Alien Games at Their Best and Worst

There’s a new Alien game on the horizon – which you can catch a glimpse of in Justin’s preview – and it’s looking to be one tough survival horror title that will scare the pants off of just about anyone who plays it. But since we’ve some time to kill before it arrives on consoles and PC later this year, this is the perfect opportunity to rewatch the Alien movies (unless you hated one of them in particular) and look through some of the best – and worst – Alien games throughout gaming history.

The Good

4). Aliens: Infestation

For the Nintendo DS, Infestation is a tough, Metroid-style side-scroller that lets players control a fire team of Colonial Marines as they battle against an alien-infested starship.

The most challenging aspect of this game, though, was that character death was permanent – if one of your squad mates gets eaten, they’re gone for good, which could be particularly heart wrenching since many of the characters you can unlock each have their own distinct appearance and personalities. With a tense atmosphere, Infestation gave players a great bug hunt to remember.

3). Aliens vs. Predator (1999)

This first person shooter let players join the fray as either a xenomorph, colonial marine, or a predator in three different storylines. What made this game so much fun were the differing styles of play that each race brought to the table – You could crawl along the ceiling and through ventilation shafts to drop on the unsuspecting heads of marines as an alien, or stalk your victims invisibly as a powerful predator. Or if you’d prefer, you can rely on a trusty pulse rifle and motion tracker to survive in a mix up of survival horror and shooter.

2). Alien Trilogy

A PlayStation-era first person shooter, Alien Trilogy let players experience a story loosely adapted from the original Alien films. Starring Ellen Ripley – as a colonial marine this time around – you’ll have to battle your way through alien hordes and infected colonists.

With claustrophobic environments and xenomorphs and facehuggers lurking around every corner, Alien Trilogy was an action-packed experience that any hardcore fan of the franchise would enjoy.

1). Aliens vs. Predator (1994)

This beat ’em up arcade game may be mixing franchise with its inclusion of characters from the Predator movies, but you can’t deny that it was one helluva fun game. Set in San Drad, California, which has recently been overrun by the xenomorph threat, players can choose from two cyborg human soldiers (like the katana-wielding Lt. Linn Kurosawa) or two predator warriors and start slicing, dicing, and beating the crap out of the alien hordes with a variety of melee and ranged weapons. – including a wicked cool shoulder cannon that just destroyed everything that moved.

Unfortunately, not all of the games that are part of the Alien mythos are worth writing home about. Of all the Alien titles released over the years, some are bug-filled messes, have shoddy controls, or just miss the point entirely.

Here are a few particular titles you should probably avoid…

The Bad

4). Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction

This real time strategy game (yes, you read that right) was certainly an original take on the whole Aliens vs. Marines vs. Predator conflict.

But unfortunately, it launched with no multiplayer and a mere 21-mission campaign to play through. Topped with a lack of any real storyline and poor, hard-to-see graphics, Extinction offered up little in the way of a great RTS experience.

3). Alien Resurrection

As a movie tie-in, this game wasn’t exactly expected to be great in the first place, but definitely had tons of technical issues that prevented it from even being average.

Even though Alien Ressurection could deliver some good scares now and then, it had horrifically shoddy first person controls, meaning shooting at your xenomorphic enemies was nigh impossible.

2). Aliens vs. Predator (2010)

This quasi-relaunch of the Aliens vs. Predator first person shooter series may have looked pretty cool, but the game itself turned out to be little more than a run-of-the-mill shooter that didn’t do anything new with the formula.

Plus, the multitude of repetitive animated sequences that break the game’s flow (like when your Alien character shoves a facehugger onto a poor victim’s face or you remove a marine’s spinal column via your predator’s wrist blades) made playing this Alien game a dull experience.

1). Aliens: Colonial Marines

Let’s face it; we all knew this game was going to be on this list. It’s just that bad. Despite some awesome looking trailers, Colonial Marines is a game that turned out to be riddled with bugs and graphical glitches, on top of incredibly ill-designed AI, a haphazardly implemented co-operative mode, tons of plot holes, unrelatable characters – the list just goes on and on and on. By far, Colonial Marines has been the biggest disappointment in the Aliens franchise.

And there we have it, 4 awesome Alien games you should check out, and 4 titles you should probably avoid. Let us know in the comments if you have any particular favorite (or least favorite) games from the Alien universe!