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Dubai: If the Resident Evil films were your way into the series rather than the games, there is a whole genre waiting on the other side.
The films took the broad strokes, zombies, corporations, a woman with a shotgun, and turned them into action. The games they came from are slower, meaner and far more interested in making you feel powerless. These six sit in that tradition without carrying the Resident Evil name, and they cover most of what horror gaming has to offer.
1. Alien: Isolation
Start here if what you want is dread rather than firefights.
Set between the first two Alien films, it casts you as Amanda Ripley aboard a space station with a single xenomorph hunting you. You have a revolver and a flamethrower, and neither will kill it. The best you can do is make it back off for a while.
The alien is driven by an AI that learns your habits, so hiding in the same locker twice stops working. Most of the game is spent under desks listening to footsteps. When the credits roll, you do not feel like you won. You feel like you got out.
A sequel is in development.
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android
Price: Dh150 on Steam
2. Outlast
The one with no weapons at all.
You play a journalist investigating a remote psychiatric hospital, armed with a camcorder and nothing else. The night vision on that camera is your only way to see in the dark, and it eats batteries, so the game becomes a constant calculation about whether you can afford to look.
Running and hiding is the entire combat system. It is short, relentless and probably the most purely frightening game on this list. The sequel, Outlast 2, moves the action to rural Arizona, and The Outlast Trials adds co-op for anyone who would rather be terrified in company.
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, Mac, Linux
Price: Dh42 on Steam
3. The Evil Within
The closest thing here to Resident Evil, by design.
It was directed by Shinji Mikami, who made the original Resident Evil and Resident Evil 4, and it shows. You play detective Sebastian Castellanos, investigating a case that collapses into his own fractured mind, with over-the-shoulder aiming lifted straight from RE4 but a pace closer to the first game.
There will be scarce ammunition, traps, and a plot that takes its time. The 2017 sequel opens the world up and leans harder into stealth and survival, and some players rate it higher than the original.
Developer Tango Gameworks closed in 2024, so a third instalment looks unlikely.
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Price: Dh75 on Steam
4. Alan Wake 2
The most cinematic game on the list, and the strangest.
The 2010 original was an action game with horror around the edges. The 2023 sequel is full survival horror, splitting time between writer Alan Wake and FBI agent Saga Anderson as they investigate ritual killings in a small town.
Ammunition is tight, enemies absorb punishment, and the whole thing is soaked in David Lynch. If you have never seen Twin Peaks, you will still enjoy it, but you will miss about a third of what it is doing.
It sits in the same continuity as Remedy’s Control, whose latest entry, Control Resonant, arrived this month.
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Price: Dh188 on Epic games store
5. The Dark Pictures Anthology
For anyone who wants horror that plays like a film, which is the natural landing spot for film fans.
Supermassive Games built its reputation on Until Dawn, a game that became a streaming and movie-night favourite, and the Dark Pictures series applies the same formula across standalone stories. You make choices, anyone in your group can die, and a narrator called The Curator comments on your decisions with unnerving amusement.
Five games have been released since 2019, each a different subgenre with a different lead actor. Directive 8020 is the sci-fi one. The Devil In Me stars Jessie Buckley. There is no required order.
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, depending on the title
Price: Dh80 on Steam
6. F.E.A.R.
The oldest game here, and still the strangest hybrid.
Released in 2005, it puts you in a special forces unit hunting down a rogue commander and his cloned soldiers, with slow-motion abilities and some of the best enemy AI of its era. That half plays like an action film.
The other half belongs to Alma, a small girl with psychic powers who appears when you least want her to. The tonal whiplash between feeling unstoppable and feeling hunted is the whole point, and few games have matched it since.
Two sequels followed, neither quite recapturing the balance.
Platforms: PC, with the original also released on Xbox 360 and PS3
Price: Dh36 on Steam
A note on prices
Most of these titles drop heavily during seasonal sales, and Steam’s Halloween sale typically runs through late October, when several have previously fallen below Dh20.
