Our Judgment
If you enter the darkness without fear, perhaps the darkness has lost its teeth.
They have brought me another game about the creatures from the dark.
I have played only several hours, so I will not pretend to have walked the entire battlefield. But, I have seen enough to know that something is missing.
The atmosphere is good. The environments look better than the first game, the Alien setting is recognizable, and there are moments when a wave of Xenomorphs comes rushing toward me and I enjoy it. There is plenty to do, the weapons can be customized, and the build system gives me some freedom to shape my character into the kind of soldier I want. When the pieces come together, fighting through a swarm can be a lot of fun.
But this is an Alien game. I should be afraid.
I am not.
The gunplay feels too arcade-like, and shooting a Xenomorph often lacks the weight I expect. The sound design does little to help, and the enemy AI can be painfully predictable. The maps look good but are largely linear, which makes the experience feel more like moving from one firefight to the next than surviving inside an Alien world. I find myself thinking about the next objective rather than wondering what might be waiting around the corner.
That is a problem when Alien: Isolation has already taught us how frightening this universe can be. Fireteam Elite 2 does not need to become a horror game, but it should understand the difference between fighting Xenomorphs and simply shooting targets shaped like Xenomorphs. Better audio, smarter enemies, stronger gunplay, and more tension would go a long way. Optimization also needs work, and the asking price makes those shortcomings harder to ignore.
The writing and voice acting are poor, but I will forgive this because I did not purchase an Alien game to admire Shakespeare. I came for the Aliens.
And when there are enough of them, it can still be a good time, especially with friends.
For fans of the franchise, there is enough here to justify taking the journey. For everyone else, the price is harder to swallow when better shooters and much scarier Alien games already exist.
This Old Sensei has seen the swarm.
He simply wishes it had given him a reason to fear it.