Alien: Rogue Incursion

As a huge fan of the Alien franchise, I’ve been very excited to sink myself into the world of Alien: Rogue Incursion. Perhaps complete immersion in a universe where bugs the size of frying pans implant eggs down the throats of humans, which then burst forth in a spray of blood sounds unappealing to you. To me it sounds like a fantastic break from the doldrums of daily life. Holiday prep got you down? Grab a pulse rifle and go blast some xenomorphs! Just watch out for the acid blood.

If there is one thing that the development team at Survios gets right, it is the vibes of the Alien franchise. Survios is one of my favorite VR developers, and they know how to distill an existing franchise into a fun VR experience (Creed Rise to Glory is still the best VR boxing game, and I'll fight anyone that disagrees with me. In Creed, of course). That commitment to the bit continues here. The pulse rifles and motion detectors sound perfect. The shuffle of aliens rattling through vents overhead is unnerving. The retro-future computer screens and interfaces feel just right. And the blood-slathered halls and byways of the Gemini Exoplanet Solutions facility that you find yourself in? Well, they feel so familiar that they might as well be film sets.

The player takes on the role of Zula Hendricks, an operative that went AWOL from the Colonial Marines with her companion Davis 01. After receiving a distress call from an old compatriot, she travels to the aforementioned facility to get to the bottom of where her friend is, and why he called for help. The answer to both of these questions turns out to be “Xenomorphs”.

Rogue Incursion dispenses with a lot of the usual story tropes found in Alien stories. The fact that Davis 01 is a robot is never in question. And Zula seems 100% aware of Xenomorphs and how to handle them; the “What are these things?” part of the story is replaced by “Oh, it’s these bastards.” However, knowing about the Xenomorphs and surviving in a locked down facility infested with them are two different things.

At her disposal, Zula has several tools, the first being that baller-ass pulse rifle. Able to hold 99 rounds per clip, the pulse rifle can dispose of several Xenomorphs without needing a reload (which is fast and satisfying). If you should run out of ammo during a skirmish, your handy six-shooter might just pull you out of a jam. The weapons are fun to fire, and reasonably accurate. You can pop the pulse rifle up to your eye for additional accuracy, but I rarely found the time to be that fussy.

You also have a datapad, which performs most Pipboy-style functions (map, quest log, etc.), and you pick up a couple of other tools that directly relate to progression. The torch, for example, will cut through sealed doors. All of these tools and weapons work great, and can be summoned out of thin air with a quick reach and button press. For a game that absolutely stacks the player with gear, Rogue Incursion does a stellar job of knowing what you are reaching for; I never tried to pull ammo just to come away empty handed.

By the time Zula and Davis arrive at the Gemini facility, the aliens are already in LV-426 mode. Facehugger eggs have been laid, the ventilation systems has become a Xenomorph superhighway, and the walls are slathered with the infested remains of the facility’s staff. Zula and Davis have to fight and sneak their way through the various floors of the facility, becoming more and more aware of what took place there the further they explore.

Unfortunately, a lot of that exploration is rote keycard-based video game stuff. While it makes sense within the confines of the story, I was pretty disappointed to find myself sneaking from subsection to samey-looking subsection, upgrading my keycards on terminals found along the way for better access. I might be suffering from keycard fatigue, but it feels like I’ve been doing the same dang thing in games for the last thirty years.

More successful are the battles against the Xenomorphs. While they scared the crap out of me when they would seemingly magically appear towards the beginning of the game, I eventually got hip to the fact that they were in fact creeping around through ducts and vents, and if I paid attention, I could predict where they would appear. Even better, in certain situations, the player can open and close doors to encourage the aliens to take specific pathways. So long as the ammo holds out, you can create your own alien shooting range.

The game never cheats; Xenomorphs don’t just pop in out of nowhere. Rogue Incursion really does a great job of keeping you on edge, making you feel as though you are constantly surrounded by aliens creeping just out of sight – because that is exactly what is happening. Your head will be on a swivel, and even so, these creepers will still catch you off guard on occasion. Luckily, they do tend to pause for a moment before attacking, allowing the player a second or two to fill them with lead before getting chomped. It takes a bit away from the realism, but greatly increases survivability.

So yes, I had a lot of fun creeping around the facility, eyeroll-inducing keycard issues aside. But that fun was almost entirely undone by an aspect of the game that I absolutely despised. There is no other way to say it - I abhorred the save system in Rogue Incursion. Really hated it.

Hate is a strong word, and one that I am loath to use in a review, but my feelings about the save system in Rogue Incursion were strong enough that the hate-invocation is merited. I’m no fan of replaying sections of a game after already beating them, and that’s precisely the position Alien: Rogue Incursion put me in, repeatedly. I got screwed over by the save system more times than I care to remember.

In short, saves in Alien: Rogue Incursion work like the typewriters in old-school Resident Evil. There are “Panic Rooms” scattered around the facility. You have to enter the panic room, slap your pad on a computer, and manually save. After that, no matter how far you go, no matter how many major story beats you hit, if you die, you will go right back to that save point and your forward progress will be undone.

Which would be fine. Antiquated and irritating, but fine. But picture this scenario: It has been twenty minutes since your last save. You have just fought through a major scripted battle against the Xenomorphs. Ammo is low. You have four shotgun shells left, and your sidearm is completely empty. You are barely limping by. You know that Panic Rooms usually contain a bit of ammo and some healing supplies. You check your map and locate one nearby.

On the way to the Panic Room, a Xenomorph attacks. You use your last shotgun shells fighting it off. You get to the Panic Room, and there is a puzzle preventing you from accessing it. The same dang puzzle you’ve done fifteen times already, where you have to rewire the electrical flow to the door to get it to open. So you gamely start doing the puzzle, and you hear the telltale shuffle in the vents behind you, and before you know it, you are killed by an alien outside of the Panic Room. You find yourself staring at the starting point of your last save, the progress from the battle and everything after completely lost.

Sounds suspenseful, right? Like, it sucks that it happened, but those are the breaks with an Alien game right? Okay, but now imagine it happening to you the third time in a row. Because that scripted battle has to happen. That ammo has to be used. This is the closest Panic Room to the battle. And that god damned puzzle is still gonna be there.

Worse, imagine if you spent twenty minutes from your last save engaged in unskippable story scenes, and the game glitched out and you could not progress, forcing you to reload an old save. Have fun sitting through all of that content again. This happened to me several times, with objects that I needed to progress becoming stuck in the geometry, or simply disappearing altogether. This forced a reload, which would be fine - I understand VR glitches - but the reload sends you allllll the way back. There are no timed autosaves, no major event autosaves, no autosaves at all. It's old school, but not in a good way. 

If it sounds like I got frustrated with Alien: Rogue Incursion, that’s because I did. Which bummed me out, because so much of this game is really good. I can’t for the life of me understand why the game doesn’t include some autosaves after major events. It is almost 2025, and we’re still using a save system from 1996? This is just not how we play games any more, and the reason we stopped was because players hated it.

Should you play Alien: Rogue Incursion? Yes, I would still say you probably should, especially if you are a franchise fan like me. Seeing those Xenomorphs drop out of the ceiling in life-sized scale is worth the price of admission. But along with your pulse rifle and motion detector, maybe pack some chill pills, because this one is going to piss you off. Going down like Bill Paxton is no fun at all if you have to do it over and over again.