Alien Hominid

Overview

Originally a Flash-based game found on the Newgrounds Flash portal, Alien Hominid is a side-scrolling shooter most notable for its uniquely referential 2D visual style, playful sense of humor, and an insanely unforgiving level of challenge. The game tells the tale of a yellow, bug-like alien who crash-lands on Earth, only to have its spaceship confiscated by the FBI, which it then spends the rest of the game trying to recover. In addition to taking on the FBI, Alien Hominid pits you against KGB agents, the soldiers at Area 51, as well as a menagerie of giant robots and screen-filling boss monsters.

The artist from the game is Dan 'Synj' Paladin, the same artist who worked on the original Flash game, giving it a distinctive look. Additionally, the game is extremely bloody for a T-rated game, but it's also very cheeky and has a toggle for the gore. If left on, then heads are chomped, people are split in half, rib cages are exposed, and blood splashes everywhere. Off, it replaces the blood with "glitter and flowers", so a decapitated body has a flower growing over the gaping wound and enemies release pretty flowers and sparkles as they die gruesome deaths.

Gameplay

The actual gameplay of Alien Hominid is akin to the Metal Slug series of games in almost every possible way. The hominid has a laser pistol with infinite ammo, which can be charged up to release even more devastating attacks, a finite amount of grenades, friendly NPCs that drop weapons (in this case, Fat Kids) and seemingly endless waves of enemies to mow down to your heart's content. Separating the hominid from a mere human, however, are a few slight abilities that aid in the defeat of enemies. First, the enemy ride, allows you to do just that-ride the back of an enemy. From here, the enemy will be blinded and run around, flailing its arms, and is otherwise helpless. Other enemies can shoot your mount, who will take the damage, or you can flip the enemy over and throw it at the other enemies, or simply bite its head off (which startles the other enemies for a second). The hominid also has the ability to burrow, which dodges attacks and lets him pull enemies into the ground with him (and find hidden lives). However, if you stay underground too long, the alien will suffocate (and no one wants that). Up close, the basic attack automatically becomes a knife slash..

At the end of each level, a points tally is added up for enemies killed, boss bonus and a style bonus, which is received from doing the actions listed above and mixing up the play style. As it tallies up, lives are being added to your coffer, allowing a very skilled player to theoretically never have to worry about a game over. In practice, the game's extreme difficulty renders this mostly a pipe dream, and the player is left literally fighting for their survival against a brutal one-hit kill system. In co-op, after the points are tallied, a "winner" is then declared, though this does nothing to the gameplay but allow gloating privileges.

The levels have a slight verticality to them, with a few platforms that can be jumped between to allow the player to bypass certain sections or enemies, but overall it's a very linear game. Though they don't really make a large difference, there are 3 main worlds, divided into about 21 sublevels for about 2 hours of gameplay if you don't get a game over (which is unlikely on your first try, to put it mildly). Within the levels are extra areas with breaks from the sidescrolling action to allow the player new activities, keeping the game from going stale.

A few collectibles are found in the game, mostly in the form of hats to personalize your alien. To unlock them, certain conditions must be met, such as destroying a certain building or stealing the car from the clown on the freeway level. These don't really add anything, but make the already adorable hominid not just a cold hearted killer, but a cold hearted killer with a wicked fashion sense. Players are also able to change the name of their alien.

Power-Ups

The Fat Kids drop a few different types of weapons throughout the game, each being its own different power, but having a set amount of ammo before running out. In addition, each power-up changes the type of grenade you carry (though this mostly just powers it up) and gives a one-hit shield, keeping death back just the tiniest bit.

The Power-ups are:

• Acid shot - which comes out like a shotgun blast. Close range and very powerful, it melts whoever it touches and can make short work of almost anything that may wish you dead.
• Fire shot - which, shockingly, shoots fire. It catches enemies on fire, and they then run around and turn into ashes
• Ice shot - which freezes enemies into comical positions, just begging to be crushed or shattered.
• Energy ball - which is very strong against just about everything. It's basically just a large orange ball of energy that has a wide area, so missing is rarely a problem.
• Laser beam - This bad boy slices enemies in half and carries through, effectively killing any enemy stupid enough to stand behind another enemy until it runs off the screen.
• Spread shot - This is a spread gun, only made of little adorable energy weapon shots.
• Machine gun - which shoots purple power balls at enemies in a rapid succession, mowing through them like a minigun in a South American jungle.

Characters

Alien Hominid The main playable character in Alien Hominid. Hominid objective is to find his spaceship and return to space again.

Fat Kids The Fat Kid are non-player-characters who help Hominid through out the game by giving them powers-up. The only reason why they are helping them is that at the beginning of the game, the FBI started cleaning the debris around the crash site and then steal the Fat Kid's ice cream.

FBI FBI are the main enemies you first encounter in World 1. They are least advanced enemies than other enemies in the game because they just shoot, duck, jump sometimes and drive many vehicles.

Soviets The Soviets are second main enemies in World 2. They do more than a FBI, like popping out from the snow, jump-shoot in mid-air and drive more sophisticated vehicles.

Soviet General The General of the Soviet Union, he calls in giant robots to try and kill Hominid. After the robots fails to kill Hominid, he then goes onto Hominid's spaceship and using all the ship's abilities against Hominid. After Hominid defeats the General, he eject the ship and parachutes down to the ground safely but then a eagle caught him while flying in mid-air and drop him on a conveyor belt when he gets killed by a saw.

Area 51 Soldiers The Soldiers of Area 51 are the third main enemies in World 3. They are the toughest enemies you encounter in the game because they can block knife slices, punch Hominid and throw Hominid when they get grab.

Alien Hominid Clone Alien Hominid Clone is the final boss you fight in the game. The clone is a larger version of Alien Hominid that was created by Area 51 in hopes for defending any aliens attacks. The clone has all the same attack that Hominid has, including grenades that set the whole floor on fire. The fight begins inside of Area 51 base after the help you get from the Eyeball and the fights ends in the sky when Hominid defeats the clone version on a giant slowly-falling-apart version of Hominid's spaceship.

Worlds

World 1 World 1 is a nondescript city, which the hominid crashes into when the FBI decides to shoot down his spaceship. This world contains numerous references to Newgrounds and other Flash projects, as well as the entirety of the flash game (the giant boss tank and the miniboss robot). In this world, the alien is chasing after the FBI to get his ship back, aided along the way by the Fat Kid. Extra levels include a bustling freeway area (where you can commandeer any car, which are being exploded almost constantly anyways) and a few spaceship areas. The first area includes a large wood chipper, where FBI agents can be dropped into (which is gorgeous when flower blood mode is turned on) and the second spaceship area involves the gathering of it piecemeal, restoring it to its bass-pumping, laser-blasting self and escaping, just to accidentally intercept a Soviet missile heading for the US.

World 2 With the end of World 1, World 2 winds up being Soviet Russia, with the KGB running rampant and once more stealing your ship. The gameplay remains mostly the same, though the KGB commander starts a personal vendetta against you as soon as you hit the ground. Most of this level remains a shooter, though there's a rather choice segment in which you ride a yeti and eat KGB cronies and a difficult snowmobile section where you take down a train. There are a lot of references to communism, including a giant red robot that uses a yellow sickle and hammer to kill you, and it ends with you battling your own ship with the KGB commander inside, before blasting off into space and fighting a giant orbital laser and being eaten by a government-owned ship that takes you to

World 3 World 3, the desert of Area 51. This area brings the full brunt of the military down on the hominid's head, as well as introducing new enemy types rather than just 'human' or 'vulture', seeing as alien species obviously run rampant in Area 51. The difficulty ramps up significantly, and all the lives gained during the first two worlds come in pretty handy here. This level has some of the most interesting boss robots as well, such as the Eating Robot (seriously, your tax money went to an EATING ROBOT) and the Battery Packs (though neither holds up to the dreaded Pudding Monster). Once the final boss is defeated, the hominid is finally free to leave the Earth and go do whatever it is that alien hominids do when they're not murdering people.

Minigames

Separate from the main side-scroller game, Alien Hominid includes a number of minigames, such as the Atari-2600-inspired "Soviet Missile Master", in which the player must guide a Russian missile to the USA, as well as the "PDA Games," a monochromatic platformer with pronounced puzzle elements that consists of hundreds of single-screen levels. Alien Hominid has been released for the Nintendo Gamecube, Playstation 2, Gizmondo, Game Boy Advance and Xbox. Most recently, the game was released for Xbox Live Arcade as Alien Hominid HD. The latest installment includes an online multiplayer button masher called "All You Can Eat".