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Last Wednesday, O3 Entertainment came to New York to show off the latest build of Dan Paladin and Tom Fulp's Alien Hominid, based on the popular Flash title of the same name (with over six million downloads).
Everything from the Flash version returns, as does each member of the original team (including Dan Paladin, the original artist, who has again hand-drawn each visual element, from the characters to the vehicles), though a few extra programmers were brought on-board to handle conversion. While the game's original flash-based engine was directly ported to the PS2, heavy modifications were required due to the complex nature of developing for the console.
Alien Hominid follows an extra-terrestrial, crash-landed on earth and forced to fend off wave after wave of F.B.I. goons. It plays much like SNK's Metal Slug series; there are two forms of weapons: a laser shot, and a thrown explosive; both can be powered-up. If the alien is in melee range, he will automatically unsheathe a blade to cut an enemy in half. New to the console version is the ability to enter and drive vehicles (mostly cars) found within a specific area; these act as protection for a short time, and can be used to run over foes. Also, the alien can now burrow into the ground -- not just to avoid danger, but also to drag a foe underneath with him. Staying low too long, though, will lead to suffocation and death.
The levels are straightforward: run to the right, stop to kill; meet boss, kill boss; repeat. Some levels do mix things up a bit (level two has you running across the rooftops of cars on a highway). Others have you controlling a vehicle (such as a UFO) the entire time.
The bosses are huge; sometimes the camera will pull back, Samurai Shodown-style, to fit the whole thing on the screen. At other times a boss will jump several screens away from the player, although it can still be hit; you can tell the alien's position with an arrow, as in Marvel vs. Capcom. They're are all pattern-based, which aids the game's old-school shooter vibe.
On that note, a common complaint about the previous build was its insane difficulty. (The Flash game is also super-hard.) To address this, the game now has three difficulty settings, though I must say, even at normal, it's still quite easy to die.
The pacing of the game feels pretty spot-on, in the sense that enemy waves, then boss appearances, appear when they should, though the mid-bosses seem a bit too tough for the game's own good. The almost rhythmic feel and manner, in which one plays such a title, (which we can only now equate to games such as DDR or Rez, since nothing comparable existed during the 16-bit era), is definitely there.
If I had to make a direct comparison, I suppose the game which comes closest in tone and feel is Contra: Hard Corps, for the Genesis, due to its urban setting and limited color palette (that's not a criticism; in both cases, it lends a certain degree of charm). Visually, I can easily imagine the game being based upon the exact drawings and plans that the guys who later created Contra conjured up when they were eight.
The console version really does feel like a Flash game, finally unbound from an uncomfortable keyboard layout and browser quirks. It has always felt to me that many Flash offerings that try to emulate the console experience are unfairly doomed to register as a hand-me-down experience, because of the constraints of their interface and format. So it's interesting to see what a few of these designers can really do if given the chance to spread out.
Overall, it feels about damned time to be offered a game like this on a modern console. It's nice to see an old-fashioned run-n-gun not sent automatically to the handheld realm, with its tiny screen. This game has the retro vibe, not because it feels and plays like a SNES or Genesis offering but in the sense that the game was created in full by five people (more or less), and it truly feels like it. At a time when the term "labor of love" is as empty as the interior of a Hallmark Card, Alien Hominid has that homegrown feel one gets from the golden age of console tiles.
As a last comment, I find it worth noting how the publisher, O~3 Entertainment (formed by a team of high-up Capcom refugees), is actively seeking out smaller dev groups such as The Behemoth (the makers of Alien Hominid), and helping them get their games out to the market, without buying out the IP or the team itself. This group might be something to watch.
Matthew Hawkins
is a hominid himself, in his spare time
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