There aren’t many creatures more iconic in sci-fi horror than the Facehuggers. Since appearing in the original Alien movie, these egg-born mobile incubators have been helping to birth Xenomorphs across the Aliens universe and they even appear in Aliens: Dark Descent. While there’s no way of removing them once they latch onto a host’s face in the wider canon, Dark Descent does actually let you deal with their implantation.
To remove a Facehugger in Aliens: Dark Descent, players must defeat the Alien Queen in Mission 2 and take the Xenotech Blueprint back to the Otago. While in the mission, you’re told that killing the Alien Queen is optional, but we’d strongly recommend that you do. Simply use all the explosives you have and lay down suppressive fire while staying mobile to stay out of the way of her insta-kill attacks and keep backing away and you should be able to deal with her. If you’re still struggling, just keep hammering that space bar to slow the action down.
Once she’s defeated, return to the Otago and talk to Doctor Donald Becker in the Laboratory, who will offer you Xenotech to take with you on missions as long as you have blueprints and also Xenosamples. Here, you can unlock the Extraction Device, a piece of Xenotech that safely allows you to remove Facehuggers with the Embyro Extraction option while out in the field.
You must spend 2x Xenosamples per mission to be able to use it for that specific mission, but it’s well worth that as it can basically save the lives of your Marines out in the field.
As for how to just generally deal with pesky Facehuggers, we generally recommend being slow while entering any new rooms, as you never know what to expect inside. If you know Facehuggers are in a room, you can typically walk past them without them awakening if you need to get to a door on the other side. However, if you need to access something in a room that they’re in, we recommend setting up a Sentry Gun outside and then retreating back out once they’ve been alerted.
Aliens: Dark Descent is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X & S.
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