Every Alien game: 48 in 44 years, and the top score isn't Alien: Isolation

There are 48 Alien games if you only count the ones with the Xenomorph in the title, starting with an Atari 2600 maze in 1982 and ending, for now, with Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2, which came out on August 25, 2026. That count includes the Alien vs. Predator games but leaves out the Predator-only ones, which deserve their own list. On top of that the Alien keeps turning up as a guest in Mortal Kombat X, Fortnite and Dead by Daylight.

Most people will tell you Alien: Isolation is the best of the lot, and 93% of its 67,000 Steam reviews agree. The top critic score on Metacritic belongs to something else, though: a 2001 shooter you can't legally buy anywhere today. Below is every game in release order, what you can still buy in October 2026, and what is actually known about Alien: Isolation 2.

1982-1987: an Atari maze, a Spectrum strategy game and Square's Aliens

The first Alien game came from Fox Video Games, the games arm of 20th Century Fox, in 1982. It is Pac-Man with a licence: you run through the ship's corridors eating Alien eggs while three Aliens chase you, and a flamethrower stands in for the power pill, scaring them off for a few seconds. Apart from the name on the box, there's not much of the film in it.

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Things got stranger after that. Alien from 1984 (Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, by Concept Software and Argus Press Software) wasn't an action game at all but a strategy game: you give orders to the Nostromo crew while something moves around in the vents. In 1986 two different games shipped under the same name, Aliens: The Computer Game, one from Activision in the US and one from Software Studios in the UK. And in 1987 Square released Aliens: Alien 2 for the MSX in Japan. Its soundtrack was written by Nobuo Uematsu, six months before his first Final Fantasy.

1990-1999: 13 games, from Konami arcades to Aliens versus Predator

In the nineties the Alien mostly lived in arcades and on consoles. Konami put out a two-player Aliens cabinet in 1990, and Probe's Alien 3 landed in 1992 on Mega Drive, Amiga and Master System, then on SNES, NES, Game Boy and Game Gear, with most versions being different games under the same name. The Mega Drive one is a tight run-and-gun on a timer: rescue the prisoners before the clock hits zero.

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The decade's most loved game has been unavailable since 1994. Capcom's Alien vs. Predator is an arcade brawler for up to three players, picking from two humans and two Predators, all against the hive. It never got a home port. As of March 2026, Time Extension notes that the only legal way to play it is still the 2019 Capcom Home Arcade. All the licences involved now sit with Disney, which is very likely why.

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By the late nineties the series had moved to first-person shooters. Probe and Acclaim's Alien Trilogy (1996, PlayStation, Saturn, PC) ran through all three films and sold well. Mythic's Aliens Online (1998) was a subscription team shooter on the GameStorm service. Then in 1999 Rebellion, which had already made AvP for the Atari Jaguar, released Aliens versus Predator on PC with three campaigns: Marine, Predator and Alien. Playing the Marine is still properly scary. It sells on Steam as Aliens versus Predator Classic 2000 for $4.99, with 87% positive reviews.

2000-2011: AvP 2 scores 85, and the phone games pile up

Monolith's Aliens versus Predator 2 (2001) is still the best-reviewed Alien game ever, 85 on Metacritic from 27 reviews. You can't buy it on Steam or GOG. Nobody has officially said why; fans point at a tangle of rights between Monolith and Fox.

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After that the scores slid. Alien Resurrection on PS1 (2000) got 61, the console strategy game Aliens versus Predator: Extinction (2003) 66 on PS2 and 64 on Xbox, and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem on PSP (2007) 49. The number of games went up, though: half of the 15 from the 2000s were for feature phones or browsers, many of them tied to the 2004 and 2007 AvP films.

Rebellion came back in 2010 with a reboot, Aliens vs. Predator. Critics gave it 68, players liked it far more: 91.5% positive out of 21,762 Steam reviews. It normally costs $14.99 and was $2.99 on October 15 with an 80% discount. The last game of this stretch was Aliens: Infestation (2011), a Metroid-style 2D game for the DS by WayForward that scored 76, and where a dead marine stays dead.

Aliens: Colonial Marines, 2013: a 45, and a one-letter typo

Gearbox spent six years on Colonial Marines for Sega. The pitch was a direct sequel to James Cameron's Aliens with Syd Mead concept art. What shipped on February 12, 2013 looked a lot worse than the trade-show demos. Metacritic: 45 on PC, 48 on Xbox 360 and 43 on PS3, the lowest score of any big game in the series.

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The famous part came five years later. In July 2018, PC Gamer and Game Informer reported that a modder had found a typo in one of the game's config files: "teather" instead of "tether". That one extra letter stopped the Aliens from attaching to the right points, so they wandered around looking lost. With it fixed, judging by the modders' videos, they got a lot smarter. It didn't save the game, but everybody had a laugh.

There was a lawsuit too, over the gap between the demos and the release. In August 2014 Sega proposed a $1.25 million settlement, and in May 2015 the judge denied class certification and dismissed Gearbox from the case. The game is still on sale: Aliens: Colonial Marines Collection is $29.99 on Steam, $5.99 on October 15 with an 80% discount, and sits at 62% positive.

Alien: Isolation, 2014: 2.1 million copies and 93% on Steam

Creative Assembly, the Total War studio, turned the series inside out. Alien: Isolation (October 7, 2014) has no squad and no smart gun. It has Amanda Ripley, Ellen's daughter, the Sevastopol station and a single Alien you can't kill, only drive off for a moment with a flamethrower. It doesn't follow a script; it hunts you by sound, and hiding in a locker is a real decision every time.

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Critics liked it (81 on PC, 79 on PS4) and players loved it: 93% positive from 67,210 Steam reviews, the best in the series. Sega was less happy. In May 2015 it called the 2.1 million copies shipped weak, and that is part of why a sequel took ten years. Feral ported it to Switch in 2019 and to iOS and Android in 2021 with all seven DLC packs. On Steam it's $39.99 and goes on sale often.

There was a mobile follow-up as well. Alien: Blackout (2019), again with Amanda Ripley, scored 68, and was pulled from the App Store and Google Play on October 31, 2023. You can't buy it anymore; it still runs for people who already had it.

The Alien as a guest: Mortal Kombat X, Fortnite and Dead by Daylight

Since 2016 the Alien has shown up more often in other people's games than in its own. On March 1, 2016 it joined Mortal Kombat X as a fighter in Kombat Pack 2, alongside Leatherface, who we covered in every Texas Chain Saw Massacre game. The DLC is still $4.99 on Steam with 93% positive reviews.

There has been no official Alien in Call of Duty or PUBG, whatever YouTube thumbnails say.

2021-2025: Fireteam Elite, Dark Descent and Rogue Incursion

After the long gap, smaller studios picked up the licence and did fine with it. Cold Iron's Aliens: Fireteam Elite (August 24, 2021) is a three-player co-op shooter where the Aliens come by the hundred. It scored 69, has 80% positive on Steam and costs $29.99.

Tindalos's Aliens: Dark Descent (June 20, 2023) is the oddest game the series has had in years: real-time tactics with a squad of four marines who get tired, stressed and die for good. 75 from critics, 88% from players, $39.99. If you like XCOM, this is your entry point.

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Survios released Alien: Rogue Incursion for headsets on December 19, 2024, first on PC VR and PS VR2, then Quest 3. The lead is Zula Hendricks from the comics. A flatscreen version, the Evolved Edition, followed on September 30, 2025 for PS5, Xbox Series and PC, and on Switch 2 in April 2026. It's only part one of the story, and part two looks unlikely: in May 2026 Road to VR and UploadVR reported that most of Survios had been laid off. The studio hasn't commented.

2026: Fireteam Elite 2 is out, Alien: Isolation 2 has no date

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 was announced on May 7, 2026 and released on August 25 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series, in time for the 40th anniversary of Aliens. The Switch 2 version was pulled at the last minute from September 29 to early 2027. It landed softer than the first one: 66 on PC, 65 on PS5 and 74 on Xbox Series, and 61% positive from 3,961 Steam reviews. At the end of September, Massively OP reported layoffs at Cold Iron. It costs $49.99.

The one everyone is waiting for is a different game. Creative director Al Hope confirmed an Alien: Isolation sequel on October 7, 2024, the original's tenth anniversary. The first teaser went up on Alien Day, April 26, 2026, and the full trailer was shown at Summer Game Fest on June 5. Platforms are PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2 and PC. There is no release date, not even a year. The official text doesn't name the heroine, only that a survey team finds a crashed ship on a remote colony planet. Anything you read about 2027 is a guess for now.

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Every Alien game in one table

I went by the Wikipedia list and checked against the stores: only games with Alien or AvP in the title, no Predator-only games, no expansions, and no Alien: Covenant cabinet, which was a renamed Aliens: Armageddon. Guest appearances are listed separately at the end.

Scores and reviews: critics pick AvP 2, players pick Isolation

Alien Trilogy and the 1999 Aliens versus Predator have no Metascore at all, so they're missing from the chart. Both were well reviewed at the time; Metacritic just barely covers the nineties.

The funny bit is AvP 2010: players rate it almost level with Isolation, while critics scored it 13 points lower. And the newest game in the series, Fireteam Elite 2, sits near the bottom of both charts.

Where to start in 2026

I'd only buy Colonial Marines for the typo story, and only at $5.99. For more horror from the movies, we've got every Evil Dead game and every Michael Myers game.

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