With the huge success of Alien: Earth and Alien: Romulus, we can safely say things are looking better for the Alien franchise these days. Even on the gaming front, the Xenomorphs are going strong with great Alien games like Aliens: Dark Descent and Aliens: Fireteam Elite, eradicating the stink that 2013’s Aliens: Colonial Marines left hanging over the franchise. Now, riding that high, we’re even getting Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition, a non-VR version of 2024’s Alien: Rogue Incursion.
Originally released in late 2024, Rogue Incursion – Part One (it was always planned as a two-part story) was a big enough success to warrant a conversion for those who either can’t — or don’t want to — get a virtual reality headset. This time around, the entry barrier is having a current-gen console or decent gaming PC; Developer Survios‘ game is no cutting-edge AAA title, but it’s a good-looking game that perfectly captures the dense atmosphere of the first two Alien movies better than most Xenomorph-infested interactive experiences.
In fact, the professional audiovisual presentation and all the attention to geeky details might be Rogue Incursion’s greatest strength. This is no poor facsimile of the original movies’ aesthetics – looking at you, Aliens: Colonial Marines… again – but a notable recreation of the advanced yet worn-down science fiction future governed by corporations. The extra graphical features of this re-release (including ray tracing) help sell the ‘haunted house’ feeling of an empty colony at the center of constant storms.
Familiar-ish faces
On the half-terraformed planet of Purdan (LV-354), ex-Colonial Marine Zula Hendricks and her reprogrammed synth companion Davis look for answers regarding experiments on Xenomorphs and the threat the species poses to mankind. If you were expecting yet another Weyland-Yutani mess, you’ll be surprised to read it’s another company that’s been toying with the wrong lifeform this time around… well, maybe not that surprised after Alien: Earth.
The weirdest thing about the plot (and the entire two-part project, I guess) is that it’s a sequel of sorts to several Dark Horse-published comic books and novels. Hendricks has been around for a long while now, and she’s even friends with Amanda Ripley (yes, this game also bridges the first Alien: Isolation and its upcoming sequel), so we’re thrown in the middle of an ongoing mission of exposing the corporations’ lies to protect Earth.
Diehard Alien fans will love seeing the heroine make the leap from page to screen, but newcomers might feel like they’re missing something over the course of the 4-to-5 5-hour story. I find myself in the latter camp, though I must say I enjoyed Hendricks and Davis’ chemistry and sincere chats more than I expected.
Another bug hunt
Even in its revised and updated Evolved Edition, Alien: Rogue Incursion struggles to make the Xenos a consistent threat, despite some well-placed scares and the occasional ‘survive the horde’ sections, which turn the heat up. They’re not as dumb as the ones found in Gearbox’s disastrous FPS, but very distant is the genuine dread of Isolation or the relentless action of the severely underrated co-op shooter Fireteam Elite.
Aliens will usually attack in pairs or trios, often randomly as you try to read messages or figure out one of the game’s many light puzzles (not even the save rooms are safe). As I said, there are a few ‘set pieces’, dedicated combat encounters amped up by the roaring music tracks which signal the bugs are coming. More variance would’ve been great to see here, yet there’s only so much you can do with these creatures in a shooter beyond throwing larger numbers at players, a lesson Fireteam Elite learned recently. That game’s solution was to add variety in terms of enemy types, weapons, and locations — not something you can do when you’re trying to replicate the feeling of the movies so doggedly.
Regardless, with your trusty pulse rifle, blasting through the horde never gets too stale, and the ‘bullet-sponginess’ some have criticized actually feels right for monsters that are meant to be fearsome. Sure, a couple of well-placed shotgun blasts will make “close encounters” brief, yet the iconic pulse rifle needs to burn through almost half a magazine to down a single Xeno. After so many shooters that turned regular warriors and drones into weaklings the moment humans had guns, Rogue Incursion finds a sweet spot between making them tough, but still vulnerable to proper firepower. If only they had better pathfinding, they’d have been legitimately scary.
It’s not game over, man!
There are a handful of surprising and welcome sequences that put aside the traditional loop of grabbing devices and unlocking doors as you shoot down the horrors. One of the game’s best sections – and one that probably plays really well in its VR counterpart – involves facehuggers and roaming around a hive unarmed while the Xenomorphs aren’t a threat. It’s a change of pace that ups the spooky factor by dialing the action down, and a few other beats also manage to spice things up. Still, you’ll eventually return back to the grind of a single type of enemy continuously pouring in from a room you already cleared five minutes ago.
At $29.99 and considering how many of its design limitations stem from its VR origins, it’s hard to get too mad about Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition’s rough edges or more awkward moments. Its Xenomorphs are neither the best nor the worst we’ve seen, and I’d have loved to spend less time looking for keycards and backtracking across its adequate map, but its staunch commitment to old-fashioned bug shooting and fleshing out the Alien universe kept me glued to the controller until the credits rolled.
If you can, get the VR version, but if not, there are worse ways to while away an evening or two. Just be careful; they mostly come out at night… mostly.
Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition – Part One is available now for purchase on PC (Steam, Epic Games Store), PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. A PC code was provided by the publisher for this review.
