It’s been a very weird and winding road to get to this point, but Cold Iron Studios’ long-teased co-op shooter Aliens: Fireteam Elite has now officially launched, arriving as a buy-to-play title to PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and PC via Steam.
“Set in the iconic Alien universe, Aliens: Fireteam Elite is a cooperative third-person survival shooter that drops your fireteam of hardened marines into a desperate fight to contain the evolving Xenomorph threat.”
As alluded to in the lede, this one has taken some interesting steps to get to gold. The game was first hinted at in 2016, then further elaborated on in 2019 when Cold Iron landed the Alien IP rights. Then, the studio went through buyouts from the likes of Daybreak and EG7 Global, and then finally the game was officially unveiled this past March and renamed from Aliens: Fireteam to Aliens: Fireteam Elite. Presumably because of leetness.
Initial impressions on Steam seem to be generally favorable, with reviews sitting in the “Mostly Positive” side of things. The vast majority of the reviews are using this game’s launch to skewer the much-maligned Aliens: Colonial Marines multiplayer shooter; “Just glad Randy Pitchford had nothing to do with this game,” reads one such review.
As one would expect, Fireteam Elite’s launch comes with a snazzy new trailer to try and entice people out of their $40. If you’d rather sit on your cash, make sure to tune in to OPTV tomorrow afternoon where we’ll be streaming some live first impressions.
