Saw over on Joystiq that the guys over at The Behemoth are mailing real-live trophies to the weekly leaderboard winners in the XBLA version of Alien Hominid.
The figs on top of the trophies are metallized versions of the figs that you can buy (I’ve got a set on top of my PC right now) and they’ve got another article on how they custom made the bases.
It’s the little things like this (and great games) that makes me happy to be a fan of these gents.
That is super cool, and The Behemoth are indeed cool dudes, but you can’t really say you like them because of “great games,” as their second game isn’t coming out until next year.
This is totally awesome. I love it when devs and publishers do this kind of stuff, and this is a great idea.
It doesn’t change the fact that Alien Hominid is still too hard to be fun, and it just don’t have this “feel” where you get a really clear indication of where all the hit locations are, a distinct separation from foreground and background, etc. So as much as I want to support The Behemoth for doing super cool stuff like these trophies, no amount of “those are cool guys” is gonna make me buy a game I can’t have fun with.
That’s really cool, but Alien Hominid is not a great game, not even a good one, really…
Alien Hominid is the single worst game I’ve ever played.
The trophies are a neat idea, although real trophies aren’t worth much more than virtual ones.
Outstanding, outstanding fan service.
That’s really cool, but Alien Hominid is not a great game, not even a good one, really…
I respectfully disagree. I think their one game is a great quarter-eater and I look forward to their next game which looks to be even greater.
Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion… even if it is horribly wrong.
Factually wrong. I’d be hard pressed to get any version of AH ever made to eat a quarter.
But yes, nice thing to do for their fans, but I didnt care for AH. Castle Crashers looks nice though. (but so did AH)
Alien Homind might be the greatest game ever. I just suck at it.
Okay the haters win. AH is a crap game. Thanxkbyenow.
I really really want to like this game, but it’s just so damn hard. And not hard in a good way. It’s hard because it’s poorly designed. It’s probably the coolest-looking side-scrolling shooty type game I’ve ever seen, though.
Do we get a trophy now?
In what way? I don’t think it’s unfairly difficult or poorly designed.
I played the Flash version, and I would describe its difficulty as “a close second to Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins.”
QFT.
My twitch-happy 7-year-old son with the lightning-fast hand-eye coordination can’t even play this game because it’s too hard.
Wait, what? “It’s so hard, even my seven year old can’t play it?”
I can’t comment on Gladguy’s 7 yo kid, but I beat Ghosts and Goblins back when I was 9 or 10, I suppose. And by beat I mean it told me the whole damn thing was just an illusion devised by Satan and I got pissed off and yelled a lot.
It isn’t “hard”, it is bullshit.
Contra is hard, Ghosts n Goblins is hard, Ninja Gaiden is hard, Alien Hominid is bullshit.
Jason Cross already pretty much covered this but they made a bunch of huge game design mistakes like not making the foreground things that can hurt you contrast enough from the background graphics, so it is virtually impossible to sum up threats using just perpherial vision. This is a cardinal sin for a shooter of this type. Yeah, you can learn to beat the game via learning patterns, but that’s not very fun.
The worst part is they didn’t fix these mistakes between the last gen console releases and the XBLA release. They are going too far in allowing the perfect graphical look they want to override basic gameplay conventions, which is really a shame because I love the look of the game and the idea of the game, but the game itself is deeply, deeply flawed. Unfortunately a lot of reviewers also seemed to love the look & idea and gave them too much of a pass on the nuts and bolts game stuff.
Alien Hominid would make a great little Flash toon, but it is a shit game.
Have you played the XBLA version? Because I don’t remember the PS2 version having that “you can’t see the projectiles” problem, but I deliberately looked for it in the XBLA version, and it doesn’t exist.