Alien: Rogue Incursion Review

i love Foreign movies, but have often found the games lacking. While Alien: Isolation is a bright spot, I leave disappointed with most Foreign games, feel that they ultimately fail to live up to the high bar set by the films. Alien: Rogue Incursiona virtual reality game that tells an original story in Foreign canon, seemed like it would be one Alien: Isolation-style exception. Unfortunately, Alien: Rogue Incursion is another decline for Foreign fans.

Survios, developer of popular licensed VR games such as Creed: Rise to Glory and The Walking Dead: Onslaughtclearly have a great love for Foreign franchise, and that is reflected in the highly detailed game world that makes players feel like they are living through one Foreign Film. Alien: Rogue Incursion is the story of Zula Hendricks, as she explores a xenomorph-infested research facility with her android companion Davis. The game hits all the punches you'd expect from one Foreign video games, and while taking clear inspiration from Alien: Isolation sometimes it trades the game's tingly horror for bombastic action.

There is undeniably something entertaining about shooting xenomorphs, but the problem is Alien: Rogue Incursion throws so many at the player that fights become pointless. The first few xenomorphs encounter i Alien: Rogue Incursion made me sweat and my heart pound, but when it became apparent that they were predictable and easy to dispatch, the creatures became little more than a nuisance. 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 drawing inspiration from Alien: Isolation's less is more approach with xenomorphs, Rogue Intrusion suffocating players with a non-stop barrage of creatures from the beginning of the game to the end. Almost every time a xenomorph appears, it's accompanied by loud, blaring music, forcing players to deal with them as soon as possible if they want peace and quiet. It's a real shame, too, because the scariest xenomorph enters Alien: Rogue Incursion were the times when the music wouldn't start for some reason and I suddenly saw one of the beasts lurking at me from 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 to make the fights with them challenging. Xenomorph meets in Alien: Rogue Incursion everyone plays pretty much the same way. The nasty music cue hits 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 has fun, 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.

Die in Alien: Rogue Incursion can be more difficult than it needs to be since the game barely has any checkpoints. Most of the time, death means going back to the last save, which isn't always a big deal, as there are a decent number of save rooms in the game, but there are times when this can cost players significant chunks of game time. Not having proper checkpoints does not Alien: Rogue Incursion frightening or more intense; it makes it frustrating, especially after being killed by a xenomorph or facehugger when a technical issue prevents players from even fighting back. In one case I simply couldn't draw my rifle, and in another my shotgun was “equipped” but my arm was stuck at an angle that made it impossible to do anything with it.

There are serious technical hiccups Alien: Rogue Incursionbut the bigger issue is about disappointing choices that ruin the back half of the game. First half of Alien: Rogue Incursion is a mostly worth VR Foreign experience, but about halfway through, the game's momentum comes to a screeching halt. This is when the battles start to get repetitive and the backtracking becomes excessive and tiresome, exacerbated by the largely unhelpful map that doesn't include room names and in turn makes some objectives unnecessarily difficult to find. Throw in the infinite xenomorphs and get lost Alien: Rogue Incursion is a huge 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 as they should. I spent about 30 minutes at one point walking around the same room, fighting the odd xenomorph that would spawn in, desperately trying to figure out what to do. I thought I was missing something, but what really happened was that Davis would come into the room with me and use a computer to develop the story. He was stuck in the nearby hallway and I don't even know what made him finally move to the target, but it eventually happened.

Alien: Rogue Incursion's Story is unfinished

After suffering technical problems like this, the mind-numbing backtracking, and countless shooting gallery xenomorphs, my reward was a terribly unsatisfying ending. Without going into spoilers, Alien: Rogue Incursion isn't a complete experience, and the story doesn't wrap up properly when the credits roll. Rogue IntrusionThe story has great moments that are brilliantly enhanced by virtual reality, but its cliffhanger ending makes it all feel pointless. It is comparable to seeing Alien: Romulus at the cinema and then left halfway through the film.

That is not to say that there is no value to be had Alien: Rogue Incursion. Hardcore Foreign fans may still want to play this when it goes on sale, as the developers have absolutely nailed the movies' atmosphere and aesthetic. It really is like living in the world of Foreign movie franchise. And while there are indeed major issues with the core game, Rogue Intrusion has an impressive level of interactivity, almost rivaling the VR behemoth Half-Life: Alyx.

Basically everything 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 Incursiona carton has multiple interaction points where you can remove 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 Intrusion does a genuinely fantastic job of drawing players into its world.

My first playthrough of Alien: Rogue Incursion took about 10 hours. I explored most rooms thoroughly, but there were definitely some areas I missed.

Rogue Intrusions interactivity extends to the equipment and weapons that Zula collects in the game. While some VR games have awkward layers, Rogue Intrusion simplifies things by allowing players to easily pick up necessary items out of thin air whenever they are needed. Weapons can sometimes be fiddly to pull out, but using them is easy once in hand. Reloading weapons is also highly interactive, with some of the game's best moments coming from the more lively event battles where players may need to quickly load bullets into Zula's revolver or quickly load the grenade into her shotgun as xenomorphs surround her.

I think about Rogue Intrusion trimmed down the back half, got a proper ending and drastically reduced the xenomorph encounters so they made more sense, it would be easier to recommend. But while I mostly enjoyed the first half of the match, the second half was a headache-inducing affair. Alien: Rogue Incursion catches successfully Foreign film franchise atmosphere and there's a novelty to exploring this terrifying sci-fi universe in virtual reality, but its problems are just too big to ignore.

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.