On Reflection

Amazingly, Alien Hominid still stands as probably, depending on your tastes, the best looking XBLA title out there, and, since its release, remains one of the only competent running, jumping, shooting, platforming type of experiences. You still can’t see enemy fire though, which sucks ass like an alien ass-sucking device.

The Score

Alien Hominid is one of the most wonderful-looking games we’ve ever played on the 360. Happy? Good, now we can get on with giving it a kicking…

Don’t get us wrong, it’s not that Alien Hominid is a bad game; it’s just that there were a number of issues that caused problems with the original Xbox version and The Behemoth has seemingly done nothing to fix them. Take those glorious hi-res visuals, for example. Yes they look as if they’ve been created from the sacred tears of the little baby Jesus, but they also happen to do an amazing job of hiding enemy bullets. There’s nothing worse than having your cute-as-a-button alien die because you couldn’t spot the bloody bullet that nailed him and it happens too regularly to be any fun.

Then there’s the somewhat clunky controls, the insane difficulty level that makes you want to stick your hand down your throat and rummage around until you’ve found your spleen and removed it, and the fact that there’s no online multiplayer experience in the full game. Silly Behemoth. On the other hand, the mini-games are plentiful and brilliant, the levels are extremely well designed and as that woman on Little Britain says, “Cor, its bloody gorgeous!!”.

7 out of 10