I should preface this review by saying that I'm a long-standing fan of the Alien franchise, and have loved the IP for a very long time.
That being said, this game iterates on the first one in many ways, that make for very compelling gameplay.
I understand that many people have encountered bugs, but rest assured - that hasn't been my experience. Fortune is a factor in this, I believe - some people are unluckily running into AI glitches, broken doors, and such. I haven't had any of those issues.
However, the issues I did run into were problematic - but easily circumvented. That said, in a finished, released, supposedly 'polished' game, these things shouldn't happen. I'll begin with the positives, *As a Standalone Title*
Pros:
> Character customisation, while simple, isn't terrible. I feel like my Marine looked very cool, and I enjoyed unlocking a lot of new visual options.
> The new weapon mechanics are fun, compelling, and rewarding to pay attention to. Weapons have split stats between damage, and stopping power. Damage does exactly what it says on the tin, reducing enemy hit-points iteratively with each attack. Stopping power however is where things become much more intriguing. This stat, common across all weapons, causes the enemies to flinch, lose their footing, get knocked down, etc. - It can be very impactful, and lends the weapons a real feel of 'mass' in their use.
> Visual Spectacle was fantastic. The set-pieces are clean (Not literally!), well-crafted, and look great. The classic aliens retro-scifi is very much a feature here, with the old-school white-grey/cream plastics, the heavy duty build quality, and the fantastically stylistic text-only / character-based displays. The aliens look great as ever, with more visual distinction being introduced for various enemy types (Pay close attention to the front portion of the 'Drone's' head!).
> The game's weapons have new features, as compared to the first game - there is now a secondary fire functionality, allowing for certain iconic weapons to have their particular iconic features...! (I'll let you figure it out in-game, because it really is a delight, and if you're an Aliens fan it'll have you whooping and hollering like I was! :D)
> Replayability seems pretty high - while the dialogue on the ship itself seems a little forced or stiff at times, (Some characters are WAY better acted / written than others!), the dialogue and actual gameplay in the missions is really solid, making for a fun if not especially complicated narrative. The story-beats are predictable, but still quite enjoyable, and the encounters in the game do show adequate variety to make things interesting after the first run-through.
I think that's enough for the pro's for now, I'll perhaps come back to it if anything else really jumps out at me. Now for the con's.
Cons:
> The new mechanics are especially fun and interesting, but some of them feel perhaps a little underused and punishing. Stamina for one is a big sticking point for me and my fireteam - we all agree that while the melee is exceptionally useful, and perhaps could be abused - the dodging mechanic is where the real problem is. The fact that both of the 'damage mitigation' options rely on the same pool of stamina is harsh and unforgiving. It's not gamebreaking, but it almost feels like it's built on the idea of creating frustration. It might have been better to not limit dodging (Since you can't fire on the enemy while dodging, and they can still hurt you with certain attacks!), while keeping melee as it is.
> Lack of optimisation rears its ugly heads in this one as it has with many other recent games. I'm running a very powerful system with no lack of memory, CPU clock rates, and a 4090 GPU (Of infamous reputation, but genuinely a very good unit!), and yet still the cut-scenes / animations did not perform even remotely smoothly. This game is installed on a very fast SSD, and yet the animations between scenes or levels tripped and stuttered horribly. On certain missions, there were 'ghost hiccups' or moments where the game appeared to stutter in a significant way.
> Freezes - During certain missions, and at certain times, the game would appear to entirely freeze for multiple seconds (Sometimes as many as 8 - 12!!), which gave me and my entire fireteam the impression the game was about to crash entirely and drop the mission. Not a great thing to have happening on a recently-released title that was shadow-dropped to steam with no beta phase, no obvious testing, and no news!
> Reconnect To Fireteam. This one was a real bugbear among me and my team - We would perhaps be a little bit more willing to forgive and forget with some of these problems if not for the completely broken, non-functional 'reconnect to fireteam' functionality that is *supposedly* within the game. Not one, single, measley time did this feature work. Every time the game crashed or a host had a problem, it was back to the endeavor to regroup, because the reconnect function *instantly* failed every single time.
> Difficulty Scaling on higher difficulties. The game gives you the option to start on intense or extreme, and while for certain things the claims of the developer about 'bullet sponges' are to some extent true - for many others, it is clearly and flagrantly false. The runners aren't what you'd call 'tanky' on the higher difficulties, but they definitely take more than their fair share of hits. Including to the weak spots. The marksman rifle was failing to kill runners with a single headshot (Which is kind of the weapons whole thing, no?), and the pulse rifles had to deliver multiple impacts to this very wriggly hitbox to put them down. Perhaps it would have been better to keep them at 'standard' difficulty levels of durability, while drastically increasing their numbers instead. It's understandable at least for the elites and specials to eat more rounds on the higher difficulties, though.
All in all, this game represents another unambitious but still ENTIRELY ENJOYABLE experience in the aliens franchise - and while many might pan the game for being so unambitious, I feel like after the years of 'ambitious but TERRIBLE' releases the franchise had, these kinds of game are really quite good and fun. You can enjoy the storyline, as there's something there. Or you can turn off your brain and go splat bugs - that's fun too.
With a new, full - if short - campaign, new enemies, new weapons, new mechanics, and newer visuals, as well as revisited 4-player balance, interesting environments, and corporate-boogly-woogliness, Aliens Fireteam Elite 2 delivers more of what the first one did, with enough iteration to justify its existence as a separate title. It's a fun game, and for aliens fans I can really recommend. To a casual gamer, I'd say wait for a sale or go into this game with your eyes open - it's got some issues, which may or may not be fixed in time - but it's a good one to enjoy some 'THEY'RE COMING OUTT'A THE DAMN WALLS!' pulse-pounding brrrrt'ing.
I give it a solid but not perfect 7 out of 10 pharyngeal jaws.
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