New xenomorphs are coming to terrorize Colonial Marines based on images from is considered the best game made for the property. Both released a year from each other.
Many games in the Aliens property stick to placing players in the Colonial Marines' shoes. Often, the goal is to shoot down Xenomorphs and survive the swarms of enemies. However, some games, like Isolation or Predator: Hunting Grounds, make the players the prey, having to escape the iconic creatures rather than doing the hunting. Aliens: Fireteam is a return to the shooting focused gameplay. However, in this instance, players will be able to fight off these Xenomorphs with up to two other players.
Cold Iron Studios revealed six xenomorph variants for Aliens: Fireteam in official images shared with living armored tanks. Drones use stealth and cunning to flank players from the walls and air shafts without detection. Prowlers, with their reddish hue, topple players and claw at them from close range. Bursters, similar to the Runners, have acidic sacks on their heads that explode when slain. Finally, the Spitter is a variant that prefers to attack from long-range. The developers said that the game has over 20 different enemy types.
Some of these variants are on display in a recently released gameplay trailer from an early build of the game. Based on that footage, it appears that variants have bigger health bars than the normal fodder enemies, along with nametags so that players can identify a variant at a glance. Cold Iron seems to have designed the enemy types to keep players guessing during each of the game's missions. The gameplay for Fireteam is rLeft 4 Dead, albeit with the motifs and references that fans of the Aliens series will undoubtedly appreciate.
Overall, Aliens: Fireteam looks to be keeping its promises of being a faithful Alien adventure. The new variants look like they will provide their own challenges independently, and make for a truly deadly challenge when attacking in swarms. Whether or not the game lives up to its namesake or falls into obscurity like Colonial Marines is too early to tell. So far, though, it looks like a far cry from its disastrously glitchy forebear.
Aliens: Fireteam is set to release sometime this Summer.
Source: IGN
