Review of Alien: Rogue Incursion – a virtual elevator to hell

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“Don’t forget, short life-saving bursts.”

I don’t often take my VR glasses out of the closet, but when I do, it’s usually for some larger, narrative, story-driven game, which then very effectively reminds me that, despite all my doubts, VR is reality is truly the future. video games. The feeling of a game world literally existing all around you, no matter where you look, is so powerful and immersive than the best TV or projection screen that words can’t even describe it well enough. I’m happy to confirm that for all fans of the Alien films, the moment has finally arrived where they can walk through a darkened base with a pulse rifle and a motion detector for themselves, and that’s exactly the experience I had. dreamed of it for many years. Unfortunately, the game itself suffers from several completely unnecessary design flaws.

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  • Platform: PS5 + PS VR2 (review), PC
  • Release date: 12/19/2024
  • Manufacturer: Survios (USA)
  • Genre: VR shooter
  • Czech localization: No
  • Multiplayer: No
  • Download data: about 16 GB
  • Game time: 10 o’clock
  • Price: 949 CZK (PSN)

Express elevator to hell

The central plot of the game is a fairly classic genre cliché, but the way the creators work with characters and situations, on the contrary, is very imaginative. They are beautifully based on the fact that some iconic scenes from a film can be “experienced” in virtual reality and allow you to relive, for example, an encounter with a facehugger in a way that you will never forget. Former Colonial Marine Zula Hendricks receives a message from a former colleague that her help is urgently needed on the remote, seemingly desert planet of Purdan. Zula heads to the location, accompanied by her android named Davids 01. Once you land on the planet, you will find a darkened and quiet Gemini Exoplanet Solutions base.

Although at the beginning the game allows you to enjoy at least a few tens of minutes of the dead silence of the base, it doesn’t last long, your motion detector goes off and you find yourself under attack by the first of the xenomorphs. . As you can imagine, secret experiments were conducted at the base that got out of control. Now almost everyone is dead or missing, there are a few androids with suspicious intentions roaming the base, and intruders seem to be absolutely ubiquitous. So, your goal is to find your former partner, find out exactly what happened at the base, and put an end to it, ideally in a way that lets the general public know what the greedy GES company has done here.

You will be able to see iconic scenes from the film in virtual reality.

Although the game showcases genre clichés step by step, as well as themes and certain scenes well known from the films, for the first time we have the opportunity to experience these things in virtual reality, and thanks to this it seems like a dream come true for fans of the series: after hundreds After watching a classic movie (and repeatedly playing successful traditional games like AvP, Isolation or Dark Descent), you’ll finally be in your own skin. It’s hard to describe the feeling of walking down the dark corridor of the base with your own hands, turning the pulse rifle slightly to look at the red ammo counter in the magazine. Or when you are kneeling at the door, stressed by the beeping motion detector and describing the joints as quickly as possible with a welding machine. Literally every moment in this game is like a cut-scene from the cult film by James Cameron, which is effectively emphasized by the decent graphics of the game and the sounds effectively adopted from the original film.

Nuclear weapons from orbit

Unfortunately, the great environmental and atmospheric experience is cruelly ruined by a couple of fundamental design errors. Firstly, the game spawns new invaders at regular intervals and ad infinitum, which is the worst and laziest design ever, but what’s much worse is how it ruins the beautiful atmosphere of the game. Instead of enjoying the tension and atmosphere of carefully exploring the base, reading emails and voice messages on computers, you instead run more or less non-stop from goal to goal, knowing that every minute a new attacker will come running. At the same time, you have a limited amount of ammunition, so if you are slow, you will simply run out, and fighting without firearms is, of course, impossible. This absurdly bad decision by the developers severely ruins the gameplay, and we can only pray that they add a patch in time to tweak or fix this feature of the game.

The second problem is an amateurish mistake in the control setup, where (at least on PS VR2) you have to actively hold down the buttons to grab any item in your hand the entire time you have it in that hand. This applies to tools such as a welder or motion detector, but unfortunately also to weapons. Almost all of these games use switches for this, if they even support grabbing beyond tool selection. This is an extremely annoying method that will make your fingers very sore if you play for a long time, and of course, you will also often accidentally drop things from your hands, especially when trying to move and turn quickly during combat. Even this absurd mistake by the creators could be fixed with one patch, so let’s hope it happens.

A great experience ruined by a couple of fundamental design errors.

Personally, I was also confused by the lack of music from the films, but in the second third of the game, once things really started to take off, the music here is so good that I forgave it (paradoxically, it reminds me of the soundtrack from the film “The Sun is Bigger Than Aliens” ). As for the technical condition and settings, I had no problems with either one, the game worked smoothly and reliably. The alien AI is amazing, but it can still really scare you if it approaches you or attacks you from an unexpected angle from a wall or ceiling. The story sounds like a cliché, but after two big twists at the end of the first third, it gets off to a very interesting start. Unfortunately, the creators seemed to hide before the release that the game is only the first part of two, so after ten hours of play, instead of a full-fledged ending, you will only find a cliffhanger. However, as a fan of the original, I enjoyed the game and I believe other fans will feel the same.

Verdict

Experiencing iconic scenes from your favorite movie in virtual reality is a fan’s dream, especially since the game looks and sounds so good. Virtual reality is the future of gaming, the feeling of the game world “all around you” is a hundred times stronger than on the best flat screen. The game’s great atmosphere is marred by unnecessary design mistakes, but it’s still an extraordinary experience for fans of the original and the sci-fi horror genre in general.

What do we like and dislike?

Accurate rendering of many iconic scenes.

Impressive audiovisual processing

Famous weapons and tools

Interesting start to the story

Endless alien spawn

Inconvenient controls

Only the first part of two

Source :Indian TV

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