Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition

Written by Rob Larkin on 10/29/2025 for PC   PS5   XSX  

Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition started its life, pre-evolution I guess you could say, as a VR game for PS VR2, Meta Quest 3, and Steam VR. With the Alien franchise being back en vogue these days with the success of 2024’s Alien: Romulus, the recent FX series Alien: Earth, and an expected sequel to Alien: Romulus reportedly in the works; it makes sense to introduce the game to a wider audience with the console ports. It’s an interesting direction of travel. Especially in the early days of VR there were plenty of examples of FPS games ported into the virtual space, but not so much the other way around.

The result here is a very competent first-person experience, that ends up being about the length of a typical VR game, but weighing in a little light for what you would expect from a single-player campaign exclusive FPS. A little short on length but this is very much only “Part 1” of the story with Part 2 “already in development” according to the developer, Survios.

You can tell it's a ported VR game when you play it with little interactive bits littering the experience like having to load up canisters into various devices, interacting with keycards into key slots, or often having to do little mini puzzles rewiring fuse boxes to unlock doors or other obstacles. It’s not like any of that is tedious, and actually plays into the flow of the gameplay rather adeptly because all of these actions take time—time that you might very well be short on if a xenomorph is still tracking you down when you try to begin the interaction. Judge it poorly, and you might just get one of the iconic inner jaws shoved right through the back of your head—and yes, there are these types of fatality-like kill cams for the final blows when your health bar reaches zero.

There are times when you might want to risk a sprint to the airlock and hope to close it before the xenomorph closes down your position, because ammo or a lack thereof quickly begins to be the most frightening aspect of the game. The difficulty in Rogue Incursion doesn’t really stem from the aliens. Sure, they can be competent when attacking in groups, but the crux comes from whether you have enough rounds to actually take down however many you might be facing.

There are certain choke points when the story pins you into these final-stand type moments where you will have to face down a few waves of xenos flooding an area, trying to flank you and creep around at all angles. These can be hairy, somewhat from the flanking, but especially from the threat of just running out of rounds on the last few stragglers. There was one particular final stand where after dying rather quickly on my first two attempts I realized I needed a lot more bullets to survive this party. I spent a solid few minutes scavenging supplies from some optional areas I had previously skipped over and still ended up hunched in a corner without a round left across my three guns and pulling out the last thing I had in my inventory—a plasma torch meant to cut welding on closed doors. Turns out you can kill one of the buggers with a torch but likely only going to find success if you softened them up with a few shots first.

I even got a PSN trophy to pop for trying it. Neat. That whole encounter was rather thrilling: trying to find high ground while a countdown ticked in the background, moving between my arsenal as one after another they all ran out, jumping out of the way of the last attacker and backing in fear into a container.

Even if it didn’t end in an intentional way, the unscripted outcome of what happens when you still need to bite (even though there is more than you can chew) works. So, in preparation for those final stands, you start to alter your thinking that maybe expending so much ammo in a hallway isn’t the best option if the aliens are far enough away you can just skip to the airlock.

Fight or flight really is important calculus, and that’s when the interactive elements come back into play. You can try to blast down everything first and then use that plasma torch to slowly cut through a welded door feeling safe in the eerie calm of the silence that your earlier mayhem has afforded you. Or you could try and risk it, hoof it near the end and hope your biometrics register in time to close the airlock before the next one’s at your back.

The game doesn’t cheat you in this either. The xenomorphs don’t just appear out of nowhere for jump scares. You can hear them coming. If the lighting is good enough or you track well enough when your flashlight is equipped, you can see them skittering along the ceiling or in and out of vents. You even have an iconic motion tracker and can track the pings even when you don’t have line of sight.

Survios respects the player in that design choice and I, in turn, respect them for that. Where they do need to probably tweak the gameplay is giving the Aliens a bit better attacking strategy in the sequel. They move nicely and flank well to a point but inevitably drop down to the floor and give you a pretty open target to blast at before they actually strike. They move great to close the distance but tend to announce their presence with a menacing but full-standing pause —just before a bull rush to actually finish the attack.

Save points aren’t automatic. I didn’t have the same frustrations Eric did in the review of the VR version, probably because I heeded his warning and saved whenever I was near a panic room where the save spots are located. But I also did stumble upon two checkpoints relatively late in the game that were very generous to unexpectedly autosave.

One was just before the final battle and the other in the third act just before approaching a tricky jump section. It’s really the only platforming type of element of the whole campaign. So, when I fell to my death without even making the initial leap in time (let alone sticking the landing) I was relieved to be restarted just before the jump section, rather than all the way back at my last save computer.

The final battle also presents a fairly different challenge that needs to be worked out. There was a relatively lengthy section leading to it, so to also provide a checkpoint there was a kindness.

While the game does follow some of the tropes about needing a higher-level biometric keycard to access new doors and making you revisit sections over and over, it does a decent job with it. You might basically skip med bay because it’s there, but you have no business with it. However, when later forced back through, you are expected to explore it at length. It tracks with the urgency of the story. You’re not on a sightseeing mission. You’re managing limited resources and time to move from objective to objective, so even when you are retreading parts it makes some narrative sense.

Part one does end rather abruptly but, overall, it’s a nice package. What it perhaps does best is really captures the feel of the Alien universe. The hive level found in the basement of the facility is especially creepy to descend into, and you get to play through a few set pieces that really encapsulate the tone of the films and other media.

It also connects to the Alien universe through media outside of just the movies and shows by making Zula Hendricks the main character. Zula has appeared in multiple Alien novels and, at one point in this game, even tries to contact Amanda Ripley, who you might know from the Alien: Isolation game even if you’ve never explored the written lore. It does show how intentional this game is about connecting to the larger franchise. It even stays true to the universe’s Standard Semiotic pictograms that adorn various doors and spaces in the complex.

The only thing that’s really disappointing is how underpowered the pulse rifle feels. You have three weapons in the game: the iconic Space Marine pulse rifle, a burly hand cannon, and a classic pump-action shotgun. Both the shotgun and hand cannon pack a wallop; but the pulse rifle, while it sounds like the classic gun that has peppered this franchise, takes so many bullets to actually down an enemy. Face huggers drop quick, but you have to spray down any full-sized xenos for so long it’s like you’re killing them with a water hose. Thankfully it’s the only weapon of the three that allows you a pretty sizable inventory of ammo, but it all comes out in the wash with how many bullets it actually takes to finish the kill. Maybe that’s all the better because you get to fire off more rounds, but really, I just want the pulse rifle to just kick a little more butt rather than just tickling the aliens to death.

Overall, Alien: Rogue Incursion puts together a compelling package. It’s not a huge package as this is just part one of a story that still needs a conclusion. Unfortunately, at that midpoint where it does roll the credits there are still many questions and very few answers. So, this half doesn’t really deliver a narrative pay off, but it feels like the Alien universe and is competent enough to be worth your time if, like me, you are a big fan of the franchise and the world building of it.