Retrospect: Alien Hominid
Like Wednesday I've decided that Friday will also be a
themed day here on the intrawebs. It will be known as “Flashback Friday” from
hence forth. I will take a look at old games from the 90’s and early 2000’s, probable
with a cutoff date around 2005. By doing this, it gives me access to all the
great web games made since the birth of the web. Ill mostly be looking at well
known high rated games, and also judging how well the game has held together
all these years. I hope you all enjoy
this new section on site.
For the first Flashback Friday I’m going to look at one of the
most well-known web games and probable the second most iconic figure besides Pico
to come from newgrounds.com. I’m of course referring to the one and only Alien
from Alien Hominid. The game launched on newgrounds.com in late summer of 2002
and was programmed by none other than newgrounds founder Tom Flup and the game
art was done by Dan Paladin. So how does it hold up after 11 years? Let’s find
out.
The story here is that an alien has crash landed here on
earth, and out of all the places he could land, he lands in the worst spot ever, right in front of the US FBI Building. Right from the start every FBI Agent
wants him dead and from there the story is unknown. If I had to guess I would
say he just wants to fix his ship and go home, but he may also be a scout for an alien invasion. Who knows?
The art work done by Dan Paladin is Awesome. Some other
games by Dan and Tom include “Dad and Me” and “Castle Crashers” on Xbox live
arcade. His style is his own, a very unique look you see nowhere else. Everything
looks hand drawn with colorful, cartoony, and funny animation. Even today you couldn't tell when it was made. A lot games and flash videos back then were made using
game sprites from snes and genesis titles. It defiantly stood out in 2002 from
everything else.
The game play is action packed, fast paced, fun, and
challenging. When I first played it I got my butt handed to me hard. The FBI
agents are no push overs what so ever and they move very fast and shoot often. Even
today some people complain about the difficulty and slam the
well-designed game. In truth you just gotta master the game play mechanics which
can take a little time. For starters if you stay duck down the entire game you
should make it to the end as all bullets go over the aliens head. The best way I find is to ride the agents and let the other agents shoot the one you're riding. You also get a combo score by doing this called a freak attack. Usually at
most there are two agents on screen with more spawning every time you kill one.
There are two power-ups for the alien’s gun, a fire upgrade and a electric one that
tears through all the agents. There is also a melee weapon that works when you’re
right by an agent. The best weapon, and my favorite is the alien’s mouth, where
you can bite the agents head off after riding on their backs and instill fear
into the other agents watching. The biggest short coming of this game is its length.
It is only one stage long and then it’s over. Now today with some games being
very long, for example Aqua boy, it took me an hour to beat that game but it wasn't as difficult. Plus this made in 2002 and the level of quality and programming put
in, you can just tell doing the one level was tough enough, so I can let it slide.
 |
| YEEEEEEHAAAAW |
In 2004 A full game of Alien Hominid was made for the PS2
with 25 levels based on the 2002 release game and received an above average score
from most critics. I think the original holds up very well today and is still a
great game.
I’m going to give Alien Hominid 5 Headless Agents out of 5
“Did I kill the kid? Yezz im a bad person :(”
OVERALL SCORE: 5
Art by Dan Paladin
Programming by Tom Fulp
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