Alien: Rogue Incursion Review - Joy Division
Last spring, I flew to Thailand to visit the set of Alien: Earth, the upcoming FX and Hulu TV series based on Ridley Scott’s beloved series. As a horror fan, it was incredible to place myself in the middle of some iconic imagery from the series. A VR game like Alien: Rogue Incursion offers a similar promise: Immerse yourself in the world of Alien in a way no game has previously allowed–natively anyway, as Alien: Isolation does enjoy some player-made VR mods today. But Rogue Incursion can’t quite capture the essence of the series for a multitude of reasons, but chief among them is a starring monster who feels suddenly toothless.
Alien: Rogue Incursion is a VR-only entry in the long history of video games based on Alien. Typically, those titled Alien–singular–look to the slow-paced original for inspiration, while those prefixed with the plural, Aliens, go for a more action-oriented take akin to James Cameron’s sequel. That’s the first oddity of Rogue Incursion. It’s not necessarily beholden to this naming convention, but the game has you spraying-and-praying at so many Xenos that it feels more like an action game than the survival-horror experience you might expect.
This is despite the fact that the developers clearly looked toward Alien: Isolation for inspiration, from the look of the androids–which Creative Assembly had introduced to the mythology back in 2014–to the signature movement scanner that you can now physically pull from your inventory in VR. Isolation protagonist Amanda Ripley is even name-dropped at one moment, so it seems Rogue Incursion wants to harken back to its predecessor… until it doesn’t.
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