Game #979: Alien Hominid

  Crash landing into my childhood.

 Man, what a throwback! I've already written about my early adventures on the Internet and Newgrounds so I won't delve too deep in there, but I will say that Alien Hominid was a blast. I remember hearing about them developing a home console version, but I don't remember why I didn't seek it out. It was probably during my brief PC gaming stint I guess. Regardless, here I am fixing my past mistakes.

 Alien Hominid is, basically, a Metal Slug clone but with a very indie and late 00's edgy look to it. You move from left to run gunning down an endless supply of enemies. The game does its best to add a lot of varied and exciting set pieces to keep everything feeling fresh. Stage 1-2 has you jumping from car roof to car roof as you defeat enemies, then in stage 1-5 you must rebuild your UFO while battling enemies in space, then in 2-3 you ride a friggin' Yeti that punches your soviet enemies to death and eventually, during world 3, you end up in the desert fighting giant vultures and scorpions. That said, the game is super short, like 2 hours long, it makes up for that in its brutal difficulty. The difficulty is set by player, because the brunt of the game remains the same, but the easier the difficulty the more advantages, lives and continues you get. I played the game on easy and I barely finished the game on my last continue. The final stage is a brutal 3 o 4 phase fight against the boss, Jesus. What makes the game so challenging is how you are getting pelted by bullets from every angle. Bosses usually have mooks bothering you, so that charging your shot becomes tougher as you try to avoid damage from your assaulters!

 Jump and shoot is the name of the game, but you get quite a few abilities to help you. L1 and R1 produce a roll, although be wary as you don't get invincibility frames. The alien can also dig underground and drag enemies to their death, but its real use is to avoid some incoming, otherwise unavoidable attacks. As for offense, just like Metal Slug, attacking while next to an enemy will produce a melee attack, and you can find weapons with limited ammo to make mowing down enemies a bit easier. There are grenades, but they uncharacteristically weak, so I relied mostly on my basic shots and the ever useful chargeshot. There are a few other abilities, like riding enemies by jumping on top o them and riding vehicles.

 As I stated before, the game is very exciting, however, at least the PS2 version does suffer from a bit of slowdown. Nothing too bad mind you, but it surprised me how a game that seems so light on processing requirements could suffer from framerate dips on the PS2.

 As you play through the game you can unlock mini-games, some that can be played in multiplayer(The main game can be played in multiplayer too) as well as hats to customize your aliens with.

 Had I played this game back in its heyday I'm sure I would've loved it, but I'm not too fond of hardcore run 'n' gun shooters nowadays. That said, I can recognize quality where I see it, and this game is pretty good and you can tell that the developers had fun coming up with different situations for the players to partake in. Fans of Contra, Metal Slug or even Turok Evolution, for the GBA, will be right at home with this one. 

 7.0