Alien: Rogue Incursion Review

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My virtual reality journey began in 2016. After seeing videos on what Oculus was cooking up with their early development kits, I became excited for the first-generation consumer model. Once I acquired, I had a lot of fun with those earlier games, but I knew this tech was still in its infancy and I longed to have more full-featured experiences with the platform.

Though I had a taste of the Alien universe in VR while trying out the Alien: Isolation Muthur VR mod, I really was able to experience it when I was lucky enough to venture through the Alien: Descent attraction in Southern California. This mixed-reality experience was incredibly immersive, and left me wanting for a VR Alien adventure that I could pick up whenever I wanted.

Developer Survios have delivered on that promise, bringing us the first built from the ground up for VR Alien game across all mainstream VR hardware. While my Oculus Rift is still perfectly functional, I figured this game was a good excuse to finally get a newer headset. Impressed with some of the newer VR features I wanted to try such as haptics, high resolution, and HDR, I decided on Sony’s PSVR2.

This game truly feels like you’re stepping into the world of Alien. Right after the initial tutorial onboard Zula’s ship, and then stepping out onto the planet’s surface and just taking it all in, seeing the looming atmosphere processor, the storm, I couldn’t help but just ‘vibe out’ in the space right off the bat. The 3D effect of the VR lenses give the illusion of scale and depth to your surroundings, and Unreal Engine 5 delivers a very nice looking presentation, putting you right in the middle of the Alien universe.

Unlike what we saw in a couple of the promotional trailers for the game, the entirety of the game is in first person, with no cutscenes out of that perspective.

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Ever since I first put an original Oculus Rift over my head and booted up one of the earlier versions of the Muthur VR mod for Alien: Isolation, I have been completely enamored by the concept of a from-the-ground-up Alien virtual reality game.

Admittedly, I haven’t played many VR games. I’ve been to a free-roam immersive VR arcade, I’ve played Muthur VR a number of times (never from start to finish), and since making the decision to take the plunge and buy a Meta Quest 3 so I could play Alien: Rogue Incursion, I’ve put quite a few hours into Starship Troopers: Continuum, as well as Pistol Whip.

So my thoughts come from a place of being an Alien fan and a general gamer, rather than anyone with super specific knowledge of Virtual Reality as a platform. I opted for the Rift so I had the flexibility to play via SteamVR or natively. I was going to buy the Rift version (so I didn’t always have to be tethered to my PC), but with the delay, I naturally went for Steam VR. I’ll definitely be getting the Rift version when it’s released, but that’s also because of a blunder I made.

I forgot to check my PC specs. I was playing this game on a severely underspeced machine. I was a generation past the recommended minimum graphics card which was the GeForce RTX 2070 (I was playing on a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti). Thankfully, though, it still ran. Even better on launch day after Survios dropped some new patches which stablized issues I had been facing previously. That is my mistake though.

Alien: Rogue Incursion does an incredible job of pulling me into the world of Alien from the very beginning. Loading into the game, I found myself in a deserted and atmospheric corridor that looks similar to Hadley’s Hope. I’m in the colony on Purdan, the world Rogue Incursion takes place on. Looking over my shoulder, I find a section of the colony covered in resin, two Aliens curled and hibernating. I’m immediately in the Alien universe.

This is a sensation that permeates the game. From the opening scenes where we’re sat in a lander as featured in Alien: Covenant, to walking around the damaged colony, to the twisted environment of an Alien hive, Rogue Incursion made me feel like I was on that world, that it was my boots on the ground. Everything that was about to happen, was about to happen to me.

Alien: Rogue Incursion finds us donning the M3 body armor of ex-Colonial Marine Zula Hendricks. Zula first debuted in the Dark Horse comic series Aliens: Defiance, and has appeared in multiple further comics and novels of varying quality, where she occupies the role of the expanded universe’s figurehead in a crusade to stop Weyland-Yutani or mankind weaponizing the Alien.

Zula was always a character I welcomed. I’ve previously been critical about the franchise’s reliance on the name Ripley and its inability to create another enduring lead. Zula was able to break that curse, and bring us a complex character. She was severely injured in her first military operation, and medically discharged from the Colonial Marines.

While we might not all be able to relate to a severe medical issue, Zula is universally identifiable in that we can all relate to overcoming adversity. Though Zula is perfectly happy to travel the Orion Arm of our fair little galaxy looking to terminate any Alien infestation, the driving force of her motivation in Rogue Incursion is much more personal. She’s responded to the distress call of a fellow ex-Marine, Ben Carver, the one who pulled her out of the fire during that fateful and disastrous first mission.

Zula and Davis 01 find themselves following that signal to LV-354, also known as Purdan, the location of a Gemini Exo-Planet Solutions research colony. It was interesting to see Rogue Incursion focus on Gemini, and not see them revisit Weyland-Yutani or Seegson once again. I’ll always be a fan of seeing those smaller pieces of lore expanded upon.

While Carver’s message and fate kicks off the plot of Alien: Rogue Incursion and carries us through the earlier parts of the game, I felt like the focus shifted more towards Zula’s survival following a particularly impressive and memorable sequence in the second “level” (not that Rogue Incursion has typical levels) of the game.

It’s this element of the narrative that Alien: Rogue Incursion wraps up at the end of Part 1, leaving Carver’s fate unresolved, along with other plot threads around Gemini’s work with the Aliens, as well as very intense cliff-hanger moment. I’m glad Part One resolved what happened with Zula, but without a conclusion for Carver’s story, it does feel somewhat incomplete at the moment.

While Rogue Incursion doesn’t offer any firm answers as to what GES’s end-game with the Aliens was, there’s enough hints to be found through what happens to Zula and those oh so wonderful emails that writer Alex White fleshed out the world of the game with. There was such a heavy focus on GES’s medical activities that White has explored so well in their other Alien entries, that I think it’s a safe bet that the company was working on a “cure” for Alien infection.

Alex White is a name that should be familiar to any Alien fan with an interest in the expanded universe. Their novels Alien: The Cold Forge and Alien: Into Charybdis are 2 of my favourite Alien novels, both receiving an impeccable 10 out of 10 from me. I was immediately excited when I learnt they were crossing into the video gaming space.

Through the various emails and audio logs, White delves further into the corrupt corporate world that Alien occupies. There’s logs early on in the game where staff are encouraged to talk to staff members about their worries and concerns, acting as unlicensed psychiatrists. When the lack of confidentially is brought up, the management wave it away. And as expected, those unlicensed psychiatrists reveal exactly what is said. It’s a gross violation of GES staff, and the corrupt behavior you unfortunately expect of corporations in an Alien story. It’s even more worrisome to know that even the smaller entities are like this.

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The relationship of Zula and her synthetic companion Davis 01 is the core of the story here, and it’s a great dynamic. It felt natural seeing these characters in this medium after spending the time I did with them within the novels and comics. Though this is a bit further along in their history, the story isn’t overly reliant on those first adventures, so those who haven’t read those stories can still have a solid introduction to these two. There are nods, though, in the dialogue and text logs that are fun to pick up on for those who have read them.

Banter between Zula and Davis is a welcome tension reliever and their subtle humor communicates that these two have a special bond from their history, and their trials that you experience in this story only strengthen it. Robbie Daymond and Andia Winslow both give fantastic voice performances for the duo.

The facility of Castor’s Cradle is a character of its own, and we discover some of the events that led to the horrifying state it’s in through finding audio logs and reading emails on computer terminals. Not all of the answers are given, however, and the story does leave some questions that will perhaps be saved for Part Two.

As the title suggests, with the exception of Davis’ companionship, this truly is a rogue incursion, and there really is miniscule interaction with other characters in Part One, though you do come across other humans and synthetics here and there. I also quite enjoyed how the facility really nailed the ‘Alien’ aesthetic. From the lo-fi sci-fi, to the Prometheus rover and Hadley’s Hope inspired vehicles, those easter-egg details were a delight.

Alien: Rogue Incursion impressed me with the level of physicality involved in playing the game. Your core weapons, and ‘life & death’ items are placed on your body. The game guides you through exactly where you need to reach for these, and before you know it, their equipping becomes second nature.

You’ll reach over your left shoulder to click on your shoulder-mounted flashlight, or across your body to snatch your motion tracker. Healing is also intensive as you equip and extend your syringe before ‘injecting’ it into your arm. Get ready to move your arms too with your VR controllers as you climb ladders, pull yourself through vents, and turn pressure valves.

Your stowed inventory is accessed with a button press which shows ghosted items in an arc in front of your reach. One of the items you’ll be using quite a bit is Zula’s Armat tablet, which can fold into a slimmer vertical unit that connects with the facility’s computer terminals. Navigating these computer terminals is where you’ll read emails revealing the story, as well as control the facility’s systems.

You can play in VR standing up, seated in a stationary chair, or seated in a swivel chair. For those who are prone to motion sickness in VR, Survios have included the options of snap-turning and vignetting while performing quick movements. I personally play with these off and mostly in the standing positions.

Rogue Incursion, like Alien: Romulus, tries to straddle that line of the horror of Alien with the action of Aliens, maybe leaning more into the Aliens vibe. The game has a survival-horror feel, with limited resources, safe rooms, and tense battles. The dark and moody atmosphere is brought to life with fog, flickering lights, blood-stained hallways, and the howl of the snowy winds outside.

Speaking of survival-horror feel, like Alien: Isolation, Rogue Incursion has a retro style manual save system. In the panic rooms (and don’t forget to close the door), there’s a central larger terminal which you connect your tablet to, to save your progress. There are only a small number of automatic checkpoints throughout the game.

Another piece of gameplay that really delivered some fan pleasing moments was utilizing the cutting torch to open welded doors, sealed cases, and lockers. This felt right out of the second movie.

The musical score for Alien: Rogue Incursion composer Sara Barone is also phenomenal, really suiting the survival horror vibe. Like with Benjamin Wallfisch’s composition for Alien: Romulus, it introduces more electronic elements into the orchestral, with rhythmic pulses and eerie pianos. Most of the tracks are more ambient and atmospheric when you’re exploring the facility, but things ramp up once you’re in combat. As with too many Alien games, unfortunately the soundtrack isn’t available outside of the game, but I hope to see that changed soon.

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The amount of weapons we have access to Alien: Rogue Incursion is limited, with only a modified Frontier Revolver, shotgun and an earlier iteration of the iconic Armat Pulse Rifle. It feels like it was done for realistic immersion (there’s only so many places to keep a weapon stowed on your body), but then when we have a floating inventory system for our other equipment, it feels less like an immersion consideration.

I’d love to see them expand this scope in Part Two, offering us more choices of weapons, but we can still only carry a little amount. Despite the limited choice of weaponry, I think Survios picked a perfect combination of weapons because every single weapon offers a different tactile experience. The way each weapon is reloaded and the way each weapon is charged is entirely different. It a wonderful design consideration that makes each weapon feel unique and gives a feeling of variation.

Despite the small armory, I still had an absolute blast with what was on offer in Alien: Rogue Incursion. There’s something thrilling about “holding” that earlier version of the Pulse Rifle in my “hands,” slamming a new magazine home and pulling the bolt back.

It is a little disappointing that Rogue Incursion’s prototype Pulse Rifle comes without an underslung grenade, but I expect that the different trigger and reload points on the same weapon may have caused technical difficulties for them, with the tracking.

Rogue Incursion also followed what seems to have become a standard VR design mentality of using both hands to stabilize your weapon for the best accuracy. It makes sense. I love it. But it can also be frustrating when you’re in the middle of a fight and you don’t “properly” grab the front of your Pulse Rifle and your shots go flying wild.

That’s not an issue unique to Rogue Incursion though. I’ve faced that in Starship Troopers. I think until we get stronger haptic feedback to confirm your grip, this’ll be an issue that will continue to frustrate VR shooter gamers for a while.

Rogue Incursion also makes frequent use out of wiring mini-games to give you access to Panic Rooms, or to open or close various doors. In concept, it’s a very simple puzzle idea, but once again it’s that tactility and interactivity of the virtual reality platform that make it work. While it’s Amanda and Ellen Ripley that are better well known for their practical or engineering skills, it also feels like a very Alien inclusion to have Zula running all these electrical bypasses.

Pretty much every item in the game can be picked up. Which, outside of the immersion factor, is just plain old fun when it comes to virtual reality. It’s a small and childish joy, but it’s a joy none the less, to pick up a hard hat and put it on my head. And when we’re taking the scavenging more seriously, it’s little things like being able to move and look inside boxes to find a health stim in there that really add to the immersion.

Though this can sometimes be a frustration in itself, when you accidentally grab the box you’re trying to reach into, which when you’re in a tense situation can be the difference between Zula surviving an engagement, or throwing a cardboard box at an Alien in frustration.

The game doesn’t particularly encourage it, but you can also take a stealthier approach to playing Alien: Rogue Incursion. Much like our beloved Stompy in Alien: Isolation, sounds will draw these Aliens to you. So if you’re just running around, knocking things all over the place, the Aliens will find you quicker.

Unfortunately, sometimes this is unavoidable as you will need to weld open doors to progress, and this will bring the Aliens straight to you. But it is possible to hide from the Aliens, or more accurately, just move away from, and they will retreat back into the vents.

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Beyond our two heroes, the stars of the show here are of course the Aliens themselves. Their models look great, really towering above you once they stretch upwards from their crawling positions. They evoke the warrior design language from Cameron’s Aliens, with ridged heads and biomechanical appendages jutting from their forearms. You’ll be getting up close and personal with them on numerous occasions as well, enough to see their drool flowing from their mouths and their inner jaws lined with pointy little teeth.

While the adult Xenomorph Warrior serves as primary enemy type in the game, you’ll also be fending off facehuggers. It can be quite a thrill shooting them out of the air while they leap at you. On a few occasions, one did manage to land on my face, and it was wild having to use the VR controllers to pull it away as my PSVR2 headset rumbled. After yanking it off, I held it as it wiggled with one hand and blasted it with my revolver in the other.

You wont have to fight any little chestbursters, but they still make some memorable appearances. At one point in the game you’ll be venturing through an Alien hive, and this truly looks fantastic in VR… though I still want to know where that damn blue light is coming from (little nod to our Romulus review podcast there). Seeing the Xenos navigate their hive also shows off some of the impressive animation work in this game.

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While Rogue Incursion leans into the action side of the franchise, and each will typically take 25 rounds of explosive tipped ammunition to take down, the Aliens are a genuine threat. If one lands its claws on you and your survival instincts don’t kick in and you don’t clear that room and inject yourself, the next hit will kill you. Each encounter with the Aliens matter, and you best take each encounter seriously.

Especially with how well the Aliens are able to navigate. I don’t know which architect Gemini Exoplanet Solutions hired to design Purdan, but they were sure to put an access point for Aliens in each and every room. You have to wary of those vents or broken windows as you enter each room, otherwise you’ll find yourself turning around in surprise to find an Alien towering behind you.

I yelled a lot when playing Rogue Incursion. A lot. I would often find myself surprised by an Alien behind me, or crawling down a wall to the side of me. I really liked the way Survios decided to spawn the Aliens at some random point in the level and then let them navigate their own way to you. It’s very similar to how the Aliens were handled in Rebellion’s Aliens vs. Predator (2000/Classic).

We don’t know exactly how their pathfinding works, but as mentioned previously, sound does factor into it. Unfortunately, the game is a little too eager to throw the Aliens at you, which can result in wasted resources and a little frustration while you’re trying to explore and you just want to read those damn emails. But that is also a problem Alien: Isolation can have. I find that to be quite player and situation dependent.

Just talking about the appearance of the Aliens – Survios does something unusual with their backpipes/smoke stacks. They make them flexible. We saw them rattling around in the some of the earlier footage, but in the finished game we see them flop down after death, or be wrapped around the Alien when its in a hibernation state. It’s not something I feel strongly about either way, but just an interesting design choice made by the developers.

As in Alien: Isolation, Rogue Incursion does make use of audio queues to give you warning of the Aliens. You can often hear them traversing the vents above you – which is also a fantastic atmospheric tool. You can also hear them drop down.

What I do find can ruin the atmosphere though, is how the Aliens sometimes look when they approach you. Despite their huge, towering stature, and the fluid way they move around the walls and overhead gubbins, or how they pounce between different surfaces, when they approach you from a stood position, they sometimes appear in that “what should I do with my hands?” pose that just looks so comical.

Similarly to Aliens vs. Predator (2010) and Alien Isolation, when an Alien does land that fatal blow, we get to see Zula’s demise in a variety of different death animations. And the panic that accompanies an Alien pouncing at you (which does look amazing), or when one of them leaps away before you’ve had chance to finish it off…the atmosphere is just on a whole other level when you’re strapped into your virtual reality headset.

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I was having a lot of fun with Rogue Incursion until about the last third of the game, where I ran into some issues. Namely, it became apparent that the game started throwing 2-3 Xenos at me at too frequent of intervals. I couldn’t really explore or read logs anymore because of the constant threat of more Aliens spawning in on queue, no matter how quiet I tried to be. What started out as occasional tense, nail-biting encounters became expected annoyances.

One of the final objectives has you backtrack to the entire other end of the facility. During this whole trek, previous routes were blocked, so I was bleeding resources dealing with Aliens as I was navigating on my tablet map. I had to reload my save multiple times once I finally figured out where I was going. It really made me wish the motion tracker had an objective marker to follow similar to Alien: Isolation, so I didn’t have to completely rely on the map to find my way through this web of hallways. It started to become frustrating.

Though the game’s campaign clocks in at a respectable 8 or so hours, there’s no way around it, Alien: Rogue Incursion is a two-parter and that wasn’t made clear until the game’s release. Survios has insisted that Alien: Rogue Incursion Part 1 is a complete stand-alone experience, but given that the game ends during what feels like the mid-point of Zula’s incursion into the facility… it really does feel like there’s a missing second half.

With the game ending on a total head scratching cliffhanger, I really hope that we don’t have to wait too long before we can experience Zula’s next steps. And I hope that part two can be a true evolution introducing more weapons, more interactions with human characters, and more enemy types. It would’ve been nice in particular to see more alternative Xenomorph types as well.

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While I still find the cliffhanger a little on the frustrating side given the complete lack of any prior indication that this was a multi-part affair, I do think that Part 1 ends in a satisfying manner with Zula dealing with her little problem. I never have a problem with more Alien – it just feels a little dishonest.

Likewise, I very nearly became frustrated with the backtracking but some smart level-design stopped that. The classic use of earlier locked rooms or areas that became accessible as Zula gains access to higher clearance or better tools stopped the initial backtracking from being too tedious for me.

It was the second time they sent me back into the colony after the sequence towards the end of the game at the lander that nearly tipped me over the edge, especially as I just wasn’t sure where I was supposed to be going. The navigation in the game could have been better. I’d have really loved to not have to zoom in all the way to a room on the map to see what it was called.

And then they sent back for a third time! I was really frustrated at that point. But, as I was quickly diverted to an area of the colony that I’d barely visited before, I found myself quite content.

I know there’s been some stability issues reported for SteamVR users, and I’ve enjoyed several issues throughout my playthrough including things like the Alien’s just randomly not attacking me, or getting stuck in the environment.

The most notable for me – and I saw during RidgeTop’s playthrough on the PSVR version – was an Alien locked behind a welded door that was bugging through the door. It took what was supposed to be an incredibly tense situation, and ruined the immersion of it.

I also came across multiple moments of dialogue not triggering at what seems like the right moment. Too early, or too late. Or the repetitious dialogue prompts to continue with the objective when I was exploring, or in the case of the Operations room, just simply lost.

I was also a little disappointed that Zula had forgotten her encounter with the strange crested Alien during the early parts of Aliens: Defiance, when she tells Davis she’d never encountered anything like the Praetorian that appears towards the end of the game.

There’s nothing that ruins Alien: Rogue Incursion for me, just little issues that I’ve mentioned that knock down the final score for me.

I had a lot of fun with Alien: Rogue Incursion. There’s certainly room for improvement, but as Alien’s first proper foray into virtual reality for retail platforms, I was thoroughly impressed. From the moment the opening menu fades in, to stepping out onto the surface of Purdan, particulates blowing all around me, I was in the world of Alien. For the most part, it was exactly what I wanted from a VR Alien game. It nailed the atmosphere and the tension.

But I know there’s more to be had here. While the initial Part One bombshell was something of a surprise, I’m hoping it can give Survios the opportunity to build upon the groundwork it has laid here and add more depth into Alien: Rogue Incursion Part Two.

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Alien: Rogue Incursion is a groundbreaking game for the Alien franchise. You can tell it was crafted with love and respect for the universe. Zula and Davis make for fantastic characters taking us through a compelling story. The game is incredibly immersive and dripping with atmosphere. You also feel like a total badass when you really get the hang of things and take down a bunch of Xenomorphs with style.

There’s a solid foundation here, but I can’t shake the feeling of things being a bit underbaked at the moment. Excessive backtracking, and too frequent of Alien spawns as the game progressed led to some frustration. We also ran into some bugs of the non Xenomorph variety. I also wish there was a bit more of a replayability factor. Something like a model viewer or a survival mode would’ve helped. Even with its shortcomings, this is a solid Alien game worth playing, and I can’t wait for the continuation in Part Two.

We both agreed on a score of: