Aliens: Fireteam, the co-op shooter about a squad of absolute badasses facing off against endless hordes of priapic extra terrestrials, will be out on August 24, with a slightly changed name—Aliens: Fireteam Elite.
The Left 4 Dead-inspired shooter didn't exactly knock our socks off when we saw it earlier this year. Not that it doesn't appear to be a competent shooter, although we won't have a final word on that until it comes out, but simply because it follows the brilliant and more claustrophobically-minded Alien: Isolation. As we said in our March 2021 preview, it feels like a step backwards: "There's so much that could be done with the Alien license, and a co-op shooter based on Aliens feels like the lowest hanging fruit."
Of course, the other side of that coin is that a guns-blazing firefight against alien horrors and Weyland-Yutani synthetics is the sort of thing that stands up pretty well in its own right. The greater challenge facing Fireteam may not be the unimaginative approach to the Alien setting, but the over-abundance of upcoming Left 4 Dead-alikes, including Back 4 Blood, Redfall, The Anacrusis, Rainbow Six Extraction, and Evil Dead. It's a pretty packed field, and no sure bet that another bug hunt will stand out from that crowd.
As for the name change, no reason was given, so I can only theorize that it's to reassure players that they are indeed state-of-the-badass-art, and not just a bunch of grunts. (No offense.)
Aliens: Fireteam Elite is available for pre-purchase now on Steam in a $40 standard edition or a $70 deluxe, which includes the Endeavor Pass collection of four post-release cosmetic DLC bundles and the Endeavor Veteran Pack of more than 20 individual cosmetic items including armor kit skins, emotes, weapon colors and decals. Details on both editions and everything else are up at aliensfireteamelite.com.
