Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition

Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition was provided by Survios for review. Thank you!

Years and years ago, all the way back in 2016, I was sucked into the world of VR. I remember driving over an hour just to try the HTC Vive for myself, and I was blown away. The game that ultimately made my decision to buy one as soon as possible was Raw Data, developed by Survios. It showed me the possibility of VR and what it could possibly do, and I was blown away. Since then, Survios has been busy, making new VR titles, with some premium options like The Walking Dead: Onslaught and Creed.

One of these premium experiences ended up being a brand new Alien game, Alien: Rogue Incursion. Ever since Alien: Isolation, I’ve been fascinated to see how the series could be interpreted and transformed into a video game. However, I don’t have VR set up, so I never got to try it. However, Survios decided to try porting it over so it doesn’t need a VR device to play, and I finally got the chance to see if Rogue Incursion is worth checking out. And after my time with it, I’d say it reminded me more of an Alien game I wish I could have forgotten.

Instead of the stealth, atmospheric horror experience that came with Isolation, I was reminded more of the action-focused Alien: Colonial Marines. With this being a VR game originally, this does make some sense, but I was still a little disappointed that it felt more action-packed instead of the consistent, unnerving feeling that the Xenomorph could be anywhere, watching you.

Alien: Rogue Incursion's gameplay consists of walking around dimly lit, sci-fi environments, completing a linear set of objectives, and fighting off Xenomorphs that crawl down to attack. We have access to three different weapons: a pulse rifle, a revolver, and a shotgun, and we will have to scrounge around for ammo, stimpacks to heal, and grenades. Xenomorphs are bullet sponges, so expect to take multiple shots from each gun into them. It’s not necessarily a bad thing when it’s one or two attacking, but I regularly found myself facing 4 at a time, and they quickly overwhelmed me. The limited ammo that can be held and found can make it quite difficult to manage when 3 or more attack.

The random nature of Xenomorphs popping up to attack seems to be the game trying to keep you on your toes, but it ultimately just made me upset. They could come out and just randomly attack when I’m interacting with a terminal, trying to cycle air out, when turning a pipe wheel, and even when trying to save. It got especially frustrating when I was turning the wheel of a gas pipe, and I started getting attacked, and I couldn’t get out of the wheel-turning screen, and died without being able to fight back.

The frustration was only made worse by the game’s save system. There are almost no auto-saves, forcing you to go to Panic Rooms and specific terminals to save. There are a decent number of them to find, but they were also spread out or not prominent enough to remember to get to, and when I died, I was sent back pretty far. Xenomorphs can also come into the room and interrupt saving entirely, and while this only happened to me once, I was killed and sent back far. It almost made me curse out loud while I was in the airport, playing the game while waiting for my flight back home from the Tokyo Game Show.

It just felt like there were too many smaller issues that compounded into creating a more aggravating experience. And while there are some small things we can do, like pick up and throw random objects for fun, there’s ultimately little depth to the game with no progression or upgrades, apart from finding a beefier wrench to manipulate the red wires on circuit boards. There are some secret rooms and containers to backtrack to with extra ammo and intel to collect to pad out the story, but that’s about it.

It actually starts to make sense once it’s looked at as a VR game. In VR, we can move our hands freely, pick up whatever objects we want, move the blow torch and weapons however we want, and need some assistance for movement systems like jumping. The non-VR version can only do so much to cover these up. Jumping is automatic, some animations feel a little floaty, and there are a lot of these interactive moments where we need to hold down the trigger to activate moving our arms to climb up ladders or holding the right trigger to insert a floppy disk in my PDA. It happened so frequently that it would keep reminding me of its VR roots, because I can’t see it being this consistent in a game that was built from the ground up for non-VR devices.

While the gameplay can be hit or miss at times, the story is an interesting one. We play as Zika Hendricks, who goes to the planet Purdan to investigate a facility that could put a lot of lives in danger. With her Synth companion Davis, she will infiltrate and look into what exactly happened here, and come face to face with the dangerous beings that inhabit the place.

Throughout the intel we pick up and the universe it exists in, I find Alien: Rogue Incursion to be worth playing through. The story is left on a cliffhanger, with part 2 coming to continue the tale, but I was definitely left more curious than I expected. I find the entire lore of Alien interesting, and I’d say I was satisfied with Part 1. I do wish I had learned a little more, as I felt there were more questions than answers to satisfy my hunger for a comprehensive narrative, but I still found it entertaining.

The gameplay seems like it would be an awesome VR experience, but translating it over to non-VR just doesn’t captivate in the same way. I’m glad we are able to experience it without a headset for those who want an interesting story. I’m curious how it will continue in Part 2, but there are obviously parts where VR helps the immersion that just don’t hit as hard.

Alien: Rogue Incursion - Steam Deck Performance

Alien: Rogue Incursion is an interesting game to play on the Steam Deck. Survios creates VR games generally, which means they need to be optimized very well to hold the 90 FPS needed for a smooth VR experience. Theoretically, this could translate well to the Deck, and it does…somewhat.

The game defaults to low settings with dynamic resolution on, targeting 60 FPS, and it actually stays there most of the time. There were only a few moments I noticed some drops, with the worst being when you take your map in your hand while walking around. It's definitely playable, though there are minor stutters that can become more and more apparent as we continue playing. It is also defaulted to the lowest settings, with dynamic resolution enabled that makes the game look very pixelated and blurry sometimes.

However, with some changes, we can make the game look much better, while still being very playable and enjoyable. By disabling dynamic resolution and switching to FSR upscaling on Performance, along with turning shadows on and increasing texture size, we can get a solid 45 FPS. It still remains playable, but it looks much sharper than the default. It still has some pixelation, but overall it looks much sharper. It still feels smooth as well, and though it clearly isn't 60 FPS, it was still very enjoyable. There are going to be some weird morphing on grates on the ground or vehicles, but it generally looks better.

If you want to save as much battery as possible, using the lowest preset at 30 FPS will be the way to go, but for a good balance of performance and visuals, this is where I would land. Still, for what it's worth, Survios did a great job optimizing the game to make it playable on the Deck, and I would still say it deserves that Verified badge.

Accessibility

There is an accessibility tab where we can toggle Aim Assist, Camera Shake, holding for Rapid Press interactions, and color saturation of the screen. We can also change difficulty on the fly, modify camera sensitivity and make it inverted, change deadzone and vibration, show the Grenade throwing arc, change audio settings, and modify keybindings.

The game does support 16:10 resolutions and has both cloud saves and controller support. The game does have HDR settings that can be found in the "Calibration" option in the Graphics settings.

Conclusion

Alien: Rogue Incursion is a game I very much wanted to enjoy, but kept finding issues left and right that hampered my experience. The story is solid, and I am looking forward to seeing how it continues, but the basic gameplay and action emphasis stop me from enjoying it. The bones of the original VR game are very clear here, and it feels like that's where it belongs. Still, for those interested in the Alien lore, this is a decent title.

However, the game is amazing on the Steam Deck for what it is. Does it require some clear compromises? Absolutely. But it's not enough to stop it from being a solid portable experience, and I think that Survios did an excellent job with optimization.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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