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Some readers may remember that back in April, I was really digging Alien: Rogue Incursion’s wonderfully practical sensibilities that could only be achieved in virtual reality. Except not long after that piece went live, a rather surprising thing happened. Developer Survios announced that a brand new “Evolved Edition” for PC, PlayStation 5, (and later, Xbox Series X|S) was coming, meant to be played without VR at all. They once again sent me a code to give it a look, and I was curious to see how things panned out. It’s left me with a lot to think about.

It’s not often a game goes from being VR to “flat”. Both call for some wildly different sensibilities, and Rogue Incursion highlights this perfectly, for better or worse. I don’t blame Survios for this, as it’s an admirable adaptation, but not an evolution. If anything, it makes me question design philosophies we just keep accepting as the norm in more traditional gaming experiences.

As a refresher, Alien: Rogue Incursion is the tale of Zula Hendricks, a key character from the current Alien/Predator expanded universe. She’s even crossed paths with Amanda Ripley from Alien: Isolation. Hendricks’ spine was massively injured, warranting her taking on immense medical debt to cover replacement surgery that only partially took. She and her android partner Davis-1 crash land trying to help extract an old friend, Carver, from a dubious corporation that’s run afoul of xenomorphs. Insert lots of tense first-person action-horror blasting and resource management with a light bit of puzzle solving and metroid-vania-esque exploration. Save for a dearth of auto-save checkpoints, some backtracking, and a rather abrupt cliffhanger teasing a Part Two for sometime in the future, it’s a solid horror FPS with some great moments.

What’s crucial to understand though is that what set the original VR release apart wasn’t merely the setting. As becomes apparent when playing Evolved Edition, Rogue Incursion is basically Alien: Isolation except now you can kill xenomorphs. It’s not easy, but you can stand your ground. This belies the real hook of Rogue Incursion: how thoroughly and viscerally it makes these fights come to life… in VR. Which is a crucial hurdle.

While there were experiments with VR for* Alien: Isolation* way back during the days of Oculus Rift, they were restricted to head tracking. It wasn’t until earlier this year that a mod approaching Rogue Incursion’s level of integrating your body into the experience was released, and even then, it still requires a lot of quicktime events that attempt to simulate what would later prove purely natural to do in VR. It’s an adjustment that unfortunately, Evolved Edition has to try and perform in reverse.

You fundamentally engage with the world differently when you have both arms as inputs. Multi-tasking is simpler, as I wrote before carrying things around in boxes is pragmatic at times, and you can keep weapons literally close at hand while in combat, among other upsides. There are so many brilliant little flourishes that demonstrate a firm grasp of how VR gaming can push the medium forward. So many that adapting them to meet traditional standards is downright sobering in how reductive mainstream game design can be.

Survios couldn’t just make a whole new game from scratch, so a number of moments that made sense in VR are now cutscenes or QTEs. The new HUD is far from organic, not even using some of the integrated elements that are still present but not made more visible on your arms in Evolved Edition. However, they are at least clear and concise. The movement speed also feels fundamentally slower when not in VR, even though any VR game has to offer slower movement than a flat game due to greater motion sickness concerns. That said, I do get how altering that slow pace now would doubtless have knock-on effects to scripting and other potential issues. I just can’t pretend that Zula’s sprint feels more like hurriedly plodding than actually fleeing in terror from xenomorphs.

What really stands out though is how mundane this flat presentation makes some aspects feel. I’d think maybe I’ve just played too many horror games, yet revisiting Rogue Incursion in VR for this piece affirmed what I felt in my gut. It doesn’t matter that the graphics and load times are clearly compromised to run on my Quest 3 – the xenomorphs are fundamentally more engaging to fight when you’re the one doing the aiming.

The flat version has Zula popping off shots and reloading her weapons so swiftly that I could swear the game started throwing more xenomorphs at me to compensate. Except there’s not really any enemy variety to speak of, so without the atmosphere, it’s a shooting gallery of xenomorph, xenomorph, face hugger, xenomorph, xenomorph, xenomorph. The threat of losing progress from taking a mere three damaging hits adds some tension, but it’s a lot more engaging when you’re trying to actually keep track of aliens with your own senses.

To be fair, there are some upsides to this for less experienced players. Nailing a xenomorph with a pulse rifle is far easier for someone used to a mouse and keyboard as opposed to aiming the real thing. The shotgun is certainly smoother to use if you’re not manually reloading each slug and then pumping it. Swapping between equipment is a mere button press rather than manually grabbing and raising each item individually. You can also rebind keys, which is understandably trickier to achieve on the limited buttons of VR controllers.

Except you have far fewer options to be clever as well. You can’t have your motion tracker and map out at the same time, sneaking past an unaware xenomorph. Nor can you be firing with your pistol while holding your shotgun or rifle in your offhand to blast whatever the pistol doesn’t put down. There’s no ingenious ability to carry multiple spare items in a cardboard box. And the thing is, it’s not impossible for some of these utilities to be achieved in a flat game.

Max Payne 3 was able to have Max shoulder his heavier weapon when whipping out a pistol quickly. Dead Space’s telekinesis lets you haul along some extra items that don’t fit your inventory – provided you don’t trigger a loading zone that erases them. Bioshock 2 and Infinite demonstrated how dual-handed gameplay can work to great effect. Yet these are often one-offs rather than expected mechanical nuances. We’ve perfected gluing muscle-bound soldiers to chest-high walls, but not intuitive actions that better cement our actions with our protagonists. Heck, there are some games where you can’t even drop something, only “discard” it into oblivion even if there’s plenty of space to just leave it behind.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that every project has priorities and limitations. I’m also not saying every game has to be built like a VR title – frankly, Vanquish would probably make for a pretty terrible VR game, and it’s one of the best third-person shooters ever made. Yet it’s in seeing how Rogue Incursion has to concede to expectations of traditional gaming that some things are absolutely worth questioning. Your ammo limit is indeed the limit. The player can’t place things somewhere more convenient – in fact, some items are now in more blatantly obvious positions because you can barely interact with all the physics objects that now serve no purpose. You literally interact with the world less now than before, and that’s a shame.

Rogue Incursion is still a fine game when played flat, but “fine” is not the word I’d use to describe the VR version. In VR, even the most frustrating moments are genuinely engaging. I know it’s a cliche at this point but you do actually get swept up in something better when it surrounds your senses in tangible ways. That’s even when bearing performance issues and glitches in mind. Evolved Edition might run far more visually impressive effects, but it felt far less thrilling when I knew what the original experience was capable of. And yet, I’m not mad that most players aren’t likely to play the superior version of Rogue Incursion. If anything, I hope it inspires further conversation on what flat experiences can learn from VR. There’s a rigidity to modern games that isn’t actually necessary.

For instance, interacting with computers. Doom 3 had this solved decades ago, letting you freely drift from blasting demons to browsing terminals just based on where you were looking. I can’t think of another game outside of VR titles that does this anymore, and I couldn’t begin to offer a good reason why. The *Amnesia *and Penumbra games also toyed with more direct interactions just using a mouse and keyboard to great effect, as did Silent Hill: Shattered Memories with analog sticks and the Wiimote. These are all far more interesting basic interactions than pushing boxes in The Last of Us.

And what unexpectedly sticks out the most is how lovely it can be to not be stuck waiting for scripted sequences. So many times in Rogue Incursion, Zula would get a process going on a computer terminal, except I’d step naturally step away. Sometimes it’d be to watch my back, or hauling my ass to the nearest exit, or setting mines to cover flanking routes. I acted like someone who knew xenomorphs would be arriving any second. I assumed that my computer tablet would do its job and didn’t need a helicopter parent in a Quest 3 helmet.

Yet in Evolved Edition, I have to choose – interact, or be aware. While you can technically tilt your head left and right, it’s so restrictive and narrowed a field of vision that it’s functionally useless. And this isn’t an issue that’s unique to Evolved Edition. We just take such a restriction as a given even though it’s frustrating, and arguably avoidable. Hopefully at least some of this can be taken into consideration whenever Part Two of Rogue Incursion’s story releases, with the benefit of hindsight.

I’m grateful there’s still a more accessible way for Rogue Incursion to find a wider audience. It’s a fine game when played on a monitor, but this doesn’t really compare to Survios’ work at its best. I don’t know if it’s a hesitation to defy design conventions or simply lack of time to consider alternatives, but this experience has really left me wondering about what other design philosophies we’re just taking for granted these days. For all the talk I see online about how games don’t innovate anymore, VR might have some ideas well worth invigorating games regardless of format. That’d be a true evolution worth exploring to the fullest.

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Elijah Beahm is an author for Lost in Cult that Unwinnable graciously lets ramble about progressive religion and obscure media. When not consulting on indie games, he can be found on Bluesky and YouTube. He is still waiting for Dead Space 4.