I love the Alien movies, but have often found the games to be lacking. While Alien: Isolation is a bright spot, I walk away disappointed by most Alien games, feeling that they ultimately fail to live up to the high bar set by the films. Alien: Rogue Incursion, a virtual reality game that tells an original story in the Alien canon, seemed like it would be an Alien: Isolation-style exception. Unfortunately, Alien: Rogue Incursion is yet another letdown for Alien fans.
Survios, developer of popular licensed VR games like Creed: Rise to Glory and The Walking Dead: Onslaught, clearly has a great deal of love for the Alien franchise, and that’s reflected in the highly-detailed game world that makes players feel like they’re living through an Alien movie. Alien: Rogue Incursion is the story of Zula Hendricks, as she explores a xenomorph-infested research facility alongside her android companion Davis. The game hits all the beats one would expect from an Alien video game, and while it takes clear inspiration from Alien: Isolation at times, it trades that game’s spine-tingling horror for one of bombastic action.
There is something undeniably entertaining about shooting xenomorphs, but the problem is Alien: Rogue Incursion throws so many at the player that the fights become meaningless. The first few xenomorph encounters in Alien: Rogue Incursion left me sweating and my heart pounding, but when it became apparent that they were predictable and easily dispatched, the creatures became little more than an inconvenience. To make matters worse, the Alien: Rogue Incursion xenomorphs seem to spawn every few minutes, making the game’s exploration- and loot-heavy sections annoying to play.
Alien: Rogue Incursion Devalues Xenomorphs
Instead of taking inspiration from Alien: Isolation‘s less is more approach with the xenomorphs, Rogue Incursion suffocates players with a non-stop barrage of the creatures from the beginning of the game to the end. Almost every time a xenomorph shows up, it’s accompanied by loud, grating music, forcing players to deal with them as soon as possible if they want any peace and quiet. It’s a real shame, too, because the scariest xenomorph moments in Alien: Rogue Incursion were the times when the music didn’t kick on for whatever reason and I would suddenly see one of the beasts lumbering toward me from out of the darkness.
The xenomorphs are simultaneously deadly enough that players have to stop what they’re doing and prioritize killing them, yet not deadly enough for the fights with them to be challenging. Xenomorph encounters in Alien: Rogue Incursion all play out more or less the same way. The obnoxious music cue kicks up and then players have to stop and look around to find the creature, which is usually crawling on a wall. Players can then kill the xenomorph with a few shots before it even gets its bearings, or it will jump off the wall, taunt the player with its arms outstretched, and then actually try to attack. Xenomorphs can kill Zula with a couple of hits, so ignoring them usually means death.
Dying in Alien: Rogue Incursion can be more aggravating than it needs to be because the game has hardly any checkpoints. Most of the time, death means going back to the last save, which isn’t always a big deal, since there are a decent number of save rooms in the game, but there are instances when this can cost players significant chunks of playtime. Not having proper checkpoints doesn’t make Alien: Rogue Incursion scarier or more intense; it makes it frustrating, especially after getting killed by a xenomorph or facehugger when a technical issue keeps players from even fighting back. In one instance, I simply was unable to pull out my rifle, and in another, my shotgun was “equipped,” yet my arm was stuck at an angle that made it impossible to do anything with it.
There are serious technical hiccups in Alien: Rogue Incursion, but the bigger problem boils down to disappointing choices that ruin the back half of the game. The first half of Alien: Rogue Incursion is a mostly worthwhile VR Alien experience, but at about the halfway point, the game’s momentum comes to a screeching halt. It’s then that the combat starts to get repetitive and the backtracking becomes excessive and overbearing, worsened by the largely unhelpful map that doesn’t include room names and, in turn, makes certain objectives needlessly difficult to find. Throw in the never-ending xenomorphs, and getting lost in Alien: Rogue Incursion is a massive pain.
I got stuck in Alien: Rogue Incursion when I couldn’t figure out exactly where to go next, but there are times when events don’t trigger like they should. I spent about 30 minutes at one point walking around the same room, fighting the odd xenomorph that would spawn in, and trying desperately to figure out what to do. I thought that I was missing something, but what was really going on was Davis was supposed to come in the room with me and use a computer to progress the story. He had gotten stuck in the nearby hallway and I don’t even know what triggered him to finally move to the objective, but it eventually happened.
Alien: Rogue Incursion’s Story is Unfinished
After suffering through technical problems like this, the mind-numbing backtracking, and countless shooting gallery xenomorphs, my reward was a terribly unfulfilling ending. Without getting into spoilers, Alien: Rogue Incursion is not a complete experience, and the story does not properly wrap up by the time the end credits roll. Rogue Incursion‘s story has great moments that are brilliantly enhanced by virtual reality, but its cliffhanger ending makes it all feel pointless. It’s comparable to seeing Alien: Romulus in theaters and then leaving halfway through the movie.
That’s not to say that there is no value to be had with Alien: Rogue Incursion. Hardcore Alien fans may still want to play this when it goes on sale, as the developers have absolutely nailed the atmosphere and aesthetic of the films. It’s genuinely like living in the world of the Alien movie franchise. And while there are certainly big problems with the core gameplay, Rogue Incursion does have an impressive level of interactivity, the likes of which almost rival VR behemoth Half-Life: Alyx.
Basically anything you see in Alien: Rogue Incursion can be picked up and thrown, and there are layers to the interactivity that most VR games don’t bother with. For example, in Alien: Rogue Incursion, a cardboard box has multiple points of interaction where you can take off the lid, pick up the box, and then dump its contents on the floor. Things like this help the game become more immersive, and despite its faults, Rogue Incursion does a genuinely fantastic job of drawing players into its world.
My first playthrough of Alien: Rogue Incursion took about 10 hours. I thoroughly explored most rooms, but there were definitely some areas that I missed.
Rogue Incursion‘s interactivity extends to the equipment and weapons that Zula gathers in the game. While some VR games have cumbersome inventories, Rogue Incursion simplifies things by having players easily pluck necessary items out of mid-air whenever they’re needed. Weapons can sometimes be finicky when pulling them out, but using them is a breeze once they’re in-hand. Reloading weapons is also highly interactive, with some of the game’s best moments coming from the busier, story event fights where players may have to quickly pop bullets into Zula’s revolver or speedily slide shells into her shotgun as xenomorphs are surrounding her.
I think if Rogue Incursion trimmed down its back-half, had a proper ending, and drastically reduced the xenomorph encounters so that they were more meaningful, it would be easier to recommend. But while I mostly enjoyed the first half of the game, the second half was a headache-inducing chore. Alien: Rogue Incursion successfully captures the Alien movie franchise atmosphere and there is a novelty to exploring this horrifying sci-fi universe in the virtual reality space, but its problems are way too big to ignore.
Reviewed on PlayStation VR2
- Released
- December 19, 2024
- Developer(s)
- Survios
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language
- Nails the Alien movie franchise’s unique atmosphere
- High level of interactivity with gear and the environment
- Some story developments and scary moments greatly enhanced by VR
- Atrocious second-half bogged down by excessive backtracking
- Story concludes with a disappointing cliffhanger
- Endlessly spawning xenomorphs are more annoying than they are scary
- Technical problems that keep important events from triggering
- Lack of checkpoints can lead to losing large chunks of progress
Alien: Rogue Incursion launches December 19 for PC and PlayStation VR2. A Meta Quest 3 version will launch on February 13, 2025. Game Rant was provided with a PlayStation VR2 code for this review.