Four Terrifying Games To Get Your Xenomorph Fix After Alien Earth
"I can't lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathies."

I’ll say it. Xenomorphs are the coolest, most terrifying monsters in all of cinema. Their biomechanical exoskeletons, spindly, intimidating stature, and rapid, cockroach-like movements make for a formidable adversary. Hell, you can’t even destroy one up close without risking permanent damage. And now, cinema’s scariest extraterrestrial has made its television debut in a new show well worth watching.
If Alien: Earth has you ready to take the fight to a nearly invincible Alien threat yourself, you’re in luck. There’s no shortage of great games set in Ridley Scott’s influential science fiction universe (or otherwise) worth checking out to get your Alien fix. These are four games to boot up after watching Noah Hawley’s Alien adaptation.
Alien: Dark Descent
Aliens: Dark Descent blends survival horror with RTS.
Alien: Dark Descent is an ingenious blend of survival horror and an infantry-based real-time strategy game. You take control of a colonial marine squad on a desolate moon, investigating a crashed ship on behalf of megacorporation Weyland-Yutani. Like all other great Alien media, Dark Descent takes its time to properly build tension. Your unknowing squad slowly pieces together what exactly happened before realizing that this mission is anything but routine.
Dark Descent is a punishing game in all the right ways. Just one Xenomorph can turn your luck sideways, let alone the entire horde. You’ll have to manage your squad’s stress levels as well, as a single soldier losing his cool can collapse an entire plan. Dark Descent understands the second film’s awesome mix of horror and nail-biting action, making it the Aliens game we’ve always wanted.
Alien Isolation
Alien Isolation essentially puts players in the middle of a new Alien (1979) film and its one of the scariest games of the 2010s.
As often as video games have looked to the Aliens series for clear inspiration, no game has better captured the terror of the original 1979 film the way Creative Assembly’s survival horror cult-classic Alien Isolation did.
Whereas most games set in the Aliens universe put you in the shoes of a capable, guntoting soldier, Isolation instead puts you in the middle of space aboard a ship with one Alien aboard. You can’t dispatch the stalker with ease. All you can do is narrowly avoid its clutches as you desperately look for a way off this cursed vessel. It’s a terrifying 18-hour experience that shows Creative Assembly’s reverence for the source material. Isolation is the best video game based on Alien, one that fans of the series owe it to themselves to play.
If you do manage to make it to the end of this arduous journey in one piece, you’re in luck. Last year, Creative Assembly surprised everyone when the studio announced that an Alien Isolation sequel was officially in the works. They haven’t revealed if the original’s protagonist, Amanda Ripley (daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley), would return, but it’s a safe bet the game will tie into the series' current canon in some way.
Mortal Kombat X
One of the coolest guest characters in Mortal Kombat history has to be the Xenomorph. Added in the game’s second DLC character pack, the Xenomorph is as inspired a guest character as it gets. You’ll never feel bad watching these awful monsters get their comeuppance at the hands of a mystical ninja from hell or the god of thunder. And it's even more fun to see how the Xenomorph fares in one-on-one battles to the end in the fighting series’ various realms.
Mortal Kombat X is the best of the modern games, and its XL edition, which comes with all the DLC included, can be found for a deep discount. What’s even cooler is that you can have the Xenomorph prove its supremacy in the horror genre, as other murderous cinematic icons, like Jason Voorhees, Leatherface (which helped inspire Alien in the first place), and familiar nemesis Predator, are all playable combatants. It’s well worth checking out this series' high point on modern consoles.
Alien Vs. Predator
Alien Vs. Predator is an underrated and often overlooked game in either species’ franchise.
Some 15 years after its release, the 2010 Alien Vs. Predator game from Sniper Elite developer Rebellion doesn’t get enough credit. The game was a sort of redux of the developer’s 1994 classic for the Atari Jaguar, redone with all the then-modern bells and whistles.
The game features not one campaign, but three. The first is a pitch-perfect story told from the perspective of a rookie Marine stranded on a planet (this seems to happen a lot in this universe), hoping to save survivors caught in the middle of two warring alien species.
The other two are stories told from the point of view of a Predator and an Alien. The Predator campaign gives you access to all the intergalactic hunter’s bells and whistles, letting you live out the fantasy of the coolest trapper in the ‘verse. The Xenomorph campaign spins a surprisingly fun tale where you stalk humans and predators alike from the shadows, crawling between vents to catch them by surprise. If you played Alien: Isolation, it’s quite cool to be on the other end of this deadly dance.
If you’re looking for a more straightforward action game where you shoot Xenomorphs and even play as one, Alien Vs. Predator is your best bet. Each campaign offers one part of a bigger narrative, and it’s fun to see how it all connects.