Virtual Reality

bHaptics, the South Korea-based VR haptics creator, announced it’s launching a refreshed lineup of its most popular haptics hardware, which are said to support over 270 titles across Quest, PSVR 2, and PC VR headsets.

The company today announced pre-orders for three new accessories: TactSuit Pro, TactSuit Air and TactSleeve.

Pre-orders for all three are set to launch today, November 12th, and go until November 26th.

Cyborn, the team behind VR sci-fi adventure Hubris (2022), announced it’s releasing mixed reality city builder Wall Town Wonders on Quest 3 next week.

Coming November 21st to Quest 3 and Quest 3S, Wall Town Wonders promises to turn any room in your house into a magical miniature town.

Supporting hand-tracking, the mixed reality game lets you interact with tiny characters as you help them rebuild and customize their world, rightfully built across your real-world walls.

Wall Town Wonders also promises to bring “a peaceful environment where you can progress at your own speed,” which includes a variety of quests, mini-games, and hidden surprises.

The studio says it’s cued up post-launch seasonal content, letting you keep your little town fresh with new themes, events, and special decorations for the game’s 100 unique buildings, 40+ characters, and variety of skins and decorations already available at launch.

You can pre-order Wall Town Wonders on the Horizon Store for Quest 3 and Quest 3S at a 10 percent discount, which is regularly priced at $20.

"Do you think VR and AR have a lasting future, or is it a fleeting phenomenon?"

"Hello Marc

Virtual reality existed long before the current wave that started in 2012, and was used for simulation, visualization, design, research, and training. With the advent of low-cost, consumer-oriented VR headsets since 2016, these areas have grown, and I expect virtual reality to remain a fixture in these areas regardless of market developments in the coming years and decades.

The more interesting question you probably were aiming at is whether virtual reality will be able to establish itself in the consumer market in the long term, with so many media, gadgets and digital forms of entertainment vying for our attention.

As I wrote last week, the VR market is currently dominated by Meta. Meta Quest is the leading VR platform where most developers make their money. I believe that as long as these developers remain profitable and Meta stays in virtual reality, virtual reality will continue to exist and grow as a consumer-oriented entertainment and computing platform. But these are ifs.

Meta has made virtual reality relatively successful with aggressive investments and subsidies, distorting expectations and prices at the same time. If Meta took into account the cost of R&D and added a healthy margin, VR headsets like the Meta Quest 3S would easily cost twice as much or more. We don't know how much money Meta spends on the VR division alone, but it's safe to assume it's still a money-losing business. Until that changes and other manufacturers can turn consumer virtual reality into a profitable business, I remain cautious about making long-term predictions.

For now, those who benefit are the developers who make a good profit from VR games (and there are many, rest assured), and of course, we consumers who can get hardware and software at an incredible value ratio. However, we should be aware that Meta is essentially still investing in virtual reality and can also stop that investment with likely devastating consequences for the fledgling computing platform. What is true for virtual reality is even more true for augmented reality, which is much further away from true mass adoption and profitability.

Do I think VR and AR can become mainstream in the long term? Absolutely. But I can't say when that will be. As someone who has been a journalist in the industry for almost ten years and has followed the technological developments, I no longer think in terms of years, but decades. From that perspective, we may still be at the very beginning.

Kind regards,

Tomislav

If you’re one of the few remaining PSVR owners looking to use the original 2016 headset on PlayStation 5, you only have a few more days to request your free PS Camera adapter, as Sony is discontinuing the device later this month.

Sony released its PlayStation Camera Adapter for free in 2020 to help bridge the gap for PSVR users looking for a console upgrade to PS5, which notably didn’t offer full PSVR support out of the box.

The PlayStation 5 HD Camera that launched alongside PS5 can’t track the original PSVR headset or PS Move controllers spatially, requiring the additional adapter.

DIG VR delivers an entertaining light sim with a great sense of humor, and it's out this week on Quest. Read on for our full review.

Comedy is a tricky thing to do successfully in games. Away from the luxury of scripted cutscenes where timing is strictly controlled, pulling off effective laughs can be difficult in a user-controlled medium. You wouldn't expect hilarity from a power-digging light sim and yet DIG VR has some of the most relatable British humor I've ever seen in a VR game.

Apple has finally dropped the ultrawide virtual display for Vision Pro in beta, giving the existing virtual display feature the ability to stretch to wide and ultrawide widths for extra screen real-estate. Out of the box it’s impressive, but default MacOS window management makes it kind of a pain to use. But with the right third-party window manager, it’s even better than I hoped for.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t know just how useful the new ultrawide feature would be. I’ve used Vision Pro’s virtual desktop feature many times before. It’s a great way to get some extra screen real-estate out of my MacBook Air (M2). But it was limited in that it could only really act like a single, large 16:9 monitor.

My productivity workhorse is my desktop PC on which I’ve used two side-by-side monitors for years. For a power-user like me, having the extra width to have multiple things on screen at once is great; constantly minimizing and maximizing apps is a pain. I also combine my dual monitors with additional virtual workspaces, meaning I can group applications together on a specific workspace for a specific task.

I’ve yet to make the leap to a single ultrawide monitor over dual monitors. They’re pretty damn expensive and physically take up a lot of space.

But with a little software update, Apple just gave me an ultrawide monitor that I can take with me wherever I take my Vision Pro. The ultrawide setting essentially gives you two 16:9 monitors side-by-side, but without the seam in the middle if you were using dual monitors.

The update optimizes the tracking algorithms and improves system stability and performance with new and optimized features. Users can also look forward to a host of new features such as smartphone mirroring, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse support, as well as improved hand and motion tracking.

Let's get this straight up front: The Vive Focus Vision isn't a competitor to the Meta Quest 3, or the recently released Quest 3S. At $999, how could it be? Instead, it's another stab at the high-end VR market for HTC Vive, an audience it's cultivated since the launch of the first Vive headset in 2016. While Meta has leaned more towards cheaper and more mainstream VR headsets over the last decade, HTC Vive has done practically the opposite, aiming for VR gearheads and enterprise customers with PC headsets like the Vive Pro 2 and feature-rich standalone models like the Focus 3.

You can think of the Vive Focus Vision as a cross between the Focus 3 and last year's goggle-like XR Elite. It's a standalone headset with two 16MP color cameras for mixed reality, built-in eye tracking and automatic interpupillary distance (IPD) adjustment. It could also be appealing to PC gamers with its $149 DisplayPort wired streaming kit, which gives you an uncompressed view of high-end VR experiences like Half-Life: Alyx.

As intriguing as its new features are, though, the more I tested the Focus Vision, the more it felt like a missed opportunity for HTC’s Vive VR platform. For one, it's running the same Snapdragon XR2 chip as the Focus 3 and Quest 2. That chip originally debuted in 2020, and it simply seems inexcusable in a high-end headset today. Both the $300 Quest 3S and $500 Quest 3 sport the XR2 Gen 2 processor, which is 2.5 times faster than the original chip and also has up to eight times faster AI processing. For a high-end headset at the tail-end of 2024, I would have expected HTC to at least match the power of far cheaper competitors, or – even better – to include Qualcomm's newer XR2+ Gen 2 chip.

The Focus Vision is also still using older Fresnel lens optics, which are prone to artifacts and light bleeding, instead of the sharper pancake lenses in the Quest 3. At least HTC shoved in 12GB of RAM this time around, compared to the 8GB found on the Focus 3 and Quest 3. And the company still has a resolution advantage over the Quest 3: The Focus Vision delivers 2,448 by 2,448 pixels per eye, compared to Meta's 2,064 by 2,208 pixels per eye. HTC Vive's 120-degree field of view also delivers a greater sense of immersion than the 110-degree FOV in the Quest 3.

"At Survios, we pride ourselves on delivering a world-class gaming experience to our players. To ensure that Alien: Rogue Incursion meets these high standards and delivers the Alien VR experience that fans and players expect, we have made the difficult decision to delay the game's release on meta platforms until early next year. The Playstation VR2 and Steam versions of the game will still be released on December 19, 2024."

Gargoyle Doyle is the latest creation from director Ethan Shaftel (Ajax All Powerful) and won the prize for best VR film at this year's Annecy Animation Festival.

Here's how his L.A.-based studio easyAction describes the story of Gargoyle Doyle.

"Doyle is a grouchy, self-important gargoyle with a chip on his shoulder – quite literally, as he was damaged in a fall during installation above the cathedral’s main entrance. Relegated to a back alcove with other irregular gargoyles, Doyle resents the hand life dealt him, especially the fact that he is stuck two feet from Chet, a decorative metal rain gutter. Chet is the yin to Doyle’s yang, a chatterbox optimist who never shuts up. Ever.

Doyle and Chet watch the world change around them as their alcove falls into disrepair. Hundreds of years later, as bulldozers surround the cathedral for demolition, both must confront who they really are and what their lives add up to."

Human Within explores the profound impact of AI and other advanced technologies on society and is coming to Meta Quest on January 9th and to SteamVR soon.

The story follows cyber-engineer Nyla and her sister Linh, who are developing a groundbreaking supercomputer for a corporation that harnesses the computing power of the human brain. When Nyla tries to withdraw from the project, the two sisters are held captive and forced to continue working, even though they suspect their employer's hidden motives. In a daring attempt to break free, Nyla is forced to connect the technology to Linh and use it in exactly the way she feared.

You can pre-order Human Within now in the Horizon Store and add it to your wish list on Steam.

The most promising competitor is Apple, but the Vision Pro flopped as I predicted in 2023. Hopes are now pinned on a cheaper version of the mixed reality headset, which could be delayed beyond 2027, according to the latest claim from supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Whether this is true or not is irrelevant in my opinion. Even with a device that costs half as much as the Vision Pro, Apple is unlikely to steal much market share from Meta. I am convinced that there is no significant market for VR headsets above $500. For that to happen, they have to become general-purpose devices that can compete with desktop computers and laptops, and they are a long way from that.

Where there is no significant market, there are no developers. Where there are no developers, there are no apps. And where there are no apps, there are no consumers to create a significant market. Meta has made huge investments to create a VR ecosystem that can support many developers. Apple, on the other hand, just built a very expensive VR headset with no discernible market strategy and no plan to help developers.

What about other competitors?

HTC lacks the resources to keep up with Meta Pico owner Bytedance recently scaled back VR investments Valve hasn't released a VR headset in more than five years Sony didn't have much success with Playstation VR 2, and PSVR 3 is years away (if Sony plans to continue supporting its VR ecosystem). Samsung and Google are working on a pricey mixed reality headset that has yet to be unveiled and will likely suffer the same fate as the Apple Vision Pro due to its high price tag The reason Meta is the market leader after ten years and will remain so for a long time is that Meta is willing to invest billions in these technologies for years and perhaps decades to come, regardless of the losses, while other companies push for short and medium term profits and give up when they don't see a return on their investment (I certainly hope Apple isn't one of them, but we will see).

Since launch, Apple Vision Pro has been able to replace your physical Mac screen with a giant virtual display. To do so, you just look at your MacBook and click a floating virtual button that appears, or use Control Center for a desktop Mac. Apple's software then almost instantly creates a direct wireless connection between the headset and Mac, meaning you don't even need a Wi-Fi network, and if you are on one you won't suffer from any congestion issues. Because of this, and because the experience has high quality and low latency, we strongly praised Mac Virtual Display in our review of Vision Pro.

Until now though, Mac Virtual Display has been limited to a 16:9 widescreen virtual display. Now with visionOS 2.2, as Apple announced at WWDC 24 earlier this year, you can choose to expand the display to a Wide aspect ratio, or even to an enveloping panoramic Ultrawide experience. And for all three modes, Mac Virtual Display is now curved. Apple says the ultrawide Mac Virtual Display has 8K horizontal resolution, as if you have two 4K monitors side by side. The company explained that this is made possible thanks to foveation, where eye tracking is used to prioritize resolution in the region of the screen you're currently looking at. Further, with visionOS 2.2 the audio from your Mac is now routed to Vision Pro, whereas previously it still played through the Mac.

The v71 firmware update will be rolled out to Quest 3, Quest 3S, Quest 2 and Quest Pro owners beginning November 4, 2024. As always, it may take up to a week or more for the update to reach all users.

This update is one of the biggest in recent years and includes the following new features and enhancements:

A new look for Horizon OS: Meta has optimized the dark and light theme of Quest's operating system to improve the readability and contrast of the menus. Other improvements include the appearance and behavior of the control panels, the position of the control bar, the colors of various interface elements, and much more. The Meta Quest settings have also been completely redesigned, and the search function has been improved. Continuous Space Setup: You can now continue with your room setup and update your room scan with a new room layout and furniture instead of having to create a fresh new room scan. Meta Quest will also now display a representation of the scanned environment after you have scanned the room and when you return to the Space Setup to update the scan. Passthrough improvements: Meta says it has adjusted the frame rates of the cameras to match the frame rates of the display. More realistic facial expressions for Meta avatars: A new AI feature called Audio to Expression derives convincing facial expressions and lip sync signals from microphone input. A similar feature called Lipsync already existed, but it only animated the mouth, while Audio to Expression covers the upper half of the face, including the upper cheeks, eyelids, and eyebrows. Dolby Atmos and Dolby Digital Surround: Meta Quest now supports Dolby Atmos and Dolby Digital Surround in selected browser content. Meta plans to expand support for other content providers in the near future. Improvements for Meta Quest Link: Meta's solution for PC VR streaming is now enabled by default and the Meta Quest Link PC app has been enhanced in several ways: Remote Desktop is now part of the PC app, eliminating the need to download a separate app, and the option to connect can now be found in the Quick Settings. Another new feature is the ability to cast your headset content to the Meta Quest Link PC app. Previously, casting to second screens was only supported via the mobile Meta Horizon app, Chromecast, and browser. Volume mixer: Meta has implemented a volume mixer that lets you adjust the volume of calls, apps, and media independently of each other (see video). You can find the volume mixer in the Quick Settings by clicking on the advanced option next to the main volume. Improved travel mode: Travel mode has been extended to include trains. Previously, only air travel was officially supported. Calendar app: A new calendar feature helps you keep track of important appointments (see video). It supports integration with Google and Outlook calendars and provides direct access to events in Horizon Worlds and meetings in Horizon Workrooms. More transparency for app notifications: The universal menu now shows in real time what permissions apps are accessing. Share videos in Horizon Chats: You can now send and receive video using the Horizon chat feature, either in VR or through the companion app. This also works with spatial videos. You can read the full release notes for the v71 update in the Meta Quest Release Notes.

War

We call those particular head-mounted displays First Person Viewers, but the biggest difference from consumer VR headsets is that they are single-purpose devices rather than general purpose computers. Instead of multitasking computing power, they feature long-range antennas designed to transport the operator into the body of a fast-moving flying machine packed with explosives. So what happens when you hook up an antenna to a general-purpose computer like the $300 Quest 3S? Does it offer any benefits over the dedicated FPV headset? Anduril’s page for command and control already outlines the general idea while depicting the older Quest 2. A fleet of aircraft or satellites could map the landscape from far above and draw the surrounding terrain with all the people inside it. Such a tool, laying out the physical world in front of you like the chess pieces on a game board, could look much like the playful app Wooorld, one of the best mixed reality experiences, whose users simply revisit their childhood home or play geography quizzes with friends. Floating above that live 3D map will be a 1080p virtual display, bigger than a 70-inch television mounted to a wall, showing the live view of an explosive-packed low-altitude remote-controlled drone that’s closing in on-the-ground targets. Meta’s recent updates to Quest headsets, which bring multitasking to Horizon OS, could offer side panels with relevant information or even views to backup drones. What’s more effective than commanding a single explosive-packed drone? As soon as it explodes, the pilot’s eyes turn to the next one. Each aircraft obliterates itself like a World War II kamikaze, without the loss of the pilot, as the next death package is already ready for a final run.

Sex

VR is also used in large numbers by adults to partake in a more impactful kind of sexual interaction than traditional “sexting”. Any partner you want can seem to perform any act you desire with bluetooth-connected accessories remotely connecting the actions of these individuals in real-time. It’s already a more common aspect of modern sex than most people realize, and you can look at the economics of OnlyFans ($6.3 billion in gross revenues for 2024) for an indication of its reach. With the Internet moving bits, and a head-mounted display delivering embodiment, VR enables sex which neither transmits disease through contact nor results in unwanted pregnancy. What is risked by handing over the most fundamental of human bonding and evolution to the Internet as intermediary? Many people already lament leaving their first impressions to swipes on photos, but those connections are often still geo-restricted because many people value what they learn from the smell, taste, and warmth of another’s skin before committing long-term to significant time together. VR is changing this particular game, so to speak, and we’ll discover how relationships and people change as we go. The key thing to convey here is that this transformation is already well underway.

There have been a few teasers over the past few days, but now the cat is out of the bag: Fireproof Games has unveiled a new VR game called Ghost Town.

In Ghost Town, you take on the role of Edith Penrose, a witch turned ghost hunter who runs a successful paranormal investigation agency. Set in 1983, Edith roams the haunted streets of London, tracking down and exorcising restless spirits.

Her world is turned upside down when her brother disappears and a mysterious new lead promises clues to his whereabouts. Edith's journey begins with a visit to a remote Scottish island in the hope that a gifted psychic can provide some much-needed answers.

Four years of development have gone into the new project. If Ghost Town turns out to be as atmospheric, creepy and challenging as The Room VR, then we can expect a real VR highlight. Unfortunately, we don't know exactly when the VR game will be released, but the studio says it's coming soon.

Code discovered in a recent Google Play update indicates the company may soon roll out support for XR headsets on its Android app store, which would mark a decisive shift in the competitive landscape.

As reported by Android Authority, code in version 43.3.32-31 of the Google Play app contains mention of “XR headset,” including a new headset icon that ostensibly indicates whether an app works with the supported device.

Google has technically hosted XR games on Play in the form of Cardboard apps since 2014, which use Android smartphones as ad hoc VR displays—something that was big in kickstarting user interest in the early days of consumer VR, but not so much in the day of standalone headsets like Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro.

The addition of a dedicated section in the Play store and official device support however points to something bigger than Cardboard, or even its now-defunct Google Daydream platform, which the company abandoned in 2019.

Developed by Myron Games (Deisim), Underworld Overseer is a villain-protagonist adventure where you play as the god-like Overseer fighting human invaders across an 18-level campaign. You're given many tools for defending your lair like placing traps and casting spells, alongside creating specific rooms that cater to your minions' individual needs, like farms for your food supply.

We enjoyed Underworld Overseer in our preview earlier this year, praising the "impressive" presentation with enjoyable strategic gameplay. Underworld Overseer's presentation already shows an impressive amount of polish. The cel-shaded visuals look great on Quest 3 for both NPCs and environments, even when you move up close. What I've seen so far looks very promising, and I'll be keeping an eye out for the full release. Underworld Overseer arrives today on the Meta Quest platform and Steam.

The MeganeX Superlight 8K isn’t called “Superlight” for a random reason: it is actually small and light. I was impressed by how this headset can be so small and lightweight yet so powerful in terms of resolution. I would like to make a comparison with the Bigscreen Beyond, but I haven’t had the occasion to personally test a Beyond, so I can not do that, sorry.

MeganeX claims on its website that the headset has a special design that guarantees no pressure on the face because there is a halo headband that you put around your head that takes care of keeping the headset still on your head. Then the headset is just rotated with a flip-up design so that it gently lies in front of your face. This claim is true, but it carries its own problems. The demo unit was clearly overused, so the flip-up juncture was a bit loose and the headset so was not stable in front of my eyes. I had to keep it still with one of my hands, which not only was uncomfortable, but also resulted in the occlusion of the SteamVR sensors, which made my display often become grey. So the idea on paper is good to deliver a headset that is not uncomfortable on your face and that you can flip up when you have to take a pause from VR, but in reality, it works only as much as the hinge properly does its job, and if over time it becomes loose, then you have a problem.

The headset features two little dials on the bottom, one on the left and the other on the right corner so that you can adjust the focus for both eyes. I performed this operation pretty fast, closing before one eye and then the other one. After that, I had the whole scene in focus.

Visuals

Given the high resolution of the display, visuals are where I concentrated my attention the most during the hands-on. Let’s start from the bright side of them: the resolution is literally incredible and so are the colors. I could perceive no screen door effect (SDE is almost gone already on Quest 3, and this headset has 3x of the pixels of the Quest) and everything looked very crisp. Thanks to the OLED displays, the colors were very bright and the black pixels truly looked black and not greyish like on LCD headsets. I was impressed by this, the visuals were amazing. For comparison, the BigScreen Beyond has 2560 x 2560 pixels per eye, so in this category of compact headsets, the MeganeX SuperLight 8K, with its 3552 x 3840 pixels per eye, truly shines.

But I couldn’t avoid noticing some issues, though: first of all, there was a constant Barrel distortion I noticed in the imagery. The first unit I tried was showcasing a 360 video and this effect was very noticeable (maybe there was something wrong with the device or the video playback). The second unit I tried was showing a 3D environment I could navigate in and the effect was much less evident, but if I attentively looked at some straight lines, I could perceive it. Then the lenses gave a good image in the center, but the periphery of them showed clear aberrations signs, mostly spherical, but also a little bit on the chromatic side. As long as I looked straight, things were fine, but if my eyes started wandering around too much, the effect was evident. The eye box didn’t look too small. Regarding the FOV, I honestly didn’t pay much attention to it, but it looked a bit less than the one on the Quest 3 headset I usually employ. I guess FOV is perceived as a pain point for this headset because it is the only specification not listed on the website.

Until now, the AR glasses have only been available to developers in the US. However, Snap announced that the latest version of its technological marvel will soon be available in Europe — but only for developers and creative professionals for the time being. I was invited by Snap Inc. to test the Spectacles 5.

The first thing you notice when you put on Spectacles 5 is the ultra-bright 2000 nits clear display. Thanks to the electrochromatic lenses, which can be darkened via the menu automatically, the headset can also be used outdoors in bright daylight — a really impressive feature!

Although the colors and resolution are far from perfect, the glasses already offer probably the best AR display available for the money.

Operation is entirely via precise hand tracking and gestures, which works surprisingly well after a short period of familiarization. The technology only reaches its limits in fast-paced rhythm games.

Two cameras in the front control all 6-DOF tracking and detect your surroundings. Two invisible infrared cameras on the bottom of the headset can also detect hands outside the central field of view. This feature is ingenious and will become the gold standard for everyday devices.

By the way, Snap offers spectacle wearers the option to insert their own prescription clip inserts into the inside of the Spectacles. However, I have also seen people pull the Spectacles over their own glasses if they were small enough. I don't know if and how much this can cause scratches.

VR pioneer, author, and studio founder Jesse Schell was interviewed by Meta on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Reality Labs. In this interview he talks about the beginnings, the present and the future of virtual reality.

When asked what he is most looking forward to in the next ten years, Schell said:

"The thing that’s going to change everything the most is going to be AI, and there’s going to be this crossover between AI and virtual reality that I think people aren’t going to expect because the power that AI brings is going to be these in-game characters that behave in a realistic way.

They speak coherently. They can have a conversation with you, and they can have real emotions, and that’s going to all seem very real. And combining that with the immersion of VR so that these characters are in the room, in the space, in the place with you—I think we’re going to see a whole new medium of story-based games that are largely about talking."

Jesse Schell predicts a genre he calls adaptive in-home story games and gives an example:

"Imagine a mixed reality game. You put on your headset, and you’re just looking inside of your house, and the doorbell rings. So you get up, and you go to your physical door. You open the physical door, and standing outside is a virtual character, who says, 'Hey, I need to come inside.' They’ve got a bag of groceries. And you follow them into your kitchen because the headset knows how your whole house is laid out. So the character starts putting these items down on the counter and says, 'I need you to help me.' And you start helping them. You cut the virtual bread loaf and slice vegetables and get everything ready. [...]

While that’s happening, the character explains to you what’s going on. 'The problem is up in your attic. There are these creatures, and you and I, we’re going to go up there and we’re going to get them, but first we need to finish getting the bait ready."'

Schell believes such mixed-reality experiences could be possible in a few years, with stories and AI characters that adapt and improvise to spatial conditions.

Some of the first hands-ons with Survios’ upcoming Alien: Rogue Incursion have emerged, revealing a promising look at one of the biggest entries in VR this year.

In case you haven’t been following along, Alien: Rogue Incursion is coming to all major VR headsets this December, letting you take on the role of Zula Hendricks, a resilient former Colonial Marine with a complicated past on a dangerous mission to rescue friend and former squad mate.

Tackling the ship’s Xenomorph infestation, you fight alongside your synthetic companion Davis 01, tasking you to fight your way to the heart of the Gemini Exoplanet Solutions research facility and confront the secrets waiting within. There, we’re promised “deadly horrors” which could spell the end for humankind.

Now, a few outlets have published the first hands-on reports with Rogue Incursion.

In Leanne Butkovic’s preview for IGN, she said it “certainly had classic moments of Alien horror.” There’s no “but” there either. Butkovic goes on to praise the Rogue Incursion’s immersive environment, smart narrative beats, and intuitive weapons and tools.

It’s doesn’t appear to go too hard on wave shooter mechanics either, as Butkovic says the game “wasn’t endlessly frenetic.”

“If anything, it deliberately moves slowly in parts to spatially acclimate, to give people like me who can’t help but touch things that are laying around, a chance to explore and discover the story of this Alien property for myself,” Butkovic said.