One thing that grizzled, cynical video game reviewers like myself often complain about is that there’s no originality in video games anymore. Sure, every once in a while there’s a hidden jewel like Katamari Damacy, but for every game like that, there’s another Grand Theft Auto clone, or an umpteenth entry in a sports series that’s little more than roster updates. When one of those little gems does cross my path, then, I stand up and take notice; after all, if those underappreciated, quirky games continue to go unnoticed, then there is no reason for another developer to take GTA, slap a new name on it, and release it as a fresh title.
Alien Hominid is a game worthy of notice, not just because of its originality and fun factor, but also because of its unusual path to publication. Alien Hominid actually began its life as a web game that was so well received that The Behemoth (the game’s developer, not a character in the game, in case you were wondering) decided to put together a more polished console version. However, instead of taking the traditional route, and using flashy 3D graphics and licensing a bunch of pop music, The Behemoth stayed true to their roots and produced a stylish 2D shooter, complete with entirely hand-drawn graphics. The end result looks and plays like something straight out of Adult Swim, and is about as entertaining.
The story is fairly simple, and is more or less just enough to give the player a purpose to begin wreaking havoc. You play as the titular Alien Hominid a somewhat psychotic-looking yellow extraterrestrial, who is flying over Earth when the FBI’s space lasers shoot him down. The FBI then steals the ship (and an ice cream cone from a fat kid who happens to be watching the whole scenario unfold), and so you need to get your ship back and get the heck out of Dodge. As the game progresses, you’ll occasionally regain your ship only to lose it again, which then leads the Hominid to locales like Soviet Russia and Area 51. The story is advanced in some short but entertaining cut scenes, sans dialogue. There’s not a whole lot there, but what is there provides Alien Hominid a lot of personality, and even had me chuckling a few times.
The gameplay should be extremely familiar to anyone who’s played Metal Slug, or Contra, or any 2D shoot ‘em up in the last twenty years or so. The goal is simply to get from the left end of the stage to the right end, shooting and through anything that may get in your way. Of course, there are gun power-ups to help with the large-scale chaos, usually provided by the aforementioned fat kid. There are also as a variety of vehicles to commandeer that are scattered throughout. These range from run-of-the-mill, like bulldozers and killer robots, to the absurd, like a Sasquatch that you can ride in one of the Russian levels to eat KGB agents, Rampage-style.
The one new element that Alien Hominid brings to the table is the Freak Attack, which allows the Hominid to jump on an enemy’s head and ride around on him. From here, there are a number of options. He can use the extra height to jump higher than he would normally, he can pick up the enemy and throw him at other enemies, or, he can take the most fun option, which is to bite off the enemy’s head. The Hominid can also dig a hole and pull an enemy underground with him; of course, only the Hominid comes out alive. I’ll grant that this type of game has been done a thousand times before, but these new touches really breathe some new life into a tried and true formula.
The other thing that makes this game feel new is the level and character design. There’s just something about fighting a butterscotch pudding monster by opening a fire hydrant to wash the sugary assailant away, or a giant robot with a sign that says "Do Not Damage Head". (Guess what you need to hit to hurt that boss?) There are some different stages that break up the standard shoot-and-don’t-die gameplay as well; some stages take place inside the Hominid’s ship and play like an old-school space shooter (think Time Pilot or Sinistar), while other levels have you dodging obstacles on a sled or running along a moving train to avoid falling off the other side.
Should you become bored with the main game, there are also a handful of mini-games that are easily as entertaining as the main package. There are some mini-games based on the main game, which can be fun for a while, but the original mini-games are, by far, the hidden jewel of Alien Hominid. The so-called PDA game is a simple puzzle game reminiscent of the old Lode Runner games, where you have to get from the start to the finish, while killing all the enemies and avoiding all the obstacles. Once you get the hang of it, it’s fairly addictive, and the 200 pre-made levels plus the included level editor ensure that, if you do enjoy it, you wont get bored of it for quite a while. Meanwhile, Super Soviet Missile Mastar is an Atari 2600 style game where your goal is simply to guide an ICBM from Mother Russia to the US, at which point, a jubilant Russian dances on the screen, which then says "pwned" in huge letters. Yeah, it’s simplistic and you probably won’t play it for more than twenty minutes or so, but it’s a lot of fun for those few minutes, and it just further displays The Behemoth’s creativity.
About the only complaint that I can find about Alien Hominid is that it’s awfully short. There are less than twenty levels, and none of the levels take longer than five minutes to complete. I was left wanting more at the end; while I honestly could have kept going through another couple of dozen levels, the entire game took me only a few hours to complete. The price ($30) compensates for this, but it’s not as much a matter of getting my money’s worth (as it often is when I have this complaint) as it is that I really wanted to play more of the game, and it felt like it ended much too quickly.
Graphically, the game’s hand drawn style provides the game a unique look that really makes it stand out from anything else out there today. Literally everything, from the backgrounds to the characters to the attack animations, is completely hand drawn, which is refreshing in a climate where most games are 3D for the sake of being 3D. As a result, everything moves smoothly with no slowdown and just plain looks pretty. One warning, though: Despite the fact that this is a cartoon-style game, it is also quite violent; there is a lot of blood that is sprayed about, and it might disturb some more sensitive types who may not expect it.
Sound isn’t quite as exciting, but it is functional nonetheless. There are some fairly generic scores and sound effects that are sprinkled throughout the game; while none of them are memorable, none really are all that irritating, either. There is also no voice acting in the game, so the nondescript sounds are all there are to listen to. All in all, though, I never felt like reaching for the remote; at its worst, the sound simply blends into the background, which is all that one can ask.
If only Alien Hominid were a bit meatier, I could wholeheartedly recommend it as a purchase. I will, however, say that Alien Hominid definitely belongs in that elite class of quirky games, like Rez and Katamari Damacy, that should at least be experienced, if not part of any self-respecting gamer’s collection. This game has such personality and originality, even despite the fact that it is in effect reviving a dead genre, that I must commend The Behemoth for having the tenacity to see this project through to completion. If this is the type of product that an independent game studio can produce given the resources, then I sincerely hope that we can see more independent games come to the mass market in the near future.
