Feels rushed. base game is 50 USD, I had over seventy in my steam wallet so I got the premium edition. The premium edition doesn't really effect anything, its 20 USD and purely cosmetic, honestly a bad purchase on my end.
I am going to be comparing this to Warhammer 40k Darktide which at this time is 40 USD purely because its a horde shooter and its the closest comparison I personally have at the time of this review.
Regarding gameplay, very basic loop, very simple mechanics, four unique classes and one class where you can mix and match other classes. Game revolves around abilities and equipment. Most rewards are stat upgrades or ability changes. There is a small variety for the arsenal.
I would say the Darktide wins on this, the fifth class has nothing and you need to play each of the four classes and level them up to make your fifth class stronger. It has the set up of a longterm playstyle that would only be useful if you played this for months and was your primary game. The abilities are very simple in comparison.
Moving on to enemies, AFE2 has more of a Left For Dead enemy roster and multiple enemy 'factions'
Xenomorphs: You have basic weak swarm enemies, tanks, pouncers, warriors, tanks, smashers. Super basic, very squishy unless you have a good build.
Neomorphs: Honestly I enjoy the addition of Neomorphs, it feels very niche as its not a popular subject regarding the AvP/Aliens community as a whole. However I have noticed that a Neomorph variant resembling a Facehugger that is very large is in the game aswell, a model I have only seen on SS13, a text roleplaygame on Byond, extremely niche, now I wonder the origin as I cannot find where this model comes from.
Neomorphs are basically an xenomorph reskin, no spore zombies, just remodeled xenomorphs with orange blood.
Synthetics: Weyland Yutani combat synthetics. I don't have a list of their enemy roster, but they basically play like the hell divers automatons. Hordes of walking turrets that explode and sometimes rush you with a lot of armor.
Darktide wins this as it has more variety, unique designs and mechanics, despite having only two factions (dregs and cultists) that are the exact same and are just reskins. I just do not like the Automaton playstyle from the synthetics.
(SPOILERS SPOILERS, SCROLL DOWN)
The Queen Boss fight felt so disappointing. It has like ONE attack and is basically just a giant bullet sponge that slowly runs at you and is the size of maybe two A-10s? Its big, it does a lot of damage, it takes a lot of damage, but its super anticlimactic. Its slow, only knows how to run up and do a slow attack animation that is really easy to dodge. The hordes of smaller enemies are more threatening than her. I honestly felt super disappointed.
Its like the batman fight in Injustice. Big build up, exciting enemy, sad end.
(SPOILERS OVER)
The Plot/Characters
I've seen the discussions about how people do not like the 'girlboss' cast. Yes, the writing isn't perfect, honestly the plot isn't that interesting. It feels more like a 2nd Person View like your character doesn't really matter aside from moving the narrative along. Like you aren't part of the main cast.
Most of the main cast are women, this is not a bad thing, thats a choice and it works. USCM has always had women in the military. Aliens has always had girlbosses like Ellen Ripley. However I do feel like the writing should include Hotshot more than just 'wow good job marine' I dunno.
Then again I do not care about the lore or plot of a horde shooter. Even in darktide the plot was standard at best, horde shooters never have a good plot in my opinion. I would not count this to my personal review.
Level Design:
This is not 'how good the map looks' this is ammo placement, health placement, loot
The 'resupply' stations are at the end of every 'segment' of a level instead of at the beginning or before hard combat. You get a ammo supply box, which is infinite, meaning if you run of out ammo you normally can run back and get it. However you only get one health pack per person at each of these. Meaning you need to be more careful with you health.
This is a very Left For Dead set up, makes medics so much more useful for giving you temporary health so you can survive before a health pack. I just wish there were more of these health packs scattered around randomly, or atleast smaller health packs that are scattered around appropriately in each map.
Darktide had a more interesting level design in my opinion regarding the scatter of supplies and stations.
Cosmetics
Voice Lines
Armor
Weapons
Everything cosmetic for your character and their equipment. (this is regarding male customization, I prefer playing male characters)
Voicelines, you get TWO for the males atleast, I suspect two for the female voicelines too. So thats four, and you can change the pitch of each. They don't really sound that different to me, unlike darktide which has completely different reactions, voice lines, and accents.
Face/Trait cosmetics: You get paint, 2D scarring, a small arrangement of color for both eyes and hair, nothing too crazy. You get a handful of hairstyles and facial hairs. You can change your facial structure. Thats about it.
Armor, there a few sets of armor, zero stat changes, purely visual, you can choose legs, torso, head, and camo. You can add stickers. Very simple, not a large selection of things.
Overall, I honestly cannot tell the difference between marines. You could give us zero customization and I probably would not tell the difference.
Darktide definitely won this by a longshot in my opinion.
I think thats all. Overall I would not buy this game for 50 USD as it is now unless you NEED to kill xenomorphs TODAY. I would buy it for like 30 USD. Its a much worse horde shooter than Darktide. That being said, I already bought it for 70 USD, I'm not in a tight spot, I don't think it was a smart purchase but I've already played it too much.
Some side notes, all of the cutscenes are super buggy for me, but then again I do not care about the plot for any horde shooter unless I can see my character in the cutscenes, from what I can tell, you can't, so.
