Last week, the long-running multimedia sci-fi action horror Predator franchise saw its seventh mainline film and third Predator film directed by Dan Trachtenberg release to theaters worldwide with Predator: Badlands.
The first Predator film to have the titular alien species in the leading role, Badlands follows a young Yautja warrior called Dek as he strives to hunt down a seemingly invincible beast known as a Kalisk, with reluctant help from an android called Thia, to prove himself to his clan.
Despite only being in theaters for less than a week as of this writing, Badlands is already proving to be one of the most critically and financially successful Predator films of all time, with Badlands earning an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes and earning a franchise record-breaking opening weekend global box office of $80 million.
For fans of Badlands hoping to relive some of the coming-of-age journey of Dek and Thia and their action-packed adventure, here’s a list of 10 games fans of the film will enjoy.
Minor spoilers for Predator: Badlands ahead
10
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
A Tragic Adventure of Brotherly Love
In multiple interviews, Trachtenberg described how he himself is an avid gamer and how multiple games inspired the action and story of Badlands, with 2013’s Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons being a particular influence on Dek and Thia’s relationship.
Brothers is a third-person, puzzle-focused adventure game following the brothers Naiee and Naia as they set off to collect water from the Tree of Life to heal their dying father, all while saving people, battling monsters, and bonding closer together.
Brothers is intended to be played alone, with one thumbstick on a controller directing Naiee while the other directs Naia and triggers, causing the two to interact with objects, but the game could be played in local co-op.
While Brothers may not be as action-packed as Badlands, they both tell incredibly moving stories of two people overcoming adversity and finding friendship in the unlikeliest of places.
9
Prince of Persia
The Most Underrated Prince of Persia Game
Many games today follow reluctantly or unlikely pairs of protagonists in titles such as 2018’s God of War and Trachtenberg was influenced by similar games with tethered leads for Dek and Thia, with one of those games being 2008’s Prince of Persia.
Today, Prince of Persia may seem like a dead franchise, but in the seventh generation of consoles, PoP was arguably at its peak, thanks to the acclaim of past titles such as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and Ubisoft sought to bring in more fans by rebooting the series with 2008’s PoP.
Here, PoP follows the Prince after getting lost in a sandstorm, who joins the princess of Ahura, Elika, to defeat the God of Darkness, Ahriman, and restore the world from his corruption with Elika’s magic powers and the Prince’s warrior skills.
Much like how Dek and Thia rely on each other’s skills to survive the dangers of the hostile alien world, Genna, the Prince, and Elika rely on each other’s abilities to save Persia and Ahura, and it’s quite simply a very fun, underrated journey to behold.
8
The Last of Us Part I
Joel and Ellie’s Iconic Journey
Besides 2008’s Prince of Persia, Trachtenberg additionally listed The Last of Us as a big inspiration for Badlands, which could be seen in not just Dek’s relationship with Thia but also with his unexpected relationship with the creature called Bud.
The Last of Us Part I features one of the most famous and heart-wrenching stories in all of gaming, with Joel begrudgingly going on a cross-country journey to bring the young girl Ellie to the Fireflies in hopes of making a zombie cure, only for the two to develop a strong bond together along the way.
Similar to Joel and Ellie’s relationship, Dek is dismissive of both Thia and Bud at first but slowly begins to appreciate them more and even teaches them how to take down opponents just like any other Yautja would, with all three becoming their own clan in the end.
For people who lived the found family dynamic of Dek, Thia, and Bud, as well as the brutal combat of Badlands, they’ll love playing through Joel and Ellie’s grand journey together in The Last of Us Part I as, in some cases, Joel can be just as brutal as Dek.
7
Monster Hunter World
A World Full of Titanic Beasts
Unlike most Predator films, the main setting of Badlands is the alien world Genna, thought to be the most dangerous planet in the known galaxy for the Yautja, let alone humanity, due to the planet’s wide variety of hostile plants and animals.
With a planet as vicious and wild as Genna, it wasn’t a surprise to learn that Trachtenberg was inspired in part by the Monster Hunter series when making Badlands and while he didn’t indicate which MH game in particular he was most inspired by, I could see a lot of Monster Hunter World in Genna.
Instead of going to an alien planet, Monster Hunter World follows a crew of hunters traveling to a new, unexplored continent called the New World to hunt down and research its wide variety of monstrous wildlife, such as the T-Rex-like Anjanath, the bull/dragon-like Behemoth, and the bat-like Paolumu.
Much like how Dek hunts down many of Genna’s wildlife and later uses their body parts to aid him in battle, players can do the same with monsters found in Monster Hunter World, with each creature dropping crafting materials for players to build better armor and weapons.
6
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
A Similarly Hostile Yet Beautiful World to Genna
Badlands‘ Genna is an impressive world to behold, not just for its unique alien creatures and plant life but also for the world itself, and I couldn’t recommend a better game to freely explore an alien world in than Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
Frontiers is set around the same time as Avatar: The Way of Water and follows a Na’Vi orphan as they join the Resistance to fight the invading human Resources Development Administration and reconnect with Pandora and its many Na’Vi clans and wildlife.
Frontiers‘ Pandora is one of the most beautiful and fleshed-out worlds I’ve ever explored in a video game, and it’s a ton of fun to just explore the many biomes of Pandora’s western frontier and catalog its many species of animals and plants, such as the elephant-like Zakru and the seed-shooting Cloud Spitter.
Much like how Dek uses the animals of Genna to aid him in battle, players can similarly bond with the animals of Pandora to help them fight the RDA forces, most notably the flying Ikran and the terrestrial Direhorse.
5
Mortal Kombat X
The Predator’s Many Fatalities and Brutalities
Despite being a nearly 40-year-old franchise, there aren’t too many great games dedicated to the Predator series alone, but the Predator has made some pretty fun cameos and guest appearances in other games, with the best arguably being in Mortal Kombat X.
In July 2015, the Predator made its explosive, gory debut in Mortal Kombat X as the game’s second guest fighter, alongside a skin for Jax to make him look and sound like Al Dillon from the first Predator film, after Friday the 13th‘s Jason Voorhees.
While this iteration of the Predator doesn’t use Badlands‘ iconic energy sword, he does have access to most Predator weaponry introduced in the films up to that point, including the iconic wristblades, plasmacaster, combistick, smart disk, and proximity mines, as well as being able to use its cloaking and self-destruct devices.
Badlands is full of some pretty gnarly kills, and the Predator in Mortal Kombat X is no different, with some of its Fatalities and Brutalities causing it to slice an opponent’s skull in half with the smart disk, skin opponents alive, and rip their spine and skull out to place in their trophy room, to name a few.
4
Shadow of the Colossus
Predator: Badland’s Biggest Video Game Inspiration
In interviews with IGN and the British Academy Film Awards, Trachtenberg noted that Shadow of the Colossus is not only one of his favorite games of all time but that it was both an aesthetic and spiritual inspiration for Dek’s journey in Predator: Badlands.
This makes sense as both Badlands and Colossus follow protagonists exploring vast wildernesses on journeys to take down massive, seemingly invincible creatures, with Dek striving to hunt down the Kalisk and Wander striving to eliminate all the colossi.
Much like how Dek’s time hunting aliens on Genna is no picnic, Wander’s journey to hunt down the colossi is a bit of a difficult task, as Wander only has his sword and his horse, Agro, to aid him in taking down the titans and oftentimes, Wander must climb atop the colossi to reach their weak points.
Wander and Dek may be hunting these creatures for different reasons, but Badlands and Colossus depict these hunts in visually impressive ways and taking down each colossus is arguably as satisfying as watching Dek slay aliens and overcome insurmountable odds.
3
Predator: Hunting Grounds
The Best Multiplayer Predator Game
Since 2020, IllFonic has continuously updated and arguably perfected the art of adapting the Predator films into a multiplayer experience with the ongoing first and third-person action game Predator: Hunting Grounds.
Here, players will either be assigned to a four-player Fireteam of military operatives tasked with taking down mercenaries, PMC soldiers, or members of the ruthless Stargazer group while another player embodies a Predator bent on hunting down each member of the Fireteam and anyone else who gets in their way.
In a sense, Hunting Grounds is a multiplayer version of the original Predator film, but it’s filled with a ton of gameplay variety, cosmetics, and references to other Predator films, including the option for gamers to play as Dutch and as the Yautja from Predator 2, Predators, The Predator, Prey, and the Alien vs. Predator films.
Hunting Grounds additionally allows players to use weapons and play as Yautja not seen in the films, such as massive katanas, hammers, Yautja bows and even the option to play as female Predators, which may make their way onto the big screen for the first time in the near future.
2
Aliens vs. Predator
The Best AVP Game Ever Made
For about 36 years, two of the greatest extraterrestrial film antagonists have battled it out in comics, films, and video games in Alien vs. Predator and the best game to showcase this epic battle has got to be 2010’s Aliens vs. Predator.
Oddly enough, there’s been more AVP games released than Predator games and while a good number of the AVP games are fun, 2010’s Aliens vs. Predator truly showcases how horrific a battle between Xenomorphs, Yautja, and humans would be.
2010’s AVP features three distinct first-person single-player campaigns with each having the player embody a member of each species on the planet BG-386, alongside PvP and PvE multiplayer modes.
While playing as a Xenomorph warrior and a Colonial Marine is fun, the highlight of 2010’s AVP is the Predator campaign, as it allows players to leap great distances, uncover the history of one of the earliest Xenomorph hunts, brutally trophy-kill Marines, Aliens, and Weyland-Yutani androids, and hunt down a Predalien hybrid.
1
Predator: Concrete Jungle
Scarface’s Journey of Redemption
There aren’t too many Predator games aside from the AVP games that tell original narratives separate from the films, but 2005’s Predator: Concrete Jungle depicts one of the most interesting yet somewhat bizarre stories that can only be found in a Predator game.
Concrete Jungle follows a disgraced Predator warrior called Scarface who, after exposing the existence of the Yautja to a 1930s crime family, is allowed a chance to reclaim his honor and prove his worth to his clan by reclaiming salvaged Yautja technology from the crime family 100 years later.
Concrete Jungle‘s gameplay is all in third-person with traversal mechanics that are oddly similar to Batman: Arkham City, but what makes the game a ton of fun are the upgradeable weapons and abilities at Scarface’s disposal, such as a glaive, a maul, and throwing mines on top of the traditional Predator weaponry.
If any developer makes a new, single-player Predator game based on Badlands, I could see them using Concrete Jungle as a basis in terms of gameplay, just with more wildlife enemies instead of the primary human-related enemies seen in Concrete Jungle.
