Alien: Rogue Incursion Review – Aliens Isolation

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It’s been a challenging decade for Alien fans, but things finally started to turn around this year. It began with the spectacular release of Alien: Romulus, a film that brought the series back to its horror roots with a bloody, gory, and genuinely terrifying experience. Shortly after its release, game developer Creative Assembly announced they were finally working on a sequel to their 2014 first-person horror classic, Alien: Isolation. With the franchise’s future glowing bright green once again, one final highlight remained for fans: Alien: Rogue Incursion. A VR-only experience, it faced some skepticism due to underwhelming early reveals that weren’t all positive. It doesn’t help that leading into this release, the marketing has been on the light side, leaving many worried about the state of the game. We’ve seen it all too many times before, and the signs have all but pointed to a potentially disastrous release.

However, after spending the past week with the game, I can confidently say that those fears have been put aside, or rather, put elsewhere, as developers Survios have managed to recapture the essence of Alien, delivering a VR experience that makes you feel trapped, vulnerable, and relentlessly hunted in a way only this franchise can make you feel.

Note: As with any of my reviews, I’ll be very light on spoilers, strictly sticking to the already publicly known information. This means this review will be spoiler-free outside of what’s been revealed. 

In VR, Everyone Can Hear You Scream

In Alien: Rogue Incursion, you take on the role of ex-colonial marine Zula Hendricks as she embarks on LV-354, otherwise known as Purdan. Her mission? To infiltrate a Weyland-Yutani black site where some of the worst of the worst experiments are ongoing. However, upon reaching her destination, Hendricks soon discovers that a far more sinister force lurks, as the research facilities have seemingly been overrun by humanity’s greatest threat, the Xenomorphs. With her trusty synth, Davis 01, by her side, Hendricks soon learns that this might just be her biggest mission yet, putting the entire universe’s fate at stake.

As far as the story goes, Alien: Rogue Incursion probably won’t be sweeping any awards for writing. It keeps the players interested and even pays homage with light nods to other mediums in the franchise. But beyond that, it’s generally a pretty straightforward story meant to keep the players engaged, which it does. The latter half of it does fall apart, with no real conclusion to it since the game’s being penned as two two-parter. That’s not to say there aren’t any surprises that will make you go, “holy shit,” but I would say that the real reason to play this isn’t so much for the story but how Survios manages to make what I would consider to be a proper VR Alien experience.

Whilst much of the gameplay trailers have been more geared toward being action-oriented, make no mistake that Alien: Rogue Incursion is a survival horror through and through. You get a gun, but much like our Colonial Marine counterparts learned in Aliens (the sequel movie to Alien), not even those can protect you from the perfect killing machine, the Xenomorphs.

In Rogue Incursion, they come at you in the masses, with no indications of their numbers ever dwindling. But this isn’t a hoard-mode type of game. No, I would argue that Rogue Incursion is more in line with Alien Isolation. You’re constantly moving, watching, and listening to your surroundings for any indications of a Xenomorph and other signs of life. Sure, they don’t take much to take down, but there is strength in numbers, which they certainly have and will use to their advantage. Ammo is scarce worldwide, and it’s easy to run out of it while traversing the abandoned facility.

The Xenomorphs are clever, as Drones (the common Xenomorph types) will do everything they can to try and catch you off guard, attempting to get a few attacks whenever possible. But knowing that you’re equipped with a weapon, they don’t mind sacrificing a few in the process, forcing you into a corner to try and reload or check your ammo reserves. It’s a terrifying feeling because even if you take one or two of them out, you know another one is lurking around, one that decided to use the opportunity to sneak behind you as the others distracted you. There have been countless moments where I’m holding my gun at the ready along with my motion tracker, with audible pings and multiple dots appearing on it, slowing inching towards me, only to realize they’re traveling in a vent below or above me, or slithering around a corner, waiting for me to cross it. One moment I remember was when I managed to kill two Xenomorphs, and thinking all was fine, I put my weapon away to see where my next objective was. It wouldn’t be long after I pulled the 3D map out that I heard a low hissing sound, and by the time I turned around, it was already too late, as a set of teeth suddenly popped right through my face. The fear at that moment almost made me throw my headset off because I wasn’t expecting that level of design, that type of unpredictability from this game that made me genuinely scared to keep playing.

Of course, I kept trekking through, but it was with caution rather than a dudebro approach like those unfortunate Space Marines had in Aliens. I felt vulnerable, not just to the Xenomorphs but to everything in the game. The environment, especially, felt directly ripped straight out from the 80’s set of the film. The attention to detail that Survios has put into the world goes unnoticed, as it looks like something you’d expect and want out of Alien. Although fiction, it’s a lo-fi and retrofuturistic look that looks and feels entirely believable. There’s imperfection to it that makes it, well, perfect. Survios just nails that look down to the T. A sense of curiosity accompanies it, draws you to it, and makes you want to take it all in. But at the same time, you realize if this were real life, you’d probably be creeped out by how cold and darkly lit everything is. Paranoia can easily creep over you if you stare at it too long. The environments are crafted in such a way that reminiscences to the movie sets, enhancing the tension, atmosphere, and storytelling.

Compared to the first film, you’ll have plenty of encounters with the Xenomorphs, but I cannot stress just how well the environments are designed and how they heightened the tension built by those encounters. This lingering feeling of constantly being watched made my hair stick up while exploring the multi-floored map. That’s something the first Alien movie got down because when you think about it, from a viewer’s perspective, the Xenomorph only got about four minutes of screen time out of a nearly two-hour-long movie. Most of that was right at the end, yet all the characters are constantly afraid of something they could not see. It’s utterly dreading, something Rogue Incursion captures perfectly throughout the game.

There are big action set pieces in the “final stand” type of way where you prep for large Xenomorph attacks. Those moments keep the gameplay fresh and interesting without making you feel overpowered. You’ll get a lot of ammo in those situations, but more times than not, battles will usually end up with you frantically trying to reload your weapon with the last of its ammo as a bunch of Xenomorphs start to surround. No one to come to your aid either, so it all boils down to how good of a shot you are.

This is done via motion controls, which the game handles pretty well, outside of a few irks I’ll go over shortly. In terms of how the game plays and handles, this is one of the better first-person shooters I’ve played in VR. General inventory placement on your body follows traditional setups, with your pistol holstered near your lower right side, primary weapons over your shoulders, with grenades, health items, and motion tracker on your hands and arm slots. You can access additional tools by simply pressing a single button, which brings more inventory items into view. It is very easily accessible, and the controller haptics work nicely to the effect that you can feel where your hand is on your in-game body without having to look down.

Overall, the gameplay and motion controls are excellent, with standing and seated positions fully supported.

One Constant Bug Hunt

One of the biggest worries during the initial reveal of Alien: Rogue Incursion of the performance. The debut trailer didn’t exactly have the best performance when it came to framerate, and being so close to release, it was odd that they would show such an evident issue for its debut.

So, going into this, I expected the final product would have reflected that, but thankfully, at least on PC, that’s not the case. Running on a Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU, the game ran flawlessly smoothly in terms of framerates. Even playing via Quest Link wirelessly, with everything cranked to the max, it played buttery smooth. I suspect the PSVR 2 version will play similarly, with the visuals toned down. There’s no Quest version, not until next year.

However, that’s not to say that the experience itself was perfect because there are plenty of bugs, and I don’t mean the Xenomorphs, that can hamper the experience.

For one, I had a constant visual bug that kept throwing a bright flashing blue light whenever my character model moved in a certain way. It might have been some lighting placed on the character’s helmet, and the tracking isn’t aligning properly with my height. Whatever it was, it was an annoyance to deal with.

Your character also has arms versus floating hands. I like this; it helps immerse you in the experience more than seeing two floating hands. But I did notice that the arms would get stuck on some things, which would cause the audio to freak out. Sometimes, they would prevent you from moving your hands, getting in the way of certain actions. I’ve even gotten stuck in the environment because I’ve had my arms glitch out on me, forcing me to reload my save. At one point, I couldn’t reach or climb anything because my right arm wanted to fold into itself, leaving me to work with my hand sticking out of my elbow in the game. I’ve had that happen a few times throughout my playthrough, and there is nothing more frustrating than having to start an entire section again.

That brings me to one of the biggest issues I have with the game: the save system. You only have one slot per playthrough, and it’s all manually saved via panic room terminals. It’s precisely how the old Resident Evil games did their typewriters. I don’t mind this system because it reminds me to save frequently, but I dislike that there’s no autosaving on top of it or no checkpoint system. There have been countless times where I gave up playing because I had been playing through a section for more than 30 minutes without passing by a savepoint, only to end up getting killed by a group of Xenos. Redoing the whole section again was enough to tell me I needed to step back. It’s one thing to power through it on a flatscreen, but to go through all the motions again in VR. It can get very tiring, no matter how enjoyable the experience is. It’s enough to hamper the overall experience because it can become repetitive, having to redo stuff repeatedly. It made me dial the difficulty down to make at least redoing those parts a bit more bearable.

Game Over, Man! GAME OVER!

I highly recommend Alien: Rogue Incursion if you’re an Alien franchise fan or just a fan of horror VR games in general. While it does have its flaws—some of which could likely be addressed in future updates—the core experience remains gripping and thoroughly enjoyable. Its haunting atmosphere and intense gameplay deliver a thrilling and terrifyingly fun adventure that captures the franchise’s essence. There’s room for improvement, something we hope Survios listens to, but overall, Alien: Rogue Incursion is a solid VR experience.

Score: 7.5/10

Pros:

• Excellent gameplay – The gunplay is fun, and interacting with things around the world can be too.
• Visuals/performance – The game really feels like it takes place in the Alien universe, with its near identical movie-set-like locations. It helps that it runs very smoothly on a PC.
• The Xenomorphs feel menacing and downright scary.
• The sound design is fantastic.

Cons:

• Some very distracting bugs can happen, from visual to audible to even motion tracking getting messed up.
• The lack of a proper checkpoint system makes dying punishing, and not in a good way. Having to redo an entire 30-40 minute section is not fun.
• The story ends on a pretty lackluster note. Overall, it’s not the most memorable of stories out there.

Alien: Rogue Incursion review code was provided by the publisher. More information on the title can be found on the official Alien Rogue Incursion website. Platform played on was PC. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.

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