Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil movie is finally out, and it’s great. Though it’s been crowned the highest-rated video game adaptation to-date, the Barbarian and Weapons director made the deliberate choice not to adapt any existing Resident Evil game. Instead, he tried to reconstruct the player experience in movie form, complete with resource management and puzzle solving.
If you loved Resident Evil (2026), with all of its loving nods to the survival horror genre as a whole, you’re probably itching to play another survival horror game yourself. Have no fear (yet), we’ve pulled together the three games you should play to recapture the thrills and scares of Cregger’s Resident Evil.
1
Alien: Isolation
Where to Play: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 3, Windows PC, Xbox 360
If you liked Resident Evil (2026), odds are you like horror in general. And if you like horror in general, odds are you love Alien, Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi masterpiece. Now imagine it in video game form. Closely designed after the original film, Alien: Isolation follows Amanda Ripley, daughter of iconic Alien protagonist Ellen Ripley. Investigating the disappearance of her mother, Amanda explores a neglected space station. Surprisingly, an alien is there.
Amanda is functionally helpless against the alien: she can’t see it, and it stalks her relentlessly. Instead, players must rely on stealth and Amanda’s limited ammunition to mount quick escapes. Like Resident Evil (2026), Alien: Isolation is horrifyingly claustrophobic. Amanda traverses cramped rooms and tight vents, stalked by an unkillable monster. Similarly, Cregger traps Bryan and viewers inside sewers, hospital rooms, and even an RV. In both cases, the threat of another scare behind every door and around every corner is enough to keep both viewers and players on the edge of their seats for hours.
Now is a particularly good time to pick up Alien: Isolation — its highly anticipated sequel finally got a trailer at Summer Games Fest earlier this year.
2
Outlast
Where to Play: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox One
Unlike previous Resident Evil movies, Resident Evil (2026) doesn’t follow an existing series protagonist. Highly trained zombie killers like Leon, Jill, and Chris are nowhere to be found in Cregger’s film. Instead, Cregger introduced audiences to Bryan, a medical courier woefully unprepared for a Resident Evil-style outbreak.
“I’d rather watch a movie starring a schlub who’s, like, out of shape and has never fired a gun before,” Cregger told Polygon’s Matt Patches.
That’s exactly the movie Cregger made. Byran is not a cop, a soldier, or a special agent. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. That’s part of what makes the film so scary — Bryan has no special tricks that could turn the table on hordes of infected monsters. He shares that quality with Outlast protagonist Miles Upsher. Outlast, a first-person survival horror game from Canadian studio Red Barrels, follows Miles as he investigates a derelict psychiatric hospital in Colorado. The hospital is full of “variants,” violent inmates who freely roam the asylum’s halls.
Viewers who found Bryan’s lack of monster-fighting experience particularly compelling are bound to enjoy Outlast. Outlast puts Miles in an even worse spot than Bryan: Miles starts unarmed and stays that way for the whole game. When under attack, Miles’ only options are to run or hide. Now is also a fantastic time to get into Outlast — a film adaptation is in the works, with Barbarian and Weapons producer Roy Lee attached to produce.
Get Polygon’s Wishlister newsletter
A weekly cheat sheet to what you’ll eventually love to play. No buying, no
commitment — just saving for later.
Sign up free
Free. Unsubscribe anytime.
3
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
Where to Play: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox One
If you liked Resident Evil (2026), and you haven’t played Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, drop everything and play it now. Resident Evil 7 brought the series back to its survival horror roots. It did so by taking away all the advantages players had come to expect, like an arsenal of firearms and advanced technical gear. Action heroes like Leon Kennedy and Jill Valentine were gone, replaced by an ordinary systems engineer named Ethan Winters.
While Resident Evil 7 wasn’t the first time the series featured a civilian protagonist (Resident Evil 2’s Claire Redfield, though far more competent than someone like Bryan, is still technically a civilian), it went to great lengths to emphasize Ethan’s lack of experience. Ethan starts the game fully unarmed; his primary means of defense is to cower with his arms above his head. Resident Evil 7 is easily the scariest Resident Evil game. As Ethan searches a decrepit estate for his missing wife, the deeply disturbed Baker family ruthlessly chases after him. Like Bryan, Ethan has to find and teach himself how to use a variety of weapons, though he never seems to get the upper hand.
Resident Evil 7 was a major inspiration for the film – Cregger himself said he drew from Ethan’s status as an everyman. For the most part, Resident Evil 7 is also a self-contained story, so people whose first introduction to Resident Evil was the new movie should have no trouble jumping in.
