Buy Resident Evil 7 Biohazard: Gold Edition if you want the better all-round purchase. It is a complete, paced, finishable horror game, the Gold box folds in content that was sold separately — PlayStation's listing shows "Not a Hero" included — and crucially it lets you fight back, which is what makes it survivable for someone new to the genre. Buy Alien: Isolation if you specifically want the scarier game and are willing to be frustrated for it: you cannot kill the thing hunting you, and that is the entire design.
These two get searched against each other constantly because they look like the same purchase — cheap, first-person, a monster in a corridor — and they are built on opposite philosophies. Resident Evil 7 is a resource game: you have a weapon, you never have enough ammunition for it, and the tension comes from deciding whether this enemy is worth the bullets. Alien: Isolation removes the decision. There is no amount of ammunition that solves the alien. Everything you own is a distraction, and the game is about hiding well enough for long enough.
The spec sheet, from the two store listings
| | Resident Evil 7 | Alien: Isolation |
|---|
| Released (PlayStation listing) | 6/13/2022 (PS4/PS5 listing) | 10/7/2014 |
| Standard list price | $19.99 | $29.99 |
| Bigger edition listed | Gold Edition, $39.99 list, includes "Not a Hero" | THE COLLECTION, $39.99 |
| ESRB rating | Mature | Mature |
| Content descriptors | Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language | Blood, Strong Language, Violence |
| Players | Single-player campaign | 1 player |
| Can you fight the main threat? | Yes, with limited ammunition | No, never |
| VR | Supported, but PlayStation notes: "In order to use the VR features of this game, you must play it on a PS4." | Not listed on the PlayStation page |
The descriptor rows are worth reading side by side. Resident Evil 7 is rated for Blood and Gore and Intense Violence; Alien: Isolation is rated for Blood, Strong Language and Violence, without the gore descriptors. That is the right way round and it surprises people: the scarier game is the less graphic one. Isolation frightens you with a thing you cannot see and cannot beat, not with what it shows you. If gore is your limit rather than tension, that distinction matters more than the rating letter they share.
Which one should you buy?
Buy Resident Evil 7 if you are new to horror games
Having a weapon changes everything about how a horror game feels to someone who does not play many of them. It gives you something to do with the fear, and it gives the designers a way to pace the game: a tense stretch, a fight, a breather, a new area. Resident Evil 7 is built that way, and it is the reason it is the pick we rank first on best cheap horror games. It also has an ending you will reach, which is not a trivial advantage over a game that can grind you down.
Buy the Gold Edition rather than the plain disc if the gap is small. PlayStation lists the standard edition at $19.99 and the Gold Edition at $39.99 list, with the Gold box including the "Not a Hero" content that was originally separate. On the second-hand and discount shelf those two prices converge often, and when they do the Gold box is simply more game for the same money — the general version of that habit is in what is a season pass.
Buy Alien: Isolation if you want the scarier game and know what you are signing up for
PlayStation's own copy calls it "a survival horror set in an atmosphere of constant dread", and that is an accurate product description rather than marketing. The alien learns. It is not following a script you can memorise, which means the standard video-game response to difficulty — try again, do it better — works far less reliably than you expect. People who love this game love it precisely for that. People who bounce off it bounce off hard, usually in the middle third, which is long and repetitive by general agreement.
It is also the better pick if you care about the source material. It is the one Alien game that reproduces the look and sound of the 1979 film with real fidelity, and if that is why you are here, nothing in Resident Evil 7 substitutes for it. It appears on our best cheap stealth games page for the same reason it works here: it is a hiding game first and a horror game second.
Which is actually scarier?
Alien: Isolation, and the gap is not close — but the two are frightening in different currencies. Resident Evil 7 is frightening in bursts: it shows you things, it startles you, and then it gives you a corridor to recover in. Isolation is frightening continuously, because the threat is persistent and unkillable and the game never fully lets go. If you want to be scared for ten minutes at a time, buy Resident Evil 7. If you want to be scared for an entire evening, buy Isolation. We are describing design, not running a fear test; no scores here are measurements.
Neither of them needs anything else
Both are single-player, both work entirely offline, and neither has servers that can be switched off later — the thing we warn about in what happens when game servers shut down. For a cheap purchase that will still work in ten years, that is a genuine point in their favour, and it is why so much of best cheap single-player games is horror.
One practical note on the Resident Evil 7 VR support: PlayStation states plainly that "In order to use the VR features of this game, you must play it on a PS4." If VR is the reason you are buying, check which console you are buying for before you order.
