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'Alien: Fireteam Elite 2' is a good old-fashioned bug hunt, ironically plagued by bugs
We're scared of the Xenomorphs again, but Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 knows old-fashioned bug hunts shouldn't be a thing of the past.
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The first Aliens: Fireteam Elite was among my favorite Alien video games, and there were a lot of reasons to be excited for a sequel.
At Summer Game Fest 2026, we learned of many smart changes and improvements to the formula, and I was eager to go bug-hunting again. A new campaign, fully reworked classes, and four-player co-op. What could go wrong?
Months later, Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2's debut has been difficult, mostly due to glaring tech issues. Despite this, it's still a welcome jolt of action for a franchise that's been focusing on making the Xenomorphs scary again in recent years.
Alien: Romulus (2024) and Alien: Earth (2025) have reestablished the acid-blooded Xenomorphs as bona fide horror icons, while games like Aliens: Dark Descent bet on tense real-time tactics and squad management; Rogue Incursion spooked VR and non-VR players alike; and we even have Isolation 2's pure survival horror to look forward to.
Rough edges aside, Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is a necessary return to mindless shooting and treating the Xenos as a relentless horde, dropping the stalking and slasher-inspired murders in favor of sci-fi shootouts and macho one-liners. It's far from a novel idea — even the original game is only five years old — but a classic for a reason.
Believe it or not, another colony has fallen prey to the Xenomorphs in Fireteam Elite 2. The familiar setup takes a new team of Colonial Marines to a mining facility on LV-558, where contact has been lost with the first wave of Marines that went in to deal with the threat.
This isn't first contact; the Marines are more than used to bug hunts by now, which means there's less exposition to cut through before getting to the Xeno-blasting chaos. The writing certainly won't stun the Academy (and there's definitely too much of it in between missions), but the agility here is appreciated. We've fought these aliens many, many times before. Fireteam Elite 2 is smart enough to sidestep fake tension and just hit the ground running.
All the design changes and upgrades reinforce the intent to make the ultimate Aliens action game. Classes have more defined roles and access to better, more destructive sci-fi weapons, and the upgrade to four-player fireteams is welcome when aliens and hostile synths won't stop pouring in. Tired of replaying campaign missions on higher difficulties and with modifiers? Prepare for the worst in this shooter's version of the classic horde mode.