Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition takes the original VR experience of Alien: Rogue Incursion and puts it onto flatscreens for an often exciting and engaging non-VR encounter. The translation shows Survios put in a lot of work to make this looks and feel substantially different, and succeeds. Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition has enough going for it to be excited about. At $30, Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition is properly priced for a standalone game that features only “Part One” of the story.
Editor’s Note: This review is based on “Part One”, which is the only part available at the time of publishing, and how it is with the original VR release of the game. Part Two has yet to be announced, and will be coming later to finish out the story.
A tale as old as time, Colonial Marines are sent to a planet but are shot down and crash upon its surface, only to find out that yes, there are Xenomorphs here. You play as Zula Hendricks, now discovering the cold unforgiving environment of LV-354, or it’s more friendly name, “Purdan”. You quickly discover that there’s facility full of secrets, but amongst them is an alien invasion as you try to reunite with squadmates and try to find a way off this dead rock.
The delineation for games based on “Alien” would often be considered horror. And games based on “Aliens” would then be considered action. Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition straddles a line between both styles of movies, but is often the latter. Throughout my playtime I did see a lot of similarities between this and Alien: Isolation more than say Aliens: Colonial Marines. That’s a very good thing.
Zula is a Colonial Marine, and such, has all the right weapons to deal with the situation at-hand for this planet. She has a revolver pistol, which has the powerful punch of putting down a xenomorph in as little as three well-placed headshots. Then there’s the pulse rifle with the 100-round magazine and has a high-fire rate and movie-accurate sound that’s glee in a gun. Then it’s not before long you get your hands on a shotgun that has incredible stopping power for a lunging xenomorph. Along the way Zula will acquire proximity grenades that can be thrown at oncoming enemies or placed strategically when defending an area. When a xenomorph crosses into its bubble, it detonates quickly to be able to dispatch anything within its explosive range. The arsenal is standard fare for the series, but no less exciting to use in your hands.
Aside from weapons, Zula has many tools at her disposal. While you wouldn’t think of a flashlight as one, it’s illumination is critical for eyesight detection when going down corridors. The fact that the flashlight moves and sways with the character, it even a bit of a delay when changing direction as it’s attached to a person over being on a weapon is just such a great detail to include. The more trustworthy tool is the portable motion tracker that can determine the distance of a xenomorph. There’s also a torch that can be used to seal or unseal doors, and is a pretty quick and painless process when it is needed. Lastly, there’s health stims that can be used to restore Zula back to health after getting into a scrap. Or say accidentally shooting an explosive barrel and taking self-inflicted damage. There’s some simple tension involved with swapping between the motion tracker, or the PDA to see where your next objective is, in conjunction with your weapons. It works so fantastically.
Panic rooms are strewn about the facility to have ammo, health, and save stations like Alien: Isolation. You can save anytime you like, so long as either no enemies are present or the panic room door is closed. Thankfully, there’s some save management here as you can rely on multiple backup saves that get made and that can be used in the event you make a bad save somehow and need to roll back to an earlier time. Without getting into specifics, I was surprised at there being scripted deaths. It works really well as you think you should be doing something different to survive. However, when you do succumb to it, that fight to the finish feels really good.
Your completion time with the game will vary slightly, but expect to complete the game in the neighborhood of eight hours. I played on the Normal difficulty, and while it could be hard at times, it overall felt pretty easy on me with its bountiful ammo and health pickups, and even with its generous enemy encounters and “defend the area” objective. I would recommend experienced players ratchet even their first time up to Expert for a more challenging and tactical way to play the game. The xenomorph AI is hit-or-miss, as they will seek you out and sometimes be able to get the jump on you if you aren’t paying attention to the sound cues. Other times they’ll be less than ten feet from you, but don’t care to engage with you. Overall they’re a decent threat, and harder difficulties will have you feeling that more intensely.
There’s a limited set of characters that you’ll meet and interact with, such as your android companion, Davis. Or your squad mate Carver that you are trying to rescue. There’s lots of audio logs to listen to and emails to read to help fill in the gaps of what’s happened here. Terminals will sometimes need you to unlock doors, close shutters, or download data in order to progress story beats. Not everything in this facility works as intended, so you’ll often need to shoot panels to open doors, or open panels to rewire power through some simple puzzle solving.
I would liken this game to being a “linear metroidvania” in that there are some areas you can’t access right away, but when the game is ready for you to, you’ll revisit them and be able to use that new thing. You get a moderate amount of freedom to explore and open up new paths, but you’re largely funneled in a single direction throughout the game. You can see the parts of the game where VR “events” occurred, but now they are quicktime events here. While I normally dislike their inclusion, they actually feel tactile as they likely did before.
Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition runs on Unreal Engine 5.54 and overall really performant when you have NVIDIA’s technology enabled. In order to stay above 60fps, I did have to disable Raytraced reflections, and I didn’t feel like I lost anything. The game is weirdly capped to 144fps, but I was able to achieve these framerates consistently with DLSS set to Native and Frame Generation enabled. The game looks really crisp and moves fantastically smooth. It’s a great looking and performing game all around, especially with its ultrawide support.
My PC Specs:
– Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
– Intel Core i9 13900K @ 5.8GHz
– ASUS ROG RYUJIN II 360 ARGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
– G.SKILL TRIDENT Z5 6000MHZ 64GB (32×2) DDR5 RAM
– ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GDDR6X
– WD_BLACK SN850X M.2 (4 TB)
– LG UltraGear 34GP950B-G (21:9 Ultrawide @ 3440×1440)
I don’t know how or when “Part Two” will take shape, but I’m eager to see its conclusion as soon as it’s ready. Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition really nails the look and feel of the first two “Alien” movies, especially with the through-line mimicking them as well. I love the tension that comes and goes as you play through the game. Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition transforms the once VR-only experience to a very capable, thrilling, and stunning episode for flatscreens.
A Steam code was provided in advance by the publisher for review purposes
