Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition Review

For a what is mainly a AA game that was originally a VR title, Alien Rogue Incursion is a solid time. Sure when compared to similar action horror games like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space Remakes as well Cronos: The New Dawn, it does fall short. However as far as Alien games that are about fighting Xenomorphs and involving space marines are concerned, I do enjoy it more than Alien Fireteam mainly because it's a single player game where you don't need to play with others to get anywhere.

The story surprised me, it isn't amazing but I was more engaged than I thought I would be. I enjoyed Zula and Davis dynamic and the former struggling with whether or not she wants to live. Davis despite being an AI cares for Zula and wants to see her survive her ordeal. Their moment to moment dialogue is engrossing enough in the moment. The game is episodic and it ends on a cliffhanger and it's up to Part 2 to nail the landing but what's here did engage me.

Gameplay is fine enough in the moment and especially for it's short length but if it was any longer, I'd be much harsher.

What Rogue Incursion ultimately boils down to is that you have to complete a series of objectives traveling through the snowy outpost as you get attack by 2 or 3 Xenomorphs every couple of minutes. You are firing and killing xenomorphs with the iconic Pulse Rifle so that novelty alone carries much of the game. What also makes it stand out that it isn't shooting hordes of Xenos like in AVP games, Colonial Marines and Fireteam. You got to use the motion tracker and often anticipate when they will attack you and shoot them before they can hit you. It's more about predicting and acting accordingingly than slaughtering them by the dozen when in your sightline. Combat is also more like RE4 where you get just enough ammo and healing items to go through the level but never too stocked up on. There is no inventory mangement like in older Resident Evil.

It also helps that killing Xenos with the pulse rifle, shotgun, grenades and revolver all feel punchy. They will be spawning a lot so they should feel good. Save points are mostly plentiful and the game never feels over stingy with resources.

You will also backtrack, get new items and open new parts of the map. You will also need to carry items and deliver them parts on the map to continue the story. Much of the novelty of Rogue Incursion in that it's a game that is more like Aliens but it's more about managing resources and backtracking than horde shooting. Remember that scene in Aliens where the marines enter LV-426 and the marines are all frantically checking the motion sensors knowing when the Xenomorphs will come out their hiding spots and shoot them. Rogue Incursion is a whole game based around this.

This is where much of the problems lie however. You fight regular Xenos and fighting the occasional facehugger where the challenge comes from how much your hand can bear the trigger mashing mini game to get them off. It's either fighting Xenos when they spawn in on the map as you explore or a story progressing wave survival section. That's main enemy types you go up against.

When you eventually deliever the distress signal to Amanda Ripley, the game really loses steam and feels padded out. You have to then go do a series of fetch quests have and then have a drawn out section of Zula finally destroying the facehugger inside of her. The game started to geniunely test my patience after a certain point due to how much it feels like it's dragging things out.

I also had two game breaking bugs where I had to reload past saves to then continue on with the story. There are also instances where Zula refuses to reload when I kept pressing the fire button after the clip was empty.

There also carry over of this being a former VR game where you have to motion imputs that are now replaced with QTEs which makes it obvious about it's origins.

A decent fight with the Alien Queen where you have to time the explosive pipes and then shoot her and then the game ends.

Overall, Rogue Incursion has it's issues but the game fortunately ends when I was really starting to get sick of it. I'm hoping Part 2 makes some major improvements since while this game is has decent fundamentals, it's going to need more of a backbone to be more than just a "solid Alien game" where the license carries much of it's quality.