Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 – Review: Cold Iron learns from its mistakes, but not enough

Five years ago, we concluded our review of the first Aliens: Fireteam Elite with a fairly simple question: “Will it be better next time?” Cold Iron Studios’ title certainly had something going for it, especially when it managed to bring three people together in front of the screen and overwhelm them with Xenomorphs, but a linear campaign, not always well-balanced classes, and two AI-controlled companions who, at higher difficulties, seemed to possess the survival instinct of a disoriented marine, had severely limited the final result.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 was released a few days ago, and the answer to the old question, to link back to the discussion above, is “Yes, it’s better, but with some reservations.” Squads now consist of four players, classes have been revised, weapon customization has gained depth, and the campaign finally tries to tell a story that goes beyond the simple pretext of traversing yet another infested corridor. The problem is that Cold Iron has corrected many flaws without managing to completely free itself from the structure that produced them, so every step forward often ends up bringing us back to a rather familiar place.

And when that place is a corridor with a door to activate and three waves of Xenomorphs approaching, the feeling of déjà-vu becomes hard to ignore.

LV-558 brings us back to where Weyland-Yutani shouldn't have meddled

The story takes place in 2207, five years after the events of the first chapter. The USS Endeavor intercepts a distress signal from Storr’s Boon, a Weyland-Yutani mining colony located on LV-558, and what should be another Colonial Marines intervention quickly takes on far less reassuring contours. The message leads to Dr. Pearce, the facility is infested, and the Banshee squad sent to the site has disappeared—ingredients that anyone familiar with this universe will have already learned to translate with a very technical term: trouble.

This time, however, Cold Iron tries to make better use of what it has. The campaign unfolds through fifteen missions and brings Xenomorphs, Weyland-Yutani Synthetics, and Pathogen-altered creatures into the same conflict, directly picking up some threads left by the first game and its related expansion. LV-558 thus becomes not just a new coordinate on the star map, because Storr’s Boon’s mining activities, the experiments conducted within it, and what is discovered by proceeding to deeper zones allow for greater continuity in the Endeavor’s story.

The improvement compared to 2021 is especially evident in how missions are connected. Characters now speak, are staged with greater care, and the dialogues aboard the Endeavor at least try to make the crew feel like something more than a briefing vending machine. Some locations and references also broaden the discussion towards the more mysterious corners of the franchise, including those connected to ancient structures that predate human presence.

However, don't expect a script capable of making us miss Ridley Scott or any other director of the eponymous Alien films. The characters remain quite functional to their roles, and many conversations primarily serve to move us to the next assignment, no more, no less. The world-building is better than their characterization, and when the game lets the environments, laboratories, mining facilities, or Pathogen-infested structures speak, it often manages to be more interesting than when it tries to tell us everything through a dialogue window.

It’s still a step forward compared to the first chapter, where the plot tended to dissolve behind a sequence of rather anonymous objectives. Here, at least, there’s something that drives discovery, even if the way we get there doesn't always possess the same quality.

Four Marines help a lot, especially when they know what they're doing

The most obvious change is the shift from three to four squad members, an apparently simple choice that actually alters a good portion of the encounters. Arenas are generally wider, attacks come from more directions, and the presence of a fourth Marine allows for building less rigid groups than in the past. One character can focus on horde control, another on more resilient adversaries, while the other two can handle support and damage without necessarily forcing someone to sacrifice their role.

The five basic classes offered follow this philosophy. Marauder, Duelist, Machinist, Hunter, and Medic possess sufficiently different weapons and abilities to make each one's task immediately recognizable, but they are less restrictive than their equivalents in the first game. We complained a lot in 2021 about how some configurations paled in comparison to the Demolisher. This time, the effectiveness of a class depends more on how it's built and what the other three squad members are using, also because modifiers, perks, and weapon upgrades allow for significant shifts in equipment behavior.

The Marauder remains an excellent solution for those who consider a rocket launcher an acceptable form of diplomacy, the Machinist works on turrets and zone control, the Medic gains much more significance as difficulties increase, and the Duelist can use two primary weapons, eliminating some of the rigidity of old loadouts. The Hunter, on the other hand, focuses on control and damage, with tools capable of slowing or freezing threats before they reach the group.

The most interesting part, however, comes after investing enough time in the normal classes. The Specialist allows you to mix elements from other specializations and build a Marine much closer to your needs, opening up combinations that would have simply been impossible in the first Fireteam Elite. Taking the offensive power of one class and combining it with a control tool belonging to another concretely changes how you approach a wave, and finally, progression isn't just about seeing some numbers increase on the character screen.

There's also a small risk. When the Specialist starts working really well, returning to the five traditional classes can almost feel like a self-imposed limitation. It's not yet a problem significant enough to render the roster useless, especially since building it requires developing the other classes first, but it quickly becomes clear why many players might converge there in advanced activities.

Weapons received the same treatment. Fire modes, modifiers, and characteristics allow for more precise customization, but the feedback from combat remains particularly convincing. The Pulse Rifle continues to unleash bullets with that somewhat childish satisfaction we expect from an Aliens game, shotguns gain value when corridors narrow, and heavy weapons become indispensable as soon as a swarm decides to stop being manageable (it happens more often than we'd like to admit).

Xenomorphs are more numerous and intelligent, level design a bit less so

On the enemy front, Cold Iron has done better. Drone, Warrior, Runner, and the other historical Xenomorph variants are joined by new threats, while Synthetics and Pathogen-mutated creatures force a change in priorities during encounters. Xenomorphs more frequently exploit walls and ceilings, try to reach the squad laterally, and some variants are designed specifically to break formation, instead of merely sticking to the inglorious strategy of running straight into four automatic rifles.

When multiple factions end up in the same arena, the game manages to create its best moments. A defensive line that seemed quite calm can change in a matter of seconds if a heavy enemy forces the group to move while other Xenomorphs enter from the sides. That's where the fourth player and the new classes truly make sense, because controlling space matters more than it did in the first chapter.

Quantity, however, continues to be used as the primary tool to increase tension. After taking down hundreds of Xenomorphs, seeing another Runner emerge from a grate hardly produces the reaction H.R. Giger would have desired. Fireteam Elite 2 clearly belongs to the Aliens school more than the Alien one, so the goal isn't to make us fear a single creature, but the continuous transformation of the scenario into an out-of-control situation. The game works when that escalation forces the squad to move and change priorities, much less so when it merely adds another group of targets to the previous one.

And here we come to the old corridor problem. The fifteen missions are visually more varied, there are more open spaces, and the ability to vault over some cover makes movement less rigid, but the structure of many assignments continues to be surprisingly similar to what was criticized five years ago. You advance, eliminate a first group, reach a wider area, activate a terminal, and defend the position until the game decides you can proceed.

It's not always boring, because combat holds up better to repetition this time, but Cold Iron continues to use the quality of the encounter to compensate for a mission structure that rarely surprises. A campaign of this length would have deserved more deviations from the formula, some assignments built around a completely different rule, or situations where the objective wasn't just a new justification for another wave to arrive.

Finally playable solo, but a real squad is still something else

Here we come to one of the points that most penalized the first Fireteam Elite. Alpha and Beta were sufficient at lower difficulties, but as the level increased, they often became the additional problem no one had asked for. Fireteam Elite 2 adds Gamma and makes the three Synthetics that fill empty slots generally more useful.

They shoot with decent accuracy, follow the group better, intervene when a companion falls, and can be upgraded through specific perks. Patch 1 also corrected several malfunctions directly related to the bots, including perks that stopped working and situations where they could get stuck during a mission. The result is that tackling the campaign solo on Standard difficulty is finally a real possibility, not just a fallback to accept when matchmaking finds no one.

This doesn't mean that Alpha, Beta, and Gamma have suddenly attended the Colonial Marines tactical academy. They don't build true synergies with our class, they follow rather than anticipate the player's intentions, and in more complex encounters, they don't replace the ability of three real people to distribute targets, abilities, and ammunition. At higher difficulties, the difference becomes quite clear again.

And that's fair to a certain extent, because Fireteam Elite is born as a cooperative game. The difference from the past is that this time the game doesn't seem to almost punish those who want to see the campaign without organizing an evening with three other human beings. When the squad is complete, however, crossplay between PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S and integrated voice chat eliminate a lot of friction in organizing matches.

After the story, the Horde mode remains, designed to push classes and builds to their limit. Waves progressively increase in difficulty, rewards grow with the risk, and the group must decide how far to push before the situation becomes unmanageable. It's probably where the new class system best expresses its potential, because the difference between four builds designed together and four players who randomly entered the same matchmaking becomes evident rather quickly.

Some doubts remain about overall longevity. Once the campaign is finished, the cycle mainly revolves around upgrading classes, finding equipment, and the Horde. For fans of the first chapter, this may be more than enough, but those who hoped for a much broader endgame risk finding the same activities with higher numbers quite soon.

Cold Iron is fixing the launch while we're still playing

The technical aspect is what makes it most complicated to conclude this review today. The game arrived on the market accompanied by problems that go far beyond some amusing clipping: stuttering, frame pacing irregularities, collisions, stuck enemies, crashes, and anomalies in cooperative game synchronization characterized the first few days in a not-so-positive way.

Visually, the leap compared to the first episode exists mainly in the lighting, the density of environments, and the quantity of elements on screen. We are not facing a technological revolution, and some animations or faces continue to remind us of the project's production scale, but the industrial interiors, contaminated zones, and especially the hives finally manage to get closer to the imagery that the Aliens logo carries with it. Austin Wintory completes the picture with a soundtrack that knows the source material well without turning into a simple imitation of what James Horner did in cinema.

Five years later, then, we can finally answer the question with which we bid farewell to the first game. Yes, it went better, because Fireteam Elite 2 has more interesting classes, a richer cooperative experience, finally usable bots, and a campaign that at least tries to build a reason to keep descending to the bottom of LV-558. But not enough to completely erase the old problems: missions continue to repeat more than necessary, the story grows more in world-building than in characters, and the technical launch required corrections that a sequel should have avoided.

Cold Iron Studios has learned several lessons. The next one, perhaps, should be the most difficult: it's not enough to put more Marines, more Xenomorphs, and more possibilities within the same structure. Sooner or later, you also have to change the corridor.