Aliens: Fireteam Elite
Fun and well designed cooperative games have been hard to come by for me as of late. I’ve tried sinking my teeth into a few of them over the years, only to be disappointed by shoddy mechanics and plodding gameplay. But then out of nowhere… two of them that were created in the 3rd person perspective eventually shot out of the dark and surprised me. Those two games coincidentally were 3-player arranged coop games titled Remnant: From the Ashes and now of course Aliens: Fireteam Elite.
– Real player with 127.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Aliens Survival Games.
Rating: 4/10
Mediocre game with lots of bugs.
Game is pretty much “dead” with only 592 current players (941 24-hr peak). Finding a match at medium to higher difficulties is nearly impossible.
The game itself is interesting, but you can’t rely on matchmaking. Inviting friends is pretty much needed.
It can get boring quickly with only 4 maps (with 4 small parts each) that are available to play.
The game hub seems so lazily made it is almost pointless and could more or less be replaced with a menu.
– Real player with 84.1 hrs in game
Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop
Reactive Drop
The sequel of Alien Swarm, an top-down cooperative shooter released by Valve back in the days.
History
Alien Swarm originates from an unreal tournament mod back in the days and was acquired and re-released by Valve in 2010. This game combined elements from survival games like shadowgrounds and left for dead. For a free game, it had a good presentation, nice gameplay and good graphics. It only lacked two things: content and community.
The gameplay
Like Alien Swarm, Reactive Drop is a cooperative top down shooter. The player plays with other marines against hordes of aliens, in order to complete different objectives. In the game, there are 4 different classes to play, each one consisting of two characters with different statistics including some class restricted weapons.
– Real player with 2188.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Aliens Multiplayer Games.
Friendly Fire is anything but friendly, medics are flavour and death, death do be part of the game. Try to keep up with your team and defend when necessary, picking a firing line and keeping it will increase everyone’s chances of survival. That said, in general, the game is Chaos.
People can and do play solo, but these are usually awe inspiring ASBI players. For the rest of us, team play is integral and trust is key. Communication in game is vital and facilitated in-game with voice communication, a text chat feature and a radial menu for quick communication emotes. Although after a few rounds, you’ll learn to read other players marine placements and apply your own work around tactics of support. The community is active and full of modders aiming to enhance your bug hunt with custom challenges, HUD’s, skins, sounds and levels. Additionally, there are dedicated servers from all around the globe, providing a place for you to meet new and interesting marines, in your fight against the swarm.
– Real player with 1836.3 hrs in game
Aliens: Colonial Marines Collection
Summer 2021 and Cold Iron Studios made it, Aliens™: Fireteam already renamed Fireteam Elite is about to be released in two weeks. Sweet & refreshing to see another game based on the franchise showing up. And don’t worry, Uncle Randy was not in charge this time.
Whatever the outcome about A:FE, after more than eight years, Aliens™: Colonial Marines signed by Gearbox Software & TimeGate Studios remains an unfinished & unpolished base game having undeniable flaws but, at the same time, a nice crossover between James Cameron & Stan Winston 1986 feature film and the numerous Aliens™ 1988-nowadays comics as well, and above all an absolutely unique experience in Bug Hunt brought by Demiurge Studios. That great Solo or Co-op' horde mode having its own, mechanics, metagame, challenge, pace, level design, depth, Aliens classes, AI surprises, toolset, and ultimately its own gameplay & skillcap. Watch out, many moves you make & decisions you take directly impact the Co-op' situation & progression, especially in UBA diff' conditions, the most captivating & immersive difficulty.
– Real player with 3309.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Aliens FPS Games.
MORALS AND IDEALS
As most of you know, this game was basically announced as an AAA game with next gen graphics, and ended up a (at the time) bug-ridden B-list game with last gen graphics. Many people were understandably upset about this, especially those who pre-ordered. If you don’t wish to do business with a company that found itself in a lawsuit claiming false advertising, more power to you for your ideals.
THE GAME
I played this in Jan 2015 after some massive patches, and after the game was on sale for $5. At this point, I experienced the game as practically bug-free, except for the astonishing fact that the game still won’t let you go: When I quit the game, it is immediately restarted (wrong exit code or something?). Restarting Steam too helps, but it’s a bit ridiculous. On the upside: no game-breaking or fun-killing bugs while I played.
– Real player with 264.3 hrs in game
EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1 The Shadow of New Despair
The premise is cheesy. The dialog is hammy. But ham and cheese has never tasted this good!
Before we continue, let’s get the negatives out of the way so we can focus on talking about how awesome EDF is.
The base price can seem a bit steep given the game’s age, and the highest discount you’ll ever find is 40% off. Yes, it’s a console port. That means enduring some things such as a clunky menu interface and unmappable, hardcoded keybinds. Increasing your arsenal and max health isn’t just tedious, it’s a requirement for the higher difficulties. There’s talk of a cheater problem in public lobbies, and creating a private online game requires you to invite your friends through the chat shortcuts window, of all things. I don’t believe you can invite anyone mid-mission, either. Sometimes there will be so many enemies or explosions on-screen that your framerate will take a very noticeable hit even on a good computer. I don’t think there’s a borderless windowed mode, if that matters to you. Oh, and the game can’t even be launched if you’re on a version of Windows older than 7.
– Real player with 761.5 hrs in game
Overview
Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair, or more commonly referred to as EDF, is a third person shooter that puts you in the shoes of an unnamed soldier of the Earth Defense Force that is tasked with locating and eradicating giant insects and robots from across the globe. Your mission is simple – kill everything that moves.
You’re given four class options before starting: Ranger, Fencer, Wing Diver or Air Raider. Rangers are your typical versatile infantry class, able to equip a variety of guns, sniper rifles, or a plethora of explosives and specialty weapons. Your next option is the Air Raider, a class that has the ability to call in buffs such as shields, turrets, healing modules and heavy armor, such as tanks, helicopters and a slew of different mechanized vehicles. Your third option is the lightly-armored, agile and swift-moving Wing Diver, an all-female crew of airborne infantry that use energy weapons and jetpacks to quickly move about the battlefield. Your final option is the Fencer, EDF’s dual-wielding tank, comprised of thick armor and massive cannons at the expensive of maneuverability.
– Real player with 213.7 hrs in game
Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed
Crypto is back with a license to probe. The alien invader returns, groovier than ever. Experience the swinging ‘60s in all its chemical-induced glory and take revenge on the KGB for blowing up your mothership. You’ll have to form alliances with members of the very species you came to enslave.
Key Features:
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Show those hippies who’s boss using classic weapons and new technology like the Meteor Shower
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Explore 1960’s Mother Earth and unload your trusty saucer all over her fictional cities
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Defend a much larger, much more open world from those who seek to undermine your mission
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Hoover up humans from different countries and grind them up into DNA cocktails to upgrade your skills
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Invite a friend over for a twosome and enjoy the full story in local 2-player split screen co-op
Space Food Truck
Mainly writing this because I disagree with what the majority of the negative reviews are saying, as someone who cranked out 40 hours of gameplay (split quite evenly between online and offline play) and who completed games on the hardest difficulty level. While I have ideas on what should contribute to a negative review, which will come later in the review, but let’s start by tackling the points I disagree with in the negative reviews.
I believe RNG gets the majority of the blame because a random event occurs at the beginning of every turn, and at every new planet, so it’s pretty much in your face all the time.
– Real player with 102.9 hrs in game
This game has the potential to be very fun. Myself and a few friends brought it and really enjoyed the game initially. But we quickly realised that this game is too hard, and not even hard in way that challenges you properly. We have been playing on mild difficulty, since the upper difficulty was seemingly impossilbe.
The game is hard beyond the player’s control, since much of the game mechanics are the result RNG. 90% of the RNG is bad! You receive negative effects that can see you wiped out very quickly. For example, we upgraded our shields to the max very early on, but in response, we started taking much more damage from RNG events.
– Real player with 44.7 hrs in game
Earthfall
I am overall positive & due to my review being detailed & long, it’s on sections with key things:
- Fun – More than 12 weapons, technically even more than 20 as even barricades can serve as a weapon if you attach arc grenades/gas cans. Melees, pistols, shotguns, machineguns, snipers, heavy weapons, launchers for grenades/crystals, turrets, a variety of bombs to keep aliens fried & sometimes flying, even tens of meters away :)
Action co-op fps with strategy elements, the game is really funny and alive by itself. Practically more than 12 types of alien enemies as the enrager changes some of them when he appears. The top enemy of the game seems to appear only in Invasion mode, which can be even better than the campaign mode. You have 11 Campaign missions & 5 Invasion Mode ones. They can last between 20 and 90 minutes on your first plays, with invasions being longer. Depending on difficulty and your skills & experience, they can go some shorter, like even 7-15 min. for some campaigns.
– Real player with 315.9 hrs in game
scratching head How to begin…
Overall, the game is amazing! It is the combination of juicy picture, 4 player co-op availability and vast weapon selection, that creates a solid game-play experience.
There’s only one huge drawback and I’m naming it now - the game’s duration. 11 maps, 5 per each campaign and 1 level aside of them, can be completed in a matter of hours. However, there’s a lot to try out and kill in those maps!
- Weapons: you will find melee and shooting guns (10+ varieties) everywhere, plus most of these can be made at special machinery (printers), where content depends on a map and its difficulty.
– Real player with 237.3 hrs in game
Alien Breed: Impact
My playtime: 36.7h (based on steam, 100% achievement).
~9h finishing the game in Rookie difficulty
~24h finishing the game in Elite difficulty
~3h finishing all multiplayer levels
Grindy Achievement: No.
Optional Achievement: Yes (11 achievements, although you’ll mostly get 3 of the optional achievements after you finish the game).
Difficult Achievement: Yes (2 achievements, might be more or less depends on your skill and (or) internet connection).
Developer Response: No (last response is in 10 Feb 2016, i think).
– Real player with 36.7 hrs in game
Not sure why this game gets the hate it does. I certainly didn’t play this for the 15+ hours it shows on Steam but probably at least half that. The controls work well on controller, it’s honestly a rather great control scheme for controllers and it makes sense, this is a TWIN STICK SHOOTER. Not a M+KB shooter. I play FPS and TPS games with a mouser and keyboard but I play anything like this with a controller. People also complaining that the game is difficult or the enemies are cheap. I played on the hardest difficulty and it was a BREEZE, I didn’t die a single time. Make better use of your items and learn to scavenge if you’re having a hard time.
– Real player with 15.1 hrs in game
EARTH DEFENSE FORCE: IRON RAIN
(Updated Review)
Now after ~50 hours, I still can’t recommend this game.
EDF Iron Rain is a decent game, but is an awful EDF game.
This game is a downgrade from EDF 5 and a sidegrade from EDF 4.1 so get either game instead. I would recommend EDF 5 since 5 is an upgrade from 4.1.
Here are a list of the good parts and the issues after beating the game twice now.
The Good:
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Prowl Rider is one of the best class and the most fun class in EDF Iron Rain.
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The WX sword is the best sword and most fun sword in EDF Iron Rain.
– Real player with 73.0 hrs in game
This game is a really guilty pleasure for me.
I found it somewhere for 27 dollars, always do your part and find yourself a deal. It was probably cheaper on a sale, but I missed it and always wanted to play this game because I have a soft spot for sci fi themes and third person shooters.
Earth defense force is a brilliant look at giant insects attacking the planet, and the display and scale of their games leave nothing to be desired mechanically. But for someone like me the game really never got my attention because of how slow everything felt. I played EDF 4.1 and something about it made me feel like it wasn’t worth the work. Unlocking guns was really slow, and I always felt like I needed to creep up the ranks in difficulty just to be able to defend myself, maybe I just wasn’t ready to commit time to a game that looked like that.
– Real player with 67.7 hrs in game
Abduction Bit
I like this game because it has a very simple 80s platform style. It reminded me of an 80s platformer called Hunky Egg (which apparently was a rip off of Chunky Egg). It’s basic gaming before games were simulations. It’s certainly not near the best of it’s genre. But it’s fun and annoying with it’s demands for precision in your jumps. Well gamers under 35 want to play such a game? I’m not sure. Actually I’m not sure how many over 35 would want to play such a game
One reviewer said it’s buggy. It’s more a case of every jump has to be perfect down to the milimetre while timing baddies perfectly, which is very frustrating. You die very easily in this game. I had to forget playing the game at any type of pace because of this if I wanted to progress. Like 80s games once you’re out of lives you start again at the very beggining. Which is also annoying. Because I probably will never finish it.
– Real player with 22.7 hrs in game
This is great little gem for fans of the golden age of arcade games. Particularly those early Nintendo releases(Donkey Kong, Popeye, Mario Bros.), as this is heavily modeled after those games. You can expect simple gameplay, high difficulty, and a surprisingly large amount of replayability. There are two packs(8-bit and 16-bit) with 20 levels each, which can be played on one of 3 difficulties. I’ve finished both packs on each difficulty, which took me about a month to get all the achievements(granted, I was juggling 3 other games at the same time). It’ll keep you busy for longer than you would expect.
– Real player with 7.7 hrs in game