The first proper look at some Aliens: Fireteam gameplay has surfaced, showing a bunch of xenomorph-splatting in the upcoming third-person shooter. Announced earlier this week, Aliens: Fireteam is a three-player co-op game set 23 years after the Alien trilogy. Judging from this gameplay footage players will be pitted against hordes upon hordes of various aliens, which is far too many for my liking. Uh, not because I’m scared of them or anything. Actually, I think they’re rather un-scary when so many are attacking at once.
Sigourney Weaver might disagree, but she’s not here. Several marines with whopping great big guns are here instead. IGN went through a level from the game with some of the developers from Cold Iron Studios, check it out for yourself below.
Right, so, have you ever noticed that the more Aliens there are, the easier they are to kill? In Alien: Isolation there’s just one (for the most part), and it does a fine job of senselessly murdering everyone. In the Aliens film, the odd group of xenomorphs turn up and a few of them get killed, but they still manage to rip through a bunch of marines. And yet, in Aliens: Fireteam, there are like 20 in a room at once and they go down like squishy little bugs. Strength in numbers really doesn’t seem to apply to them past a certain point.
I just feel like making the xenos so easy to exterminate takes away from the tension and scariness this franchise is so good at creating. Granted, I haven’t played Fireteam personally, and my opinion might change once I get my hands on it. But from this video, it looks a bit like Left 4 Dead-but-Aliens. (Which isn’t even a bad thing! Just not what I was expecting, and not the sort of vibe I’d fancy from an Aliens game).
My gripes aside, the devs did reveal some cool stuff that has piqued my interest a little. One of the main things is that Austin Wintory is composing the Aliens: Fireteam soundtrack. He’s done music for games like Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Journey, Absolver and other good’uns. Unfortunately, you can’t really hear the background music in the gameplay vid, there’s a bit too much shooting and alien shrieking over the top.
On top of that, they chat about the different character classes – Technicians use turrets, Demolishers get heavy weapons like grenade launchers and flame throwers, and Gunners are your standard military dudes with assault rifles and frag grenades. Each have unique abilities to help the team, as the devs say they want each player to feel like they have an individual role to play.
They also touch on enemy types, campaign length and difficulty settings, amongst other bits and pieces. It’s worth having a watch if you’re interested.
Aliens: Fireteam is set to arrive on Steam this summer. It’s also heading to Xbox and PlayStation consoles.
