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> Results: Alien Hominid
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Remember in War of the Worlds when the aliens invaded Earth and none of our armies could stop the aliens, but a small thing like a virus, a common cold, a bug, stopped the aliens in their tracks? Well, that's a good analogy for Alien Hominid. A few game bugs will keep this alien from invading your gaming time.
Alien Hominid is a 2-D shooter that is very, VERY similar to games like Metal Slug and Contra. You play as a deceptively cute little yellow alien who has crash-landed on Earth. Before he can recover, the FBI steals his UFO and now the little E.T. must blast his way through agents and robots and other obstacles so he can leave our planet. Youl shoot down helicopters, ride in vehicles like tanks and bulldozers, and take on giant bosses like the mutant pudding monster.  Alien Hominid actually started out as an Internet Flash game on www.newgrounds.com. It was a very popular game to download, so the developers decided to take a chance and bring Alien Hominid to the home game consoles. They rebuilt everything in the Flash game from the ground up for the console release, so it's not the same as the Flash game anymore if you were wondering. For more info on the developers of this game, make sure to visit www.alienhominid.com. You blast your way through the city, fight KGB Soviet soldiers in the snow, and finally travel through the desert to reach Area 51. Along the way you collect power ups and weapons from humorously drawn ﾑfat kids' like shields, grenades, ice guns, flamethrowers, stink rays, rapid fire, and spreader guns. Some levels deviate from the norm with UFO flying missions. There are 18 grueling levels in all. You can go at it solo or bring a buddy alien in for 2 player simultaneous play. You can unlock numerous silly hats that both player's aliens can wear to distinguish each other apart. In addition to the main game, there are several mini-games that you can unlock. The single screen PDA games that resemble Donkey Kong are particularly fun, especially with over 200 levels plus a level editor. One of my favorite parts of the game is the graphics. All the 2-D sprites and backgrounds are hand-drawn and animatedﾗeven the explosions! The graphics really bring out the Invader ZIM-like humor in the game. When your UFO crashes, there's a little animated sequence of the evil FBI agents cleaning up the mess with little brooms followed by an agent holding up a sign that says "Nothing to see here." As he walks off the screen, the agent passes one of those ﾑfat kids' who saw the whole thing while eating an ice cream cone. The FBI guy takes his ice cream! There's another scene where a couple of FBI agents are stealing the fat kid's lunch money! The fat kids have forks on their T-shirts. You can buy those fork t-shirts and Alien Hominid action figures at www.alienhominid.com also! (I'd love to get the shirt and toys, but wee doggies, they're expensive!) At any rate, there is lots of humor in every level. The music ranges from sweeping to cartoony, but you won't hear it most of the time because of all the BLAM, BOOM, BAM explosions and other sound effects. Play control is top notch and responsive. Your little alien has tons of moves at his disposal. He can shoot, jump, duck, roll and backflip out of harm's way, as well as charge up shots for a mega blast. He can also dig underground for cover, and pull down any unsuspecting FBI agent who may happen to pass over him. Hop up onto an agent's shoulders and ride him around for a little bit and you can then dispose of him by either tossing him away or biting his head off. Make sure to read about more of Alien Hominid's violent antics in the Kid Factor.  If there is any problem with Alien Hominid besides the bugs, it's that the enemy bullets are hard to see. When your little alien can only take one hit, it gets pretty frustrating. This is the least of your worries as the big problems in the game are glitches that cause the game to freeze up. In the first two hours of game time, this happened to me three times! Once it froze at the pudding boss, another when I was trying to ride the giant Yeti, and one time as I was fighting the hammer and sickle blimp boss, it just flew away and never came back! That's just inexcusable. I checked on message boards on the Internet to see if anyone else was having those problems, in case I just got a bad disc. No luck, turns out lots of others are experiencing the same kinds of bugs on both the PlayStation 2 and Gamecube versions. Plus I read about bugs I haven't even encountered yet like indestructible enemies! The Behemoth needs to realize that this is not a PC gameﾗyou can't just download patches that'll fix the problem. If you're going to play with the big guys in the console world, you need to have very good quality control and testing. Those major bugs just ruined the game for me. I like my games to work properly. I'm weird that way, I guess. 
Now for the meaty chunks. Alien Hominid CAN be a violent game. As your alien shoots and slices bad guys the cartoony, hand-drawn blood goes flying everywhere. You can bite their heads off, too! The violence is akin to what you'd find in a Simpsons Itchy and Scratchy cartoon. However, you can turn the gore off in the options menu. They even present the non-gore mode in a humorous way, because now instead of blood squirting everywhere, defeated enemies disappear in a cloud of sparkly smoke and flowers! I would say that if you turn the gore off and have adult supervision, kids younger than 13 are probably OK playing this game.
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