‘Alien: Rogue Incursion’ Review – A Thrilling but Repetitive Fight Through Xenomorph Hordes

Alien: Rogue Incursion is the first full-blown VR-native in the storied franchise, serving up hordes of Xenomorphs in an authentically ‘Aliens’ universe. Developed by VR veteran studio Survios (Creed: Rise to Glory, The Walking Dead: Onslaught), Rogue Incursion presents a veritable balancing act of combat and exploration through its dark and gritty cinematic universe, which definitely offers pulse-raising encounters with raptor-like packs of the game’s namesake. It also feels overly encumbered by the sheer repetition of random alien encounters and its equally punishing save system.

Alien: Rogue Incursion Details:

Developer: Survios
Available On: SteamVR, PSVR 2, (coming to Quest 3 early 2025)
Reviewed On: Quest 3 via PC Link
Release Date: December 19th, 2024
Price: $40

Gameplay

Unlike Alien: Isolation (2014), where you’re basically helpless to stealthily sneak by a singular Xenomorph, Rogue Incursion has armed you with numerous weapons, and as a result, has put a slew of more numerous, but decidedly less impactful enemies in your way. Still, it’s a tried and true recipe for the franchise, which you’ll find in everything from Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013) to Aliens: Dark Descent (2023).

Essentially, Rogue Incursion builds pressure by making aliens super powerful and super easy to kill, but also super prevalent. Aliens can kill you with one or two swipes of their claw, but they’re also bullet sponges susceptible to a quarter mag from a pulse rifle or three revolver shots, handily turning them into a pile of acidic goo—which you better not step on.

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That said, don’t be fooled by the first few hours of the game, as you easily dispatch baddies with a few casual blasts. What Xenomorphs lack in armor, they make up for in numbers, eventually serving up a fever pitch of rough encounters in the second half of the game that will have you blasting away and reloading like a maniac against a whole pack of X-rays. The lack of variety in enemy types and repetitive encounters do spoil the fun somewhat, as you always know what’s waiting for you around the corner; just not the number of them.

With lots of baddies, you’d expect to find a ton of ammo and health packs too, although the rub is the game’s only two consumables are pretty scarce, which increases pressure to get every shot right—all the while tackling the game’s routine assortment of environmental puzzles, such as rewiring door panels, and fetching keys and accessing terminals for various reason, all of which forces you to keep your head on swivel for incoming baddies lurking behind you. Nowhere but the save points in Panic Rooms dotted throughout levels are truly safe.

Thus far, it’s a winning recipe, especially considering the fit and finish of the game’s environments and enemies, which agilely clatter through the science station’s sieve of ventilation shafts. By straddling the horror and action-adventure genre though, Rogue Incursion presents its own unique set of pros and cons.

It took me a while to really pin down why it was so good at making me feel anxious—it definitely does the job. After the first few hours, it really started sink in that it wasn’t for the sake of the creepy crawly killing machines, which seemingly slink in from anywhere and can even climb the ceiling above me. It’s what they represent: resource depletion and having to repeat a laundry list of tasks after eventually dying and reappearing at a far-flung manual save point back at the Panic Room. That’s a frustration I wish weren’t a part of the game’s otherwise clever formula.

The lack of automatic saves makes things harder on any difficulty level, which could mean going up an elevator, wiring a door panel, crawling through an access tunnel, hearing a narrative beat from your on-again off-again android companion ‘Davis 01’, running through an entire new section of the game, wiring another door panel, getting ammo, and then being forced to repeat everything upon an untimely death. It sounds exhausting because it is.

My fear of the being ganked by a Xenomorph was gradually replaced by a mental checklist of tasks I had to repeat. It’s an old school philosophy to game development, which I definitely respect, but its one rarely seen in games that put such a heavy emphasis on narrative progression. You’d expect a save point after completing an important task, or right before entering a difficult arena-style fight, but that’s simply not the case.

This comes in stark contrast to the game’s sprawling levels, which offer plenty of opportunities to get extra equipment and learn more about the world through found notes. Traversing the busted station however comes at a price. Should you really explore everywhere to read a ineffectual email about supply requisition, or scavenge a clip of ammo or a health syringe only to expend them instantly when two aliens pop out on your way back to the original fork in the road? Because you can’t ‘clear’ levels, anywhere you go is dangerous, effectively discouraging ancillary exploration.

The constant threat of being tossed back to a far away save point also limits the amount of attention I can pay to the game’s many found notes, which include both audio tapes and written logs on terminals. More on those below.

Immersion

For all of my frustrations with Rogue Incursion, it absolutely smashes the Alien franchise aesthetic out of the park, creating a foreboding atmosphere across its massive levels, which notably load dynamically for an unbroken gaming experience. You won’t be sitting around waiting in loading screens beyond the initial boot-up process.

And the level of detail is amazing—even on my below min-spec PC gaming rig. Packing a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 and aging Intel Core i7-6700K CPU, I was able to play on medium settings with no real hiccups when using my Quest 3 via Meta’s PC Link.

Another high point is the game’s narrative, which offers a few exciting twists that I won’t reveal here, and a difficult battle that caps off the game, which takes around eight hours to beat—eventual level setbacks included.

Marring some of this, the game has a bit of jank when it comes to its physics-based object interactions. Weapons work well, although I always found myself ineffectually grabbing levers and fumbling the game’s inventory system, which is split between body-worn stuff, like grenades, guns and ammo, and a quick select inventory, brought up with a button push, for tools like a blow torch, wire clamp, my tablet and access key card.

Inventory and interaction systems can feel just a little too cumbersome to be truly friction-free though. The most frustrating was how object placement was too loosely tied to your body’s actual position. In any mode, standing, seated in fixed position, or swivel chair, I was always second guessing my gear’s actual position, leaving me to scramble for a bit of ammo I thought was at my hip, but had shifted somehow to be in front of me, requiring me to constantly look down and fumble for it, or periodically recalibrate my position in the menu in hopes it would fix things temporarily. In the end, I had to do a lot of looking down to find my gear, which left me at a disadvantage.

Realism in shooting and reloading is high, which is a double-sided sword when it comes to immersion. You have to delicately reload shell-by-shell on both the revolver and shotgun, which takes 10-15 seconds. I admire the game’s realism here, but wish there was a suitably sci-fi excuse why I might be able to load all of my shells at the same time for quicker reactions.

Sadly, one of the least useful bits of kit in the game is invariably the series’ classic movement radar, as it’s both a massive thing that clatters against everything, and is essentially useless since a sound effect always precedes an alien’s appearance. Both the shotgun and pulse rifle are better operated with two hands, so I tended to keep an ear out for skittering X-rays instead of awkwardly shifting between weapons.

Comfort

With only few exceptions, Alien: Rogue Incursion is a very comfortable game. There are brief moments of forced locomotion that could be uncomfortable for some, namely when Xenomorphs grab and eat you, but they’re well vignetted. You won’t find rollercoaster rides, or anything else (besides the togglable camera shake) that might send you reeling.

It also features all standard comfort options (excluding teleportation), including smooth and variable snap-turn, variable strength movement vignettes, and both standing and two seating options (fixed and swivel).