I love theAlienmovies, but have often found the games to be lacking. WhileAlien: Isolationis a bright spot, I walk away disappointed by mostAliengames, 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 theAliencanon, seemed like it would be anAlien: Isolation-style exception. Unfortunately,Alien: Rogue Incursionis yet another letdown forAlienfans.
Survios, developer of popular licensed VR games likeCreed: Rise to GloryandThe Walking Dead: Onslaught, clearly has a great deal of love for theAlienfranchise, and that’s reflected in the highly-detailed game world that makes players feel like they’re living through anAlienmovie.Alien: Rogue Incursionis 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 anAlienvideo game, and while it takes clear inspiration fromAlien: Isolationat 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 isAlien: Rogue Incursionthrows so many at the player that the fights become meaningless. The first few xenomorph encounters inAlien: Rogue Incursionleft 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, theAlien: Rogue Incursionxenomorphs 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 fromAlien: Isolation’s less is more approachwith the xenomorphs,Rogue Incursionsuffocates 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 inAlien: Rogue Incursionwere 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 inAlien: Rogue Incursionall 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 inAlien: Rogue Incursioncan 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 makeAlien: Rogue Incursionscarier 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 inAlien: Rogue Incursion, but the bigger problem boils down to disappointing choices that ruin the back half of the game. The first half ofAlien: Rogue Incursionis a mostly worthwhileVRAlienexperience, 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 inAlien: Rogue Incursionis a massive pain.
I got stuck inAlien: Rogue Incursionwhen 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 Incursionis 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 toseeingAlien: Romulusin theatersand then leaving halfway through the movie.
That’s not to say that there is no value to be had withAlien: Rogue Incursion. HardcoreAlienfans 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 theAlienmovie franchise. And while there are certainly big problems with the core gameplay,Rogue Incursiondoes have an impressive level of interactivity, the likes of which almost rival VR behemothHalf-Life: Alyx.
Basically anything you see inAlien: Rogue Incursioncan be picked up and thrown, and there are layers to the interactivity that most VR games don’t bother with. For example, inAlien: 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 Incursiondoes 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 Incursionsimplifies 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 ifRogue Incursiontrimmed 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 Incursionsuccessfully captures theAlienmovie franchiseatmosphere 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.
WHERE TO PLAY
Alien: Rogue Incursionlaunches December 19 for PC and PlayStation VR2. A Meta Quest 3 version will launch on July 13, 2025. Game Rant was provided with a PlayStation VR2 code for this review.
