It’s hard to believe it has been over a decade since the release of Alien: Isolation. No Alien game since then has matched the intensity of its survival horror focus. Slowly creeping around a space station, only to be ambushed by a Xenomorph and engage in a cat-and-mouse chase in hopes of survival, is an exhilarating experience that no other Alien game has quite been able to achieve. Unfortunately, Sega and Creative Assembly did not immediately start work on a follow-up; it was only this year that we learned a sequel is in the works.
That Alien: Isolation sequel is still years away at this point, but thankfully, a different Alien game is here for players looking for another Xenomorph-filled first-person shooter. It’s a new VR game from Survios called Alien: Rogue Incursion, and it’s your best bet for that Alien horror short of replaying the original Alien: Isolation as we wait for its sequel.
Rogue Incursion follows Zula Hendricks, a Colonial Marine who’s defecting with her synthetic android, Davis, in the hopes of exposing the evil Wayland-Yutani corporation. The game begins with them crash-landing at a remote black site where they have a contact, only to find it completely decimated by Xenomorphs. Rogue Incursion follows Hendricks and Davis as they thoroughly explore the Gemini Exoplanet Solutions research facility to discover its hidden Wayland-Yutani secrets and fight any Xenomorphs they encounter along the way.
Like Isolation, Rogue Incursion is a tense first-person horror game where players see the destruction that Xenomorphs leave behind firsthand before fighting the alien threat head-on. Survival horror befits Alien as a franchise more than any other game genre, with a first-person perspective being particularly effective in VR as I have more control over where to look or how to interact with objects I encounter.
Rogue Incursion plays similarly to November’s solid VR game Metro: Awakening. It’s a mostly linear experience where finding and managing ammo is important because a vicious enemy could attack at any time. While I’m somewhat apathetic to having to learn yet another way to reload a gun in VR at this point, there is some novelty to the tactile nature of that process in Rogue Incursion.
Having to reload a gun as a Xenomorph was attacking was mortifying for me and often didn’t end well. At its best moments — like when I see the blips of a Xenomorph on my motion tracker, but still can’t actually spot it with my eyes — Rogue Incursion can hit the same highs of Isolation. Rogue Incursion is more of an action-focused title; I could typically kill a Xenomorph as long as I had enough bullets. When I didn’t, though … it was truly horrifying.
Rogue Incursion does, unfortunately, succumb to some typical VR woes. I’m too often fumbling my ammo or watching an alien get stuck in a wall. Rogue Incursion does not have the same level of polish as first-party VR games like Batman: Arkham Shadow or Horizon Call of the Mountain. It’s certainly not as clean as a modern console game, but I appreciate that we get to experience another first-person Alien horror game at the start of this long wait for Isolation’s sequel.
Most Alien games released recently have been more action-focused. While games like Alien: Dark Descent are enjoyable in their own ways, Rogue Incursion does feel like a return to form for Alien in the game genre where it works best. Alien fans have already had a decade to replay Isolation and will likely have to wait for several more years until they can check out its successor. Having Rogue Incursion as an alternative for those with VR headsets is a net win for those fans.
Alien: Rogue Incursion launches for the PlayStation VR2 and Steam VR on December 19. It will come to the Meta Quest 3 sometime in early 2025.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.