Earlier this week, we dove into some Alien stuff for Alien Day. Well, it's safe to say that I'm not done with it yet. No, we are closing out this week as Alien Week. Because this series deserves all the love and recognition it gets.
I have talked about Aliens Fireteam Elite in the past. It is a game that I was super excited for. It looked like it was going to be everything that Aliens Colonial Marines was promising to be. When I initially reviewed it, it was at the beginning of it's life cycle. It was brand new and shiny. Only one problem, I was playing it on PS4.
The PS4 and Xbox Ones are solid systems. They both delivered so many fantastic experiences. However, the newer games may not run as well as they should. I mean we did see that with Cyberpunk didn't we? It just reminded me when I was trying to play Spider-Man 3. It was at the end of the cycle and they were shooting for all of the systems as they could. However the newer ones received a different experience than the old generation. This was a similar experience except it was just the AI of the systems in the game unable to keep up.
Recently, I was able to get an Xbox Series X. The new generation is here and it was everything I was hoping it would be. The updates in graphics and ability to play in 60 frames per second is incredible. The backwards compatibility was the huge deciding factor for this system as well.
When I decided to revisit Fireteam Elite, I had remembered that there was a book tie-in. Because everything needs to have a tie-in these days it feels like. I mean even Alien Isolation received a novelization. I'm sure I'm going to get that one at some point. The tie-in book is Aliens: Infiltrator by Weston Ochse. Once again, it would be published by Titan Books.
The synopsis is as follows: Dr. Timothy Hoenikker arrives on Pala Station, a Weyland-Yutani facility. Lured there by the promise of alien artifacts, instead he finds a warped bureaucracy and staff of misfits testing the effects of Xenomorph bio-materials on living creatures.
How does it hold up? Well, it does give us some time with the crew of Pala Station. This was something that is a bit interesting since in the game - story could be considered a bit light. So being able to spend time with those characters is interesting. For the most part, there are some memorable characters - Hoenikker, Cruz, Kash, and Etienne being the main ones. Everyone else feels a bit shallow and just there for fodder.
The way things happen in the story feels very episodic. You have a set of chapters dedicated to this event, then there's a new status quo. Rinse and repeat. It does feel a little lengthy. Could some things have been tightened up? Perhaps.
One of the interesting additions is that they explain why there are different types of Aliens. Being that the Station is a place to experiment on them is pretty interesting. The explanation as to why there's an albino xenonorph is original. It's also a beautiful callback to the original concept that was pitched for the first film. The one thing I don't recall is explanations for some of the Aliens from the game. Most specifically the Prowler Alien.
There are also some nice Easter eggs and tie-ins to Prometheus and Covenant. I really appreciated that as I enjoyed those films a lot. But there was maybe a story beat that felt close to the Fifield monster from Prometheus. That and the black goo ultimately being a macguffin.
Overall, this was a nice book. It didn't deviate to much from what expect an Alien book to be. It felt a little safe. And that's a bit understandable. Is it one that I will revisit? Probably not.
Rating: 3 out of 5.
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