Even though the original Xenomorph was clearly operated by a performer in a suit, its presence in Ridley Scott’s Alien remains genuinely chilling. Its sparse screen time, the relentless atmosphere of dread, and its clinical brutality helped cement it as a horror icon. That shudder-inducing quality has endured through successive portrayals — most recently in FX’s Alien: Earth, which showed a fresh take on the creature tearing through unsuspecting soldiers.
By contrast, in Alien: Rogue Incursion the Xenomorphs often feel less like apex predators and more like persistent annoyances. The game’s foundation is solid — a competent first-person shooter with survival-horror overtones — but as an entry in the Alien mythos it rarely reaches the stomach-dropping menace I expected.
Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition is the PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X adaptation of a VR title Survios released late in 2024. You play as Zula Hendricks, a former marine longtime fans may recognize from other Alien media such as Dark Horse Comics’ Aliens: Defiance, and you’re accompanied by her synth partner, Davis. The game sends Zula into a facility overrun by Xenomorphs, where she must solve environmental puzzles while unraveling how the infestation spiraled out of control.
The game is positively saturated with Xenomorphs. Part of what made the best Alien tales — the original film, Alien: Romulus, and Alien: Earth among them — so unsettling was the scarcity of the creatures on screen; one Xenomorph should feel like an existential threat. In Rogue Incursion, however, Zula chews through groups of aliens with relative ease. The pulse rifle and later additions to her loadout reduce encounters to shootouts more than stalking nightmares. By the time you unlock a shotgun, the primary challenge often becomes scavenging enough ammunition to keep pace — a frustration that peaked during a boss encounter where I found myself circling the arena waiting for crates to respawn.
The creatures scale walls, spill from vents, and cling to ceilings, but they rarely act with the speed or ferocity you’d hope for. Zula’s quick dodge evades most swipes without much risk, and several enemies will simply cling to a surface while taking fire rather than aggressively closing the distance. When the AI chooses to bide its time, the result is less terrifying and more perfunctory.
Rogue Incursion doesn’t aim to be pure survival horror in the vein of Alien: Isolation, but it occasionally hits a spooky note. More often, though, surprises translate into irritations rather than terror. During one sequence, I was engrossed in an electrical wiring puzzle when the screen stuttered and registered damage; I flicked out of the puzzle, shot a Xenomorph that had materialized beside me, and resumed solving. Seconds later another identical pop-in occurred — same spot, same quick shootout. In a universe where Xenomorphs are supposed to rend an unprepared human, these encounters felt underwhelmingly tame.
The audio design doesn’t always help. The music swells whenever an enemy spawns, whether or not you’ve noticed the threat; conversely, roaming the station’s dim, blood-splattered corridors without any musical cue removes much of the potential dread. Ultimately, Rogue Incursion undermines the franchise’s signature suspense by turning the Xenomorphs into predictable, telegraphed obstacles rather than the cunning, patient hunters they are in the films.
Mechanically, the game is enjoyable as an FPS, but its failure to sustain the trademark Alien anxiety limits its ambition. Marketing leans into the stakes — the launch trailer even warns, “If they reach Earth, humanity ends.” Yet after roughly seven hours with the game, the experience suggests that with one well-armed soldier and enough ammo, humanity might be fine after all. The story is presented as part one and ends on a clear cliffhanger, so there’s hope the sequel will restore the franchise’s bite when it arrives. In the meantime, you can watch the launch trailer here: launch trailer.
Alien: Rogue Incursion Evolved Edition is scheduled to be released Sept. 30 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Windows PC. This review was conducted on PlayStation 5 using a prerelease download code supplied by Survios. Additional details about Polygon’s ethics policy are available on the site.
Source: Polygon
