With the Alien: Earth TV show doing its best to turn the Xenomorph into a Disney mascot, Alien: Rogue Incursion couldn’t have come to consoles at a better time. The VR version did a solid job of creating a tense atmosphere that felt so quintessentially “Aliens”, you could forgive some of its flaws. That being said, the transition from VR to console would have been a good time to fix some of those flaws, which sadly hasn’t quite been achieved.
The story follows Zula Hendricks, protagonist of the novel Alien: Inferno’s Fall and the subsequent run of Resistance comics. She’s a tough-as-nails former Colonial Marine who wrestles with psychological demons and chronic back pain, aided by a combat Synthetic named Davis, who is also present for the events of Rogue Incursion, often working alongside you in the early portions of the game. After being shot down over the alien-infested colony of Castor’s Cradle while looking for an old friend, Hendricks finds herself facing off against her old enemy.
Hendrick’s place in the overall canon is a welcome development for most of the fanbase, given her stoicism and competence and buoyed by the fact that she’s not just an Ellen Ripley clone. In fact, she’s friends with Ripley’s daughter Amanda in the continuity, further cementing her adventures as canonical lore. This being Part One of a planned arc, the story is left unfinished yet with a satisfying, arguably unpredictable climax. And it won’t take you long to get there, given that Rogue Incursion is a pretty linear eight hour adventure with few distractions from the critical path.
Developer Survios has done brilliant work here with the atmosphere and feel of the world. From the retrofuturistic technology to the all-important sound design and that sense of bleak camaraderie we’ve come to expect. Castor’s Cradle could be Hadley’s Hope for all intents and purposes, which is entirely by design and very welcome. Even the sound of the wind whistling between the rocks, or the mechanical grind of opening doors, Survios nailed the ambience. One major boon for the PS5 version is the inclusion of haptic feedback, which hammers your palms with Pulse Rifle fire and add a tactile feel that couldn’t have been present in the non PSVR2 version.
Certain things reveal the game’s VR roots though. Exaggerated hand animations for one, or the fact that everything of importance happens directly in front of your face and if you look away from a key moment, you’ll miss it. A few times an audio sting made me jump because a Xenomorph had crawled up a window or through a vent behind me when the game assumed I’d be looking that way.
Likewise, the Xenomorph AI leaves a lot to be desired. While they’ll creep out of vents and can approach from any angle, they typically drop down and run at you, which removes a lot of the dread and turns it into a bit of a shooting gallery. They don’t really stalk you, and you’ll often know they’re coming before you have to pull out the iconic motion tracker because you’ll hear them clicking and growling, which doesn’t really conform to what we know of the creature as a predator. There are no silent assaults from above, no real sudden jump scares.
There’s also almost no enemy variety whatsoever. A larger enemy towards the end of the game or skittering facehuggers are all you get besides the standard Big Chap-style Xeno, which is expected but still a little disappointing. I’m starting to wish the creative leads of these projects would just bust out the old McKenna toy range for inspiration now and then.
It’s an issue compounded by your general lack of options. Zula has just a few weapons throughout the entire campaign: a powerful six-shot revolver, a standard-issue M41-A Pulse Rifle, and a handy shotgun for close encounters. Sadly you have to use a weapon wheel to change, and I died more while trying to reload or change my weapon than any other time. On occasion the Xenos will zerg you en masse, and short-controlled bursts don’t get it done. While shooting stun-locks them, they take a surprising amount of punishment before dying in a pool of acid. I was also hit with a couple of weird bugs on PS5, one of which stopped me turning unless I opened the map menu, and one that stopped me throwing grenades, both of which led to me dying at least once each.
Everything you do besides shooting is a hangover of Rogue Incursion’s VR conception. Hacking doors with a puzzle minigame, or using a computer that completely removes your peripheral vision help to heighten the tension, but the former are particularly egregious because everything you do increases the chances of a random Xeno attack. Moving fast, shooting, hacking, or opening doors will attract them, and there were several occasions when I had to keep stopping mid-hack to shoot a bunch of aliens. And if you manage to run out of ammo, you’re dead. You can’t run and hide like in Alien Isolation, and Zula has no melee attack to fall back on.
Overall, Alien: Rogue Incursion nails the atmosphere, spectacle, and sense of place, but struggles to maintain a threat level above mild annoyance. A lack of variety becomes less of an issue with the shorter runtime, but this all combines to create a fairly bare-bones experience kept alive by the setting and protagonist rather than the threat of the perfect organism you’re trying to evade. Most often it devolves into a straightforward corridor shooter with few twists or scares. Big fans of the franchise will have a ball with the world itself, and it certainly doesn’t waste your time with filler, but it never quite manages to replace what it loses due to the change of perspective.