hoops), yet so few games are actually set in that world of acid-blooded aliens and endlessly-quotable space marines. It's been a few years but now here comes a new one, Aliens: Fireteam. Announced today and due this summer, it's a cooperative third-person shooter which I imagine will involve staying frosty, riding an express elevator to Hell, using the Force, and getting in that pipe, five by five.
Aliens: Fireteam is the mysterious game we've heard whispers of since 2018, made by Cold Iron Studios. The class-based shooter will put you and your pals in the boots of marines aboard the USS Endeavor (best known for joining Picard's blockade of the Romulan-Klingon border) investigating a distress signal from the outer colonies. Uh oh.
So off three of you go (with real players or AI squadmates), all tooled up, into industrial facilities and colonies and such to splat different types of alien and fry androids. As Johnny Rico said, "Kill 'em all!"
Cold Iron say it has customisable weapons and character progression, plus a 'Challenge Card' system that "lets players mutate each mission, offering a new experience with every playthrough." While the game's mostly under wraps for now, what they say broadly reminds me a bit of Warhammer rat-smasher Vermintide.
Sure, I'm curious about this. Always up for a bit of cooperative shooting, me. Murder is a good catch-up activity with my pals. Though I am less enthusiastic than I would've been years back. Aliens is wildly overexposed thanks to a quintillion games unofficially borrowing its vibes, and the official adaptations often being just, well, licensed games, y'know. The bar for cooperative shooting with a sci-fi horror vibe has been set high by GTFO too, one of the most wonderfully terrible things in years. But Aliens is still a great film with a great look, and I'll not pretend I'm above wailing like Bill Paxton.
It's just... after the hash Gearbox made of Aliens: Colonial Marines, I have no unbridled enthusiasm for a new Aliens game. My enthusiasm is strictly bridled. Alien (singular) has been riding high since Creative Assembly's excellent Alien: Isolation but Aliens is in the dog house.
Aliens: Fireteam is due out on Steam this summer. It'll also be on Xboxes and PlayStations.
Cold Iron were owned by the Alien overlords at Fox, but became part of Daybreak Games (the gang behind EverQuest and PlanetSide) last year.