Alien: Rogue Incursion review – these monsters are real

Alien: Rogue Incursion’s planet of Purdan is every inch as hostile and unwelcoming as Aliens’ LV-426, and your introduction to it is as chaotic and calamitous as anything in James Cameron’s iconic movie. Amidst a snowy blizzard and the buzz of missiles that eventually take out her shuttle, former Colonial Marine Zula Hendricks emerges from the crash site to a view every bit as reminiscent of Aliens – lightning crashes around the antennas of a desolate research facility.

The difference in VR is that you are on Purdan, you are Hendricks, and that unwelcoming corporate facility, with its upturned forklifts, broken windows and sparking, stuttering security doors is a place you need to go. But Alien: Rogue Incursion isn’t a stylistic tick-sheet of things that resemble the Alien franchise, it is every but a part of this universe as Alien: Romulus and Alien: Isolation.

Having interviewed Tate Mosesian, game’s art director, I’m aware of the creative effect that has into making Alien: Rogue Incursion fit the universe, and how Unreal Engine 5 has made this possible. The design of the game’s world is cold and angular, built from steel it’s visually complex and nest-like, with panels built over girders, struts and air vents – and it’s not long before those channels, gaps and crevasses are swarming with scurrying Xenomophs.

You’re never truly comfortable in Alien: Rogue Incursion, and developer Survios plays every trick in the book to keep you on edge. Xenomophs can come from anywhere, from any direction; above, below, dropping from vents, inside vents… really, they’re everywhere.

At first they come in isolation but within the hour they attack in groups. There’s a randomness to these attacks that keeps you in anticipation of where or when they may come – and in a nice move, if you die, or replay, they will often emerge from new areas of a location, even in a scripted event, as they react to your position in the environment.

There’s something unbelievably immersive about watching a Xenomorph scurry the outside of a building, come in through a broken window and up into a vent. I think I have it in my sights, I’ve tracked it, I can hear it, but I forgot about the over Xenomorph emerging behind me – just like the movies, they caught me.

Survios cutely uses sound as well as visual queues to suggest a threat is nearby. The Gemini Exoplanet Solutions facility, by now a broken place filled with haphazardly stacked detritus, with random fires crackling and eclectics sparking, is awash with ambient noise As sparks from loose wires patter around the corridors they make the same noise as a scurrying Xenomorph, the smoke and clutter perfectly alluding to something in the shadows. This Aliens-inspired environment feels dangerous, especially in VR.

You do, of course, have Colonial Marine gear and weapons to hand that give you some leverage, and it’s weirdly comforting to have some of these tools and weapons to hand. The motion tracker is your life jacket; it beeps when a Xenomorph is nearby and when in use tracks movement exactly like in Aliens.

Weapons are wonderfully manual and analogue; the pistol is reloaded by jogging the gun to one side and physically inserting bullets one-by-one, the shotgun needs to be ‘pumped’ after every shot and the iconic M41A Pulse Rifle needs its clips ‘slapped’ in place. Every action is designed to feel physical but each also has pacing embedded that influences the tension of a confrontation – can you reload and shoot before the Xenomorph pounces?

Each gun can take down a Xenomoph kind of easily, but then Survios rebalances the combat in neat little ways. Weapons have limited ammo capacity, so one pistol clip can take out two Xenomophs but not a third, so I drop it and pull the Pulse Rifle, which can blaze away at any remaining creatures but is unwieldy – fail to grasp it with two hands and it will spray in a rising arc, which is just one of many nice touches from the movie-verse that make sense here.

We also get analogue computers and interactions – an ‘80s joystick is used to navigate the PCs in the game and not a mouse, discs are loaded into the datapad by manually inserting them, doors are closed with the pull of a physical lever. The world’s design is perfectly in-keeping with the Aliens universe, as if Syd Mead had designed it himself, while also perfectly suited to VR.

As the story unfolds more gadgets are added to your tool belt, and because Alien: Rogue Incursion is as much about survival as combat, these are tailored to unlocking new areas of the facility, some corridors push on the narrative other rooms reveal backstories to the missing research staff and ammo. Simple rewiring puzzles are solved to open doors – they definitely cut the power – while a fizzy welding torch can cut open some doors and locked cases.

It all comes together to form one of the purest Alien games I’ve played in a long time. In a moment I can be scorching a welded door open to reach safety, my head bobbing to look for dangers, one hand hovering over my pistol, listening for any unusual sound. What was that noise? Above? Below? In the wall?

Holding it all together, and ensuring Alien: Rogue Incursion is more than a well made novelty, a theme park ride that hits all right bends, is a solid story that regularly throws in a twist you won’t see coming and has an over-arching plot you will want to discover the end to.

There are some bugs – pun not intended – such as Xenomorph AI occasionally trapping itself behind areas of the environment, which I’m not afraid to say I made the most of, but many of these issues are known to Survios during pre-launch so will be fixed. There’s a slight pacing issue after a thing happens, and the story and game has a soft reset, but you’re soon back on track.

The mark of a great game is despite the occasional issue, nothing ever gets in the way of the sheer enjoyment of surviving in an authentic Aliens scenario. Alien: Rogue Incursion is at its best when you’re face-to-face with Xenomorphs emerging from every vent, nook and cranny as ammo depletes and you’re frantically cycling weapons. Just another day in the Marine Corps? No, Alien: Rogue Incursion is so much more.

Alien: Rogue Incursion: Verdict

A pitch-perfect recreation of the Aliens universe that balances a claustrophobic atmosphere with tense combat and authentic, analogue design. This is the kind of game you bought PSVR 2 to play.