Alien Hominid

"Fantastic shooter in the same vein as Contra, if unfortunately a little short"

When I first picked up Alien Hominid, it was totally alien to me. Hah hah, bad pun, I know, but seriously. Never had I played the flash game, never had I heard of it's existence. Disregarding the old saying that curiosity killed the cat, I let my curiosity get the best of me. Unlike disasters like Seek & Destroy, World Championship of Poker and Cabela's Outdoor Adventures, this is one curious pick I most certainly do not regret.

You won't either, I'm sure. Not that you'd have the time to realize if you were having fun or not - you'd be far too busy clearing the screen of never-ending swarms of bad guys, Contra style. Alien Hominid is a 2-D side-scrolling shooter, much like Contra (not the crappy PS1 games - the NES original), Gunstar Heroes and Metal Slug. It's also very, very difficult, like the previously mentioned games. If Alien Hominid is anything, it is not alien to side-scrolling shooting - it hits the nail square on the head there. Bouncing around with your cute little Alien that looks as if it were drawn in Flash shooting the big meanies of the FBI is so terribly fun that for a while all my Gamecube saw was more Alien Hominid action. Then, the game ended.

Like Contra, Gunstar Heroes, and Metal Slug, Alien Hominid is short. The game is 15 levels long for the single player mode, meaning a couple hours of dedicated blasting will clear it on the easiest difficulty. Thankfully it's not as short as it may sound - the sheer difficulty of the game will halt your progress on multiple occasions, making you blast through a level again once all lives are lost. Lives - that's where the shooter newbies will cry joy. Unlike in Contra, Gunstar Heroes and Metal Slug, Alien Hominid is very, almost too liberal with lives. While it's not particularly difficult to lose those lives, it definitely feels a tad to easy to just blast stuff without getting the ‘Game Over' screen. The newbs will love this as it means they can actually finish the game - gaming veterans who have played games like Contra before will cry foul. The ‘Hard' difficulty is exactly that, so while that may temporarily shut them up, it's still somewhat of a minor burden.

Alien Hominid has you slicing and shooting while moving to the right of the screen at a very brisk pace. The game also packs some other things to do when you tire of shooting - driving vehicles is good fun, there are certain levels where you can control your spacepod/UFO/whatever it is and fly around shooting FBI choppers. There are also some mini-games outside the main game mode, which are relatively fun in short doses. The nicest extra is the PDA, which packs tons of simplistic 2-D platforming levels for you to hop around in. The goal would be to kill all the evil FBI and collect all the items, and it's good fun for a side-game. You can also create and save your own levels, so you can challenge friends to complete your own take on the game. Oddly enough, depending on skill it could take you longer to complete all the PDA games that it would take to complete the single player mode. But it just goes to show you how deep the mini-games bother to go.

Possibly the best thing this game has going for it is it's co-op mode, where you play the single player game with two players. Such fun could only be matched in the golden oldies (Contra…), which is a great feat for this game. The co-op mode makes the game somewhat easier, that's easily agreeable, but the sheer fun gotten from blasting baddies with two players and then taking on a boss while discovering it's weakness is awesome. It's great if you play through your first time entirely co-op - working things out together is just fantastic fun that seems to be replicated hardly anywhere else these days. Then after completing, you would set the difficulty up another notch and conquer the game solo - so much fun it manages to actually surprise me.

For a game that started life as a Flash game, and for a game so simple as Alien Hominid, it's surprisingly enjoyable to almost infinite depths, as you can replay to try and up your high score, making it a never-ending battle with your friends to see who can better who. Even if you never played the original Flash game this game is based off of, you're sure to have a blast blasting enemies and slicing them in two. Alien Hominid isn't deep like a good RPG, it isn't lengthily like a good adventure game, it isn't technical like a good modern shooter and it isn't a graphical powerhouse like most good Xbox games. However, Alien Hominid is still a hell of a lot of fun, and on that merit alone it's easily an important addition to your collection.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/21/05