We don't recommend playing Alien: Rogue Incursion on Quest 3
Alien: Rogue Incursion for Meta Quest 3 and 3S will be released on Thursday, but we found the game is poorly optimized for these devices.
Alien: Rogue Incursion has been available for Playstation VR 2 and PC VR since December 19th, while the Quest version has been postponed to February 13th.
"At Survios, we take pride in delivering top-tier immersive gaming experiences for our players. To ensure Alien: Rogue Incursion meets these high standards and provides the Alien VR experience that fans and players expect, we’ve made the difficult decision to delay the game’s release on Meta platforms until early next year," Survios wrote in November when announcing the delay.
I played Alien: Rogue Incursion on Meta Quest 3 and my impression is that this version is just on the edge of being unacceptable in terms of visuals and performance.
A VR game that just barely runs on Quest 3
Alien: Rogue Incursion doesn't feel like it was optimized for Quest 3, but rather like a VR game that was developed for much more powerful systems and then ported to this platform by any means necessary, leaving only the bare bones of its original visuals. Without realistic lighting and shadow effects, Alien: Rogue Incursion loses much of its visual appeal, while resolution and frame rate have also been reduced to a minimum.
To back up my subjective experience, I analyzed the VR game with Meta's proprietary metrics tool and had the performance data displayed in real time during the game (see video below).
Alien: Rogue Incursion basically runs at 36 fps and uses Meta's AppSW rendering technology to artificially double the frame rate to 72 fps. The good news is that this framerate remains relatively stable. Since the GPU load in the game is constantly changing, Survios uses Dynamic Resolution, a rendering feature that scales the resolution up and down depending on the GPU load. The studio defined a resolution of 1,680 x 1,760 pixels as the upper limit, which is the standard eye buffer resolution of Quest 3. In practice, however, the resolution constantly drops, sometimes as low as 1,100 x 1,100 pixels. To counteract this performance problem, Survios uses fixed foveated rendering. Here, the edges of the field of view are rendered at a significantly lower resolution, a method that developers should only use in exceptional cases.
Even tools like the Quest Games Optimizer cannot improve Alien: Rogue Incursion visuals, as the game already runs close to the performance limits of Quest 3, at least in its current state.
Wait or choose another VR platform
Graphics aren't the most important thing in a game for me, but I'd rather not play Alien: Rogue Incursion at all than on Meta Quest 3, and we'll have to see if Survios can improve the visuals and performance in the coming weeks. For now, Alien fans should wait or switch to another VR platform.
That Survios listens to the feedback of the fans is shown by the recently released patch 1.08, which addresses one of the biggest criticisms of the VR game: the high spawn rates of the aliens. In addition, The xenomorphs should now behave more realistically and not always know where the player is.
The game currently has an average score of 74 (PSVR 2) / 78 points (PC VR) on Metacritic. In the first reviews, the press praised the authentic atmosphere and good graphics of the alien game, but criticized the lack of variety, especially towards the end of the game. Alien: Rogue Incursion also ends rather abruptly, as it currently only contains the first of two parts.
Alien: Rogue Incursion is available on Steam, the Playstation Store and the Horizon Store.
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