Unveiling the Mystique: A Deep Dive into “Alien: Rogue Incursion”

Last spring, I traveled to Thailand to focus on the set of Alien: Earth, the upcoming FX and Hulu TV series based on Ridley Scott’s cherished franchise. As a horror enthusiast, it was impossible to keep myself from being surrounded by some iconic visuals from the series. A VR game like Alien: Rogue Incursion offers a similar promise: Dive into the world of Alien in a way that no game has done before—at least natively, as Alien: Isolation does have some player-created VR mods recently. However, Rogue Incursion struggles to capture the spirit of the franchise for various reasons, primarily due to a leading monster who feels curiously harmless.

Alien: Rogue Incursion is a VR-exclusive installment in the long history of video games inspired by Alien. Generally, those titled Alien—singular—seek inspiration from the slow-paced original, while those prefixed with the plural, Aliens, aim for a more action-centric approach akin to James Cameron’s sequel. This is the main peculiarity of Rogue Incursion. It isn’t necessarily bound to this naming rule, but the game has you shooting at so many Xenos that it feels more like an action title than the survival-horror experience one might anticipate.

This is despite the fact that the developers clearly looked towards Alien: Isolation for ideas, from the design of the androids—which Creative Assembly contributed to the mythology back in 2014—to the signature motion scanner that you can now physically retrieve from your inventory in VR. Isolation’s protagonist, Amanda Ripley, is even mentioned at one point, implying that Rogue Incursion aims to pay homage to its predecessor… unless it doesn’t.

At the outset, the game seems poised to embrace the same sense of creeping dread that made Isolation a cult favorite, but it doesn’t take long to understand why it couldn’t fully commit to this style: Here, the enemies simply aren’t the super-intelligent predators they were previously depicted as. My initial encounter with a Xeno was underwhelming, considering protagonist Zula Hendricks is a rogue Colonial Marine who has apparently faced the Xenomorph threat before. There was no buildup to the confrontation. At one point, a Xenomorph merely walked into the room with me; I aimed my gun at it and killed it before it could harm me. Hendricks didn’t seem to think much of it, but I wished she had.

For what is meant to be such a monstrous, nearly indestructible foe, it felt far too simple, and that’s despite the alien crawling around on the walls and ceiling in a manner that felt hard to predict. Since ammunition is limited and aiming at a Xeno while they scuttle about can go poorly, I learned in this very first encounter to simply wait for the monster to stand still in front of me, at which point I unleashed my clip into them before they could launch an attack.

This is how most confrontations play out in the roughly four-hour game. I can find a unique tool, such as a blowtorch that can cut through the welded-shut door blocking access to a corridor, or I can solve a puzzle, typically involving rearranging electrical circuits to unlock doors. An alien or two would soon interrupt my task. I could stand still as they approached, then shoot them dead at point-blank range.

To experiment with another approach seemed like both a waste of ammo and overly challenging for myself. Why do anything else but wait? Moving around before they approached only made things more complicated, too, so I learned to keep my shoulders turned towards them, circling in place when necessary, until they rolled out the red carpet and strolled into my gunfire. There was no stealth component, no genuine sense of avoiding danger to enhance your predicament.

I could squint and sometimes observe a more engaging game. One of the appealing aspects of VR, generally, is the tactile nature of gameplay. Pulling out my motion tracker, quickly switching to my sidearm when my rifle ran dry, or interacting with the controls in my hands to navigate the world are aspects that every VR game of this nature naturally provides, yet it remains enjoyable for me even years and many games into that experience, particularly in environments close to my heart.

Thus, performing these actions in an Alien setting should be fundamentally intriguing, even if not entirely so, given the franchise’s strong artistic direction. To some extent, it was. Certain moments provided me with the same sense of place as being on the set of the TV series. Yet the game’s graphics are limited on Quest 3, which cannot deliver the level of visuals that Rogue Incursion achieves on other VR platforms.

like Steam VR and PSVR 2.

Shadows lack the desired (and, in different settings, executed) depth, resulting in lighting being notably less engaging. The visual sharpness within the surroundings has been reduced to achieve a decline in performance on this specific headset. Everything appears blurrier and less intricate. The features of characters seem less defined. In a real-world setting, witnessing a Xeno’s massive head emerge from the shadows can indeed be terrifying; however, on Quest, the atmosphere is diminished as the headset simply cannot deliver. Clearly, even in a more powerful environment, it seems likely that the experiences fall short of the same (undeniably high) standards of the series’ finest efforts.

I didn’t get the chance to experience these superior versions of the game myself, I must clarify, so my comparisons are merely based on what I’ve seen online. Still, I’m comfortable stating that the platform’s reduced specifications shortchange the game’s Quest edition. Perhaps a Quest player who is a fan of Alien understands and accepts that they are sacrificing visual fidelity for the convenience of being wireless, and I can relate to that. I’ve made that trade-off time and again and always come to the same conclusion. Quest is my preferred VR platform, but in this instance, the richer environment may be worth the inconvenience of having a wire dangling from your headset.