Alien Hominid Review

The action in Alien Hominid never stops, and the artwork makes it that much nicer to look at.
(click for a slightly larger image)

Originally created as a simple one-level flash game on Newgrounds, Alien Hominid was originally created by Tom Fulp (creator of Newgrounds) with all the artwork drawn by Dan Paladin (SYNJ). The original one-level flash game was downloaded over 10 million times and has since become a site favorite.

A Co-worker named John Baez loved the game so much that he approached Dan about the possibility of actually making it a real game. They formed their own company they named The Behemoth and have since put out a complete console version of Alien Hominid. The new console game was entirely coded by Tom Fulp, and all of the graphics were hand drawn by Dan Paladin. What's great about this game is that since it was completely made by the original creators, everything's kept intact.

Alien Hominid is best compared with the arcade classic Metal Slug. It's crazy, it's frantic, and you just shoot anything that moves. You play as the little yellow alien, Alien Hominid, who is under strict investigation by the FBI. That's where the story kicks off, and your goal is to simply stay alive. Of course, staying alive is the hardest part of the game, since any second of gameplay includes at least five FBI agents rolling around with their guns. Taking care of them is simple. With controls similar to the original Megaman series, all you have to do is blast everything. You're given a few hand grenades to even out the playing field, and rolling and backflipping past bullets is effortlessly pulled off by tapping the triggers. The game is complete with a charged up blast you can launch off, and many types of weapon upgrades that even effect the grenades you throw.

This game is incredibly hard since you'll die instantly from a single hit. Fortunately you have a default of 5 lives or so to start out with, including four continue credits. So at 20 lives per level, you're sure to run out fast. FBI agents are everywhere, and hack-n-slashing them on your way to the giant boss at the end of each level never seems to get old. This game is actually pretty violent, especially with the trail of bloody FBI agents lying behind you, but the cartoon aspect keeps it off the edge.

The hand-drawen artwork is absolutely amazing. I've actually been a fan of some of Dan Paladin's work from Newgrounds, but seeing it in non-stop exploding action is a wonderful sight. The artwork is smooth, and the frame-rate works at a wonderful 60 frames per second. Everything has a wonderful style to it and never gets old. The explosion animations are breath-taking and are easily the best 2D explosions ever to grace a TV screen. They look really nice with your weapon power-ups as well. The ice gun freezes enemies with a nice puff of chilled air, and even changes your grenades into ice versions.

Ah yes, the evil soviet robot.
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The game is arcade style, where a second player can jump in at any time, and you need quarters to continue. The biggest problem though, is that the game is very very short. Only 16 levels which are seperated into three world levels. (3 sets of five levels). It'll take you only a couple days to blast through the whole game, with an ability to load any level you've been too. Personally, if they wanted to increase re-play value, they shouldn't have let you load from any level until you've beaten the game, or at least each set of five levels. This way it would have been really difficult to play through the game without getting a game over, forcing players to get unnaturally good at each level to ensure they play the game over and over to get to the end. Especially since beating a level opens it up on every difficulty level. They should have at least had a "beat it on hard mode!" screen and forced you to play through that one as well.

These PDA mini-games can be played with four people at once.
(click for a slightly larger image)

Alien Hominid does come with a few mini-games. The biggest of which are the PDA puzzles (left). These are really simple smooth puzzles in which you have to jump on all of the enemies heads, and make it to the exit. There are 200 of these quick levels and it even comes with a level editor, so you can make a set of your own. I found these interesting, but a tad bit boring because of how simple they were. Jessica really got a kick out of them though, since she finds the main game too much action for her taste.

There's also the classic "Super Soviet Missile" mini-game, where you have to guide a giant pixeled rocket between some planes and hit the USA. It's pretty funny, and the fact that is says "PWNED" when you hit the 'States is a great tribute to all Newgrounds fans.

There are also a couple of other minigames I title as "forgetful" including a piñata boss in which you have to blast a colorful donkey in the sky and collect the candy that pops out, and some strange versus game involving kicking an orb into a goal that's a little more boring than soccer.