Alien Hominid HD. Most other reviews focus on "haha funny alien shoots things". Because of the context of it trying desperately to be Metal Slug while not nailing the basics, I felt that it was more or less impossible not to review it without comparing it back to Metal Slug. I can't promise the writing is exactly exceptional (written in the deep throes of butthurt while having played it recently) but frankly I've read
Alien Hominid is a run 'n gun platformer (that originally started as a fairly basic Flash-based game) that tries to emulate the gameplay of the arcade hit Metal Slug, but is so amateurish in its execution that it honestly feels like the developers enjoyed Metal Slug but did not actually understand what it is about Metal Slug that makes it such a good run 'n gun game. Metal Slug was a smash hit in the arcades that spawned numerous sequels, featuring a cartoonish military aesthetic. The titular Metal Slug was a tank you could ride around, that would protect you from a few hits, and gave you some extra firepower. Metal Slug is rightfully regarded as one of the best run 'n gun platformers out there, due to its absolutely solid game design combined with gorgeously detailed artwork with tons of frames of animation, great sound design, and enjoyable levels. Metal Slug is a joy to play and should be experienced by any fan of this style of game, and because it was the very clear inspiration for Alien Hominid's design, this review will frequently compare the two. That's not to say that Metal Slug is the only run 'n gun series worth playing, and there are plenty other solid run n' guns out there such as Sunset Riders and Moo Mesa by Konami, or even various indie releases (such as REDPULSE, a relatively recent game as of the writing of this review). Heck, there are a few games that feel heavily inspired by Metal Slug such as Demon Front as well as Dolphin Blue that are highly enjoyable due to them being mechanically solid. Alien Hominid unfortunately is not worth playing, mainly due to how broken its core fundamentals are.
It's immediately clear when playing Alien Hominid that the game is designed around Metal Slug, with a few additional frills. You've got grenades to throw, and a shot that you have to button mash to fire (this was one of the few complaints about Metal Slug and I prefer it with a rapid fire setup). Tapping attack near an enemy uses a knife slash attack like Metal Slug, but you've also got a charge shot, which helps spare your fingers during bosses in theory, as well as the ability to jump on the heads of enemies to ride them around or bite them, and also the ability to dig underground, instantly becoming invulnerable to most attacks as you dig, whereby you can attack enemies from below for a short period of time, but cannot move until you dig yourself out. The shoulder buttons perform dodge rolls too, with forward rolling moving you under high bullets. You can also ride vehicles around, although due to their lack of health or maneuverability you'll generally not be able to use them for very long compared to Metal Slug's tanks. Unfortunately, much of this expanded moveset feels superfluous and impractical:
• Grenades have a strict 3 grenade limit, and you can't throw another one until the explosion animation finishes. They're also quite weak, and instead of mapping the button to a shoulder button so you can easily hold a charge shot while using grenades, it's mapped to a face button that's opposite your main shot. Compare this to Metal Slug, where grenades could be spammed very rapidly at close range for significant damage. The grenades in Alien Hominid end up feeling mostly useful for destroying buildings to get new weapons and a shield to provide some protection, as well as taking out the occasional enemy hiding behind cover.
• Enemies constantly spawn in Alien Hominid, meaning using the charge shot regularly can actually be riskier than trying to keep a constant stream of fire down to kill whatever's in front. The charge shot is handy for bosses though, but it seems with aggressive button mashing you can match or possibly beat the charge shot in damage, and on enemies that gives points per shot you get more lives by plinking them down with the basic shot.
• Running around and biting enemies gives more points than shooting them, but enemies can shoot out your hostage, putting you suddenly in danger at close range.
• Digging is helpful for getting the occasional secret, and you become invulnerable the moment you start the dig animation, but you can't stay underground forever as you asphyxiate eventually. There are also several attacks such as grenades or tanks driving over you that can kill you while hiding this way, meaning it turns into a bit of trial an error. Sitting still also feels antithetical to this kind of game and isn't a terribly fun mechanic.
• Dodge rolling has no invulnerability and feels like a poor way of moving around to make up for your relatively slow horizontal movement speed. You move under high bullets by doing a forward roll, but forget that and accidentally try to do a back roll and you'll get hit by a bullet. I'd have rather seen rolling mapped to one button that always did a forward roll, rather than keeping a useless back roll in the game.
• Firing downwards in the air lets you float longer. Both Metal Slug and Alien Hominid have a single, floaty jump when you press the jump button, denying you from making short hops. Unfortunately, Alien Hominid's downward firing thing is a curse as much as it is a blessing, as it can mess up your jump timing to evade attacks if you're also trying to fire at something below you. I'd much rather see Alien Hominid have used a more player controlled jump height, where you can make short hops or jump as high as you want, closer to something like Mega Man. The player's hitbox in Alien Hominid is much larger relative to enemy bullets than it is in Metal Slug, and enemies are very aggressive with faster attacks, meaning dodging is generally quite a bit harder.
• The knife eventually becomes unsafe and enemies can outright block it, multiple times in a row in the case of the Area 51 mobs. There's really no reason basic mobs should outright be able to ignore your melee attempts, and what can happen is enemies can quickly shoot you at close range in between knife slashes.
The game tries to replicate Metal Slug by offering various weapons, such as a piercing laser or an acid launcher cannon that visually resembles Metal Slug's shotgun. However, most of the weapons barely feel stronger than your basic weapon on bosses. There's actually only two really useful bonus weapons for bosses, namely the spreadshot and the rapid fire purple gun. The best part about getting new weapons ends up being the shield, rather than the weapon itself. I'm not sure how many hits the shield can take. It usually seems to be 1 hit, but I swear I sometimes see it soaking a hit without breaking. Some weird collision detection maybe? Compare this to Metal Slug, where all the weapons are a genuine upgrade on top of the basic pistol. The shotgun in Metal Slug is particularly powerful, whereas its equivalent in Alien Hominid is strictly a downgrade due to its close range nature and lack of damage on bosses.
Alien Hominid's art by Dan Paladin is cute and amusing, but the actual use of the art in the game leads to some gameplay issues due to things like poor colour scheme choices, or the art not making it clear where hitboxes are for platforming. Enemy bullets flash purple and green, in a game where many background elements include these colours. The levels set in Russia are particularly troublesome, with purple snow and green trees, where the enemy bullets do not stand out as immediately well as Metal Slug's flashing light blue/orange bullets do on Metal Slug's generally grey and brown desaturated backgrounds. And this isn't to say anything of the relatively massive explosions that can often distractingly cover elements of the screen in Alien Hominid. The most significant examples of collision detection boundaries not always accurately matching the art I can think of include:
• There's a building under construction early on where you can climb some girders. There's a section where it looks like you can walk up an angled girder to a straight one, but you actually fall through the point where they meet.
• There are some sandbags piled up in 2-1 that look high enough to potentially block enemy shots, but shots just barely travel above them, meaning you're in danger standing on them.
• Early on you can drive a bulldozer into some buildings that block your way. If for some reason you're on foot and not in the bulldozer, the building still blocks you, despite your character clearing being drawn as standing in front of it on the pavement.
• The PDA Games minigame has really wonky collision detection, where you can walk your character into the sides of walls. The walls only have a physical boundary in their center, past where their outer lines are drawn.
This game is hard. Normal and even Easy will absolutely brutalize players, even compared to Metal Slug's standards. Most of the difficulty comes from the endlessly respawning waves of enemies that tend to rapidly jump in and fire unexpectedly. Many bosses feature these respawning enemies, such as the early pudding boss where a key fire hydrant actually blocks your shots from reaching enemies that are behind it, meaning you can't even always deal with the respawning enemies. Though they only fire occasionally, it's just enough to seriously mess up your attempts at nailing down boss patterns. It's very easy for this game to fall into cheap deaths territory, far moreso than the relatively tame Metal Slug which is a difficult but entirely fair arcade game that allows you to play it at your own pace. Metal Slug has a time limit, but the time limit is very generous and enemies are not constantly respawning, so you can play it slower and more methodically if you want. Alien Hominid on the other hand demands lots of memorization to succeed without dying, and has no shame in throwing cheap deaths your way.
There's a couple of space flight levels that attempt to break up the run 'n gun elements but they're horrendously implemented. The controls are terrible, where you'll want to pretty much hold X and A constantly on the Xbox 360 controller. But you also want access to the B button as needed to boost thrust. Fortunately the game has unlisted mappings on the shoulder buttons (LT to fire, RT to boost) which are far preferable to allow you to feather the B button as needed. Still, the space flight levels control terribly, and generally consist of you getting swarmed while you eventually just run from everything using your ship's rear cannons, since it's way safer than trying to use the frontal cannons. The bosses in these levels aren't so dangerous as they are tedious, frankly.
As if to confirm that Alien Hominid is well aware of its unusual issues, you start with an unusually high number of extra lives (5) and a massive number of extra continues. It's almost as if Alien Hominid expects people to treat it like a credit feeding game, instead of a game that, like many quality arcade games, can reasonably be beaten on a single credit. There is an achievement for beating it without getting a game over, but to do so is frankly ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is the scoring system or lack thereof; you get points for beating enemies, but there's no time limit and infinitely spawning enemies, and there's multiple sections where, with a lot of patience, you can essentially milk enemies indefinitely and rack up a huge number of lives (every 1000 points awards a life). Metal Slug had some scoring issues such as randomized value point items and a scoring exploit where you could shoot a specific tank constantly for a ton of points until time ran out, but even these don't match Alien Hominid's scoring problems, where score is rendered irrelevant due to infinite time, infinite enemies, and multiple safe places to milk them for as much score as your patience allows (amassing a huge stock of lives this way is probably the key to beating it on one credit).
To its credit, some of the boss fights are genuinely fun, but they feel too few and far in-between. The core gameplay feels sloppy, making it difficult to take seriously throughout its 15 or so levels. And 2 of those levels are the obnoxious space levels which are annoying at best to play. The constantly respawning enemies almost everywhere are also frankly not fun to deal with due to how they constantly pop in and can instantly fire off a shot at close range at you, making the level designs feel like a bit of a mess.
The main game features 2 player multiplayer, and a few minigames are 4 player. Multiplayer adds a bit of fun to things if a friend's willing to play, but frankly you could also just play Metal Slug or any other more competent multiplayer platformer instead. Shadow of the Ninja for the NES is a great one with multiplayer for instance, Gunstar Heroes is another classic for the Sega Genesis that's also fun while being more forgiving. Alien Hominid has many small minigames, but I'd rather they'd focused on tightening up the main game instead of making these. Indeed, the massive quantity of level packs as DLC for the mediocre PDA Games is rather questionable. Does anyone really want to play an unimpressive multiplayer platformer with spotty collision detection when trying to jump on enemies when they could be playing something else with multiplayer? And there's no real excuse for the weird collision detection that doesn't match the drawn elements. If you want a 4 player platformer, please consider something like Micro Mages instead, a homebrew NES 4-player game with amazingly fun multiplayer platforming.
Alien Hominid HD for the Xbox 360 is a widescreen remake of a game originally released on multiple 4:3 aspect ratio consoles. I haven't played the original Gamecube or PS2 releases so I don't know if anything mentioned here only applies specifically to the Xbox 360 release, but from what I've seen of gameplay footage, most of the issues apply across all versions of the game. I've beaten Alien Hominid on the standard difficulty, thanks to the aid of using a lot of additional credits.
The only reason I can say you'd want to play and own this is to unlock the additional character in the Xbox 360 version of Castle Crashers. Made by the same developers, Castle Crashers as well as their later BattleBlock Theater are far more competent games and actually worth checking out. I've put a lot of playtime in Castle Crashers so it's not so much that they're bad developers as it is that Alien Hominid simply isn't a well-executed game. It's a mediocre first effort, one that tries to capture the essence of Metal Slug, but fails to show an understanding of how Metal Slug's refined gameplay managed to make it a smash hit. Alien Hominid's issues with its game mechanics unfortunately leaves it feeling a bit like a cheap, amateurish attempt at a Metal Slug fangame, rather than a properly polished game that can stand on its own. 4/10
(I've added a bit that wasn't present on the original review submission about the knife to the above, and also corrected an error; I actually forgot the space levels allow you to fire and move using the shoulder buttons because it's not listed in the level's tutorial, despite the shoulder buttons being the superior way to control the space levels so your thumb is free for the B button)