I had a fine enough time, so you can just go, "Oh yeah, blue tick, good to go," and if that's all you need we're square. But that's not what I do. Stick around for some rambling.

Do you know about the Aliens franchise? I imagine most folk do. So it's waaaay more Aliens and not at all Alien. Which is to say there's a lot of alien grass and you're the lawnmower with a full tank of gas. Which is, in turn, to say that you regularly get swamped with a lot of easy-to-kill alien weirdos that try to run up to you and bite you, and you can easily dispatch them with a few rounds from any gun. And, on occasion, something zestier shows up that spits, or explodes, or ambushes, or something else, just to mix it up.

Now, if you don't know about the Aliens franchise, basically a bunch of insectoid-lookin' aliens that were initially designed by famous artist H.R. Giger want to kill you, and do try their level best to do it, essentially uncaring for their own personal well-being. His art was intentionally evocative and creepy but you never get quite that good a look at them, as they're usually dying in droves. The aliens are more disturbing than zombies to me, but getting into that is going to take more paragraphs and veer this review off-topic. They're not the only enemies; there's a few others, most of whom act essentially the same (cannon-fodder rushes, heavier dudes with specialty attacks), and one clump of them in the second campaign are a radical departure from the rest. But I'll say no more not to spoil it.

The closest comparison to this game is the Left 4 Dead series, in terms of gameplay. Left 3 Alien doesn't quite cut it as a title, but the differences are largely academic. There's enemies that can temporarily incapacitate an ally, but they can struggle free at least; a timely rescue means they take less damage. You want to stay close to your allies, keep an eye on all approach angles, but not too close as there are a few AoE attacks to encourage a bit of a healthy distance. Well, also the marines have a very good dodge-roll so the battles tend to be a bit more dynamic.

There's four campaigns, each broken into three chapters, each chapter will take 20 minutes if you rush it, 30 to 35 if you take your time to drink in the scenery. So if you played through the base game the once, about six hours of actual shooting, plus extra time between missions twiddling your loadouts and trying on new hats on your dudes or new colours on your guns. But your dudes (and their guns) have levels, there's new guns to unlock, so if making numbers bigger speaks to you, you're encouraged to go back and play again on harder levels of difficulty. Maxing out every class and every gun could well take you a few hundred hours, and you'd wind up seeing each map about 50 times each on average in doing so. They're not dynamic so you'd get real familiar with 'em.

I'm not wired that way.

There so many nods to Alien(s) lore here that playing it with people who know stuff about it can be amusing or interesting if you can get 'em to prattle on about it. Not *too* much, as audio cues are helpful to help get the drop on would-be ambushers, especially as your commanding officer is directing your fire and attention mid-fight. Well, also, one of my buddies was deeply bothered by what he thought was willful stupidity on the parts of our commanding officers, so you might not want to engage too deeply. (For the record, I think it was a mixture of cynicism and policial flexing, but he was also the guy I got into a long-winded discussion about the nature of F3AR, so, y'know, we're both opinionated and will talk for hours about minutiae of little interest to others.)

Anyway, the various campaigns do have notably different scenery, and it's well-realized. Each area feels quite distinct. It also makes for enemies specific to individual maps, which initially feels underused... unless you go max out all your classes and guns and you'll be seeing an awful lot of it. If I had my druthers, I'd rather have many more maps and have to play each of them fewer times; make each campaign have six or twelve missions or something, even across the same terrain set. The outing length is pretty good though, at 20-30 minutes each. Keep them that length, that's brilliant..

There's jumpscares galore here, as the smaller cannon-fodder aliens will jump out of convenient hatches in ceilings, ambusher aliens will lurk around corners and wait for you, and they're always keen to pull a Rear Admiral attack. It's best appreciated with friends. Bribe a couple people if you need to.

So in short, if you missed Left 4 Dead, want to get that sort of coop against-the-horde shooting, like Aliens or just a touch of scifi, this is a pretty good proposition for your money. You really will get the most out of it with buddies though.

I'll go back to this with some other buddies in time, but I'll be streaming other things instead. I'm also open to ideas. Mostly I'm just talkative when there's an audience, so if you're down here, I think you and I will get on just fine. http://www.twitch.tv/fdejeuner

I read a bit of the hate on the game, and I can't really speak to the dlc stuff but the game is solid if you like the horde shooters with progression unlocks between matches. This very similar to space marines 2, while I prefer the astetics and the warhammer 40k universe, this game is whole sale a better game. Class specific perks feel way more meaningful, each class also unlocks general perks you can slot into any class making progressing with multiple classes beneficial to your favorite class, weapon variety is higher with 2 or 3 types of weapons for each weapon type and then variation within a weapon. For example: rifles include sniper rifles and assault rifles, but withing assault their are full auto and burst fire rifles. This lets you settle more exactly where you want to be, plus each weapon has three slots to further enhance or customize play.

I have some critisisms about the mission but I haven't actually finished the campaign so I'll reserve them for now. Each enemy faction is a little bit one note, when you are doing missions fighting just one faction it can get monotonous, though as a lover of killing hordes of enemies it's not yet boring for me after 20 hours. Nothing like toasting up some Xenos in the morning! That said, the game came alive for me in the second part of the second mission, where you are fighting two different factions throughout the mission. One faction is primarily range and the other melee, the class I was using at the time had a solid spray and pray assault rifle and a singe shot heavy damage hand cannon. I take aimed head shots at the ranged ones and have to switch to spray down the melees. On top of this the two factions would fight and kill each other too. This meant I was always thinking of my positioning, listening for call outs from our eyes in the sky and just generally having a really fun fight. My only criticism is I've only really experienced this in the second mission. First mission is an introduction, second one got things cooking, and third one introduced a third faction but didn't really mingle any other factions in there. I still have one more mission and a DLC to check out so maybe those both lean in on this tactical style fighting. We'll see.

Over all for getting this on sale for $6 it's well worth it, I'd personal probably pay $20 for it as someone who really like horde shooter, and you might want it for Aliens lore if you are a fan or want to learn more about the franchise.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite is unfortunately a disappointing experience. The gameplay quickly becomes repetitive and monotonous, offering little variety to keep players engaged. The main campaign feels incomplete, and in order to access the rest of the story you are forced to purchase DLC...a very questionable decision from the developers.
On top of that, the game suffers from poor optimization, with frequent crashes and technical issues that break immersion. Even at a discounted price, I cannot recommend this title.