The Alien franchise has never had the most consistent track record when it comes to video game adaptations. For every Alien: Isolation, there’s an Aliens: Colonial Marines. One thing is for sure, though: gamers love to simply exist in this world whether it’s for the clunky CRT monitors or the iconic rattle of the M4A1 Pulse Rifle. In that sense, Alien: Rogue Incursion has a very unique selling point as it’s the franchise’s first official venture into VR, giving you an up close and personal experience with the franchise’s iconography.
If you’re familiar at all with the series then narratively there isn’t much to surprise you here. As Zula Hendricks, ex-colonial marine, you crash land on Purdan after a soldier buddy puts out a call for help. From near enough the second you step out onto its barren snowy landscape, you realise that the station you’re about to explore is riddled with murderous Xenomorphs.
The game has a fairly affectionate story at its heart between Zula and her synthetic companion Davis-01. These are characters established in an Aliens comic series, so there are hints and nods for those in the know, but the game does a good enough job not to leave out any newcomers. In your travels you’ll uncover greedy corporate experiments, mismanagement, and the complete lack of compassion for those unknowing employees. Standard stuff for the Alien universe, then.
But of course, you’re here for the big lads themselves, and Rogue Incursion has them in abundance. This game is firmly in the Aliens camp over Alien, so don’t come in expecting anything close to Creative Assembly’s 2014 masterwork. In fact, during our time with the game we found it to be closer to the arcade Aliens experiences, and we don’t really mean that as a bad thing — at least not entirely.
Before we get into that, though, let’s talk about the VR-ness of it all. Alien: Rogue Incursion isn’t Survios’ first venture into the VR medium, and there are some ways in which you can feel that experience, and others where there’s a little more work required. For starters, the way that your gear is all accessible in-world is utterly brilliant. Naturally there is that awesome burst of nostalgia as you hold a motion tracker in one hand and the pulse rifle in the other. It’s easy to imagine yourself as Ripley making your way to Queen’s nest in the 1986 classic.
But for us, it’s actually the more mundane stuff that impresses, like reading employee emails on an old computer monitor whilst using a joystick to control the cursor, or pulling out your data pad map to work your way through its metallic mazes. There’s a level of immersion offered with everything being in-world, and we think the work Survios has put in here is almost understated. We also love all the unique VR mechanics like physically wiping blood off a monitor or spine-tingling scripted moments that we won’t spoil here.
That being said, there is a fair serving of jank with Rogue Incursion, whether it is your weapon not quite pointing where you want it to or objects clipping. Ultimately we learned how to work within the parameters of the game’s tracking system, but we found Metro Awakening’s, for example, to be a bit more pinpoint. Come the end of our time with Alien Rogue Incursion, though, all the controls had become second nature to us, which is one of the best compliments you can give to a VR game in our opinion.
Once you’ve become acquainted with the controls, it’s time to explore the Purdan station. The gameplay loop essentially boils down to gaining access to new areas via cool little wiring puzzles, computer terminal access, and new tools. It’s actually surprising how complex the map can be, and how much you’re required to learn it. It did lead to more than one occasion where we had next to no idea where to go or how to get where we were going. A tad more signposting would have been appreciated.
We did, however, enjoy all the moments which harkened back to the films, like an intimate surgery with a synthetics head and a bunch of wires, of course referencing one of the only good scenes from Alien 3. There is also one particular moment in an Alien nest which is among some of the best gameplay moments of the year.
When bullets start flying, though, that’s really the make and break point for Rogue Incursion. There are many a moment in here when your head is on a swivel as you hear the scuttling through nearby vents, your motion tracker is about to give you an anxiety attack, and as the Xenos zone in on you, you are deadly aware of that diminishing digital bullet counter on the side of your pulse rifle. As massive fans of the series, this is exactly what we wanted from an Alien VR game.
Sadly, though, not every combat encounter has this level of immersion. The longer you spend with the game the more apparent it becomes that the Alien AI is barebones. Xenos will jump down from vents and then just stand in front of you for a second, giving you ample time to coat your surroundings in acidic paint. Outside of main action encounters the game is incessantly sending Aliens your way which starts to become more of a nuisance, especially when you’re unsure of where to go.
Again there are moments where combat will have your heart thumping, but since we were facing Xenos so much, and they are pretty much the only enemy type, it would have been nice for combat to be a tad more dynamic. Even the option to hide from Aliens and engage in a bit of stealth would have been nice. Your weaponry also isn’t the most varied. You’ll have the iconic pulse rifle and then a bog standard shotgun and revolver, which are fun enough, but never quite scratch the same itch as the main rifle.
We have to say, though, Rogue Incursion is a great looking game, with a particular affinity for dark smokey metallic corridors. It doesn’t all scream Alien like Alien: Isolation does, at times looking more generic sci-fi than something ripped straight out of the movies, but when the game gets the aesthetic right it really gets it right. We’d have loved a tad more variety in its environments but there’s nothing quite as chilling as witnessing a fleshy Xenomorph egg peel open before your very eyes, with a face-hugger crawling its way out.
Special shout out to the sound design, too, with the initial beep of your motion scanner or the thumping from overhead vents often leaving the hairs on the back of your neck standing tall. We loved how hissing pipes would often replicate the sound of Xenos, feeding into that sense of paranoia as you explore Purdan station.
Performance wise Rogue Incursion isn’t the steadiest experience out there. There were times that tracking on objects looked a little stuttery, with noticeably lower framerates as you wave your motion tracker from side to side, for example. Aliens would somewhat frequently become stuck in walls once killed too, really shattering any immersion. There was also an occasion where a level was stuck in lockdown, locking all doors (it thought Aliens were present when they weren’t), so we had to load up our last save and replay that segment — a particularly annoying bug with a save system as brutal as this one. There’s nothing that ultimately ruins the experience, but there’s plenty we’d love to see ironed out in subsequent patches.