Alien: Rogue Incursion review – the final new video game of 2024-Nick Gillett-Entertainment – Metro

Alien: Rogue Incursion – game over, man (Survios)

The last release of the year is an ambitious new VR game that sets to recreate the horror and action of Aliens on PlayStation 5.

There’s a long and rich history of video games based on the Alien franchise, dating back to 1982’s Pac-Man style Atari 2600 game. Since that formative era things have become considerably more sophisticated but despite several good games there’s never been a definitive Alien title, either the various horror-focused adaptations or those more influenced by the action of Aliens – although the recent Dark Descent did well in trying to combine both aspects.

The franchise’s high watermark arrived in 2014, in the shape of Alien Isolation. That offered a back-to-basics Alien experience, pitting you against a single, terrifying xenomorph which stalked you around the game’s lovingly recreated retro-futuristic corridors. However, while superbly atmospheric, it suffered from somewhat one note gameplay and an overlong running time.

Yet despite so many failed attempts and near misses, developers’ fascination with the Alien licence persists. With the allure of adding VR to the mix, that’s especially understandable. Virtual reality has the ability to draw you more viscerally into its world, which in this case is wholeheartedly based on James Cameron’s vision for Aliens, its setting highly reminiscent of the former ‘shake ’n’ bake’ colony on planet LV-426.

That means darkened exteriors covered in windblown snow, with vehicles and equipment still smouldering, and half-broken synthetics (the Alien name for androids) wandering about disconsolately in the wreckage. Inside, it’s all black metallic corridors with massive sliding security doors, and gaping holes torn in their ceilings or acid-burned into their floors.

Everything is all pleasingly and consistently retro. The datapad you use as a map and journal accepts sturdy-looking discs through a slot in the top and rewiring the game’s electronics requires interacting with 80s style connectors using special tools to stop you getting electrocuted. Almost as often though, you’ll be blasting open doors with your good old M41A pulse rifle, the standard weapon of the colonial marines, and a stalwart prop from Cameron’s film.

It’s inspiringly recreated, looking chunky and solid, its familiar LED readout on the side telling you how many bullets are left in your clip. While you can fire it one handed, recoil sends the muzzle leaping into the air, making it a two-handed weapon for all but the closest of encounters. The best thing about it though, is its immaculately sampled staccato roar as you fire it on full automatic. Slamming in a magazine and priming its firing bolt, you feel ready to take on an entire xenomorph nest.

That’s just as well because, unlike in Alien Isolation, you’ll be laying waste to dozens and dozens of aliens, which is possibly why your first encounter with one is so disappointingly throwaway. It simply turns up as you exit a building, with no nerve shredding preamble. Running along a roof, down a wall and then rearing up in front of you, it’s easily vanquished by your pulse rifle in a pixellated cloud of green blood. It’s an inauspicious beginning.

The arrival of a motion tracker soon afterwards helps. Fans of Aliens can once again rejoice in its sound effects, the flat regular tapping noise replaced by a pulse-quickening rising chirrup when it detects incoming movement, getting higher as targets approach you. With only two hands to work with, the continual tension between needing your map, motion tracker, and weapon means you never feel comfortable or safe.

With aliens attacking every minute or two, it’s reasonable to feel ill at ease, making every task you undertake a lot more nerve-wracking because you constantly need to watch your back. Facing a power panel that needs rewiring or set of doors you need to unseal, using your plasma torch to remove a weld, makes you feel horribly exposed. All it takes is a single chirrup to make you drop what you’re doing, reach anxiously for a gun, and start searching ceilings and windows.

Along with your pulse rifle you also have a revolver, which looks just as convincingly sturdy, even if it’s not as familiar from the films. It’s handy in a pinch, normally when your rifle runs dry at just the wrong moment, but reloading is another matter. Popping open its cylinder you first shake out the old bullet casings, before grabbing more ammo, loading it with a succession of small stabbing motions.

That’s a walk in the park compared with the shotgun, which has you reaching down to your belt for each individual shell before making a sliding motion to slot it into the gun. Then, after each shot, you’ll need to rack the pump before you can fire again. Unfortunately, it’s at these moments that the game’s initial impression of solidity starts to breakdown. The finer motions required to insert shells into your gun and grip it with both hands make for moments of unintended frustration.

Alien: Rogue Incursion – check those corners (Survios)

Fortunately – or possibly not – most encounters happen at acid blood-spatteringly close range, making aiming almost redundant. Nowhere in the complex is safe, no matter how cosy it seems, or how reassuringly its huge metal door slides shut. Wherever you are, xenomorphs can quietly worm their way through the ceiling or ventilation system, popping up to interrupt your busywork with their lunging claws and slavering double sets of jaws ready to stove in your skull.

It means you’re constantly on edge and, as in the films, stillness is hard to come by. Puffs of steam emerge from pipes, lights flash, cables spark, computers click and whir, and there are faint sounds of scurrying delivered in unnerving surround sound – making you feel as though something is continually stalking you just out of sight. It primes you for that first motion sensing chirrup way before it actually turns up.

The one exception to that sense of impending death is the game’s panic rooms. They offer momentary respite from the horror and, like Resident Evil’s typewriter rooms, also act as manual save points. Initially, it’s easy to get caught out by the total absence of checkpoints but after a bit the sight of the inviting but fleeting safety of a panic room is a chance to catch your breath.

The real problems come when the slow stream of xenomorph attackers turns into a tsunami. It’s at those times that the wonkiness of detecting the placement of both hands and the fact that loading some of your guns is so damn fiddly, turns a frightening encounter into an irritating one. That’s magnified if the last panic room was a long way back.

It’s also only fair to warn confirmed arachnophobes that there’s a particular scene involving the game’s spider-like facehuggers that will live for eternity in your nightmares. It would be churlish to spoil any of its chills further, but despite the annoying – and clearly partly deliberate – fumbled reloading of some weapons, there’s effective horror as well.

That includes moments where you’ve become slightly too wrapped up in a minor puzzle or search for a hard drive and failed to heed your motion sensor’s warning chirp. Turning round to come face to face with a spittle-flecked xenomorph on its hind legs, centimetres away from your virtual face, was enough to make us yell very loudly in the real world, causing surprise and mirth to those in the room not currently being attacked by an alien.

Crawling through vents covered in bloody drag marks, and working your way through corridors filled with hastily erected and eventually futile makeshift barricades is hugely atmospheric, a sense enhanced by your motion tracker. It’s a shame it’s undermined by VR’s old bugbear of clumsy, unreliable reloading. With just a touch more polish this could have been a real landmark.

Formats: PlayStation VR2 (reviewed), Steam VR, and Meta Quest 3
Price: £32.99
Publisher: Survios
Developer: Survios
Release Date: 19th December 2024
Age Rating: 18

Alien: Rogue Incursion – when the motion track beeps you know you’re in trouble (Survios)

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