Reviews// Alien Hominid

The story behind Alien Hominid's creation is one of the most reassuring tales one could hope to hear in the current industry climate. So much emphasis is now placed on the role of big name franchises and technical prowess that all too often developers aren't given sufficient incentive to actually make games fun to play. But because Alien Hominid was originally a downloadable mini-game: that was downloaded over six million times before this console version had even been announced, the developers knew that the basic premise was, at the very least, quite fun.

And looking at and playing Alien Hominid [American PS2 version reviewed], we can see an inspirational light at the end of the tunnel. This is one of those games that could help put the 'fun' back into the 'fundamentals of gameplay‘. Because, of course, without the 'fun', it has just been ‘damental gameplay‘; and that's not been much use to anyone. But the point is, if developers have a talent and passion for what they do, they can independently knock out a modest portion of old-school genius like this for only a fraction of the cost and, if this sort of thing keeps cropping up, the bigger publishers might conceivably take note, and stop shovelling out the dire tripe they frequently produce.

If all it takes is a bit of love and a copy of Macromedia Flash in order to spawn such delights, just think of the possible profit margin! Even EA couldn't dismiss that as a viable option. In the US, AH has already been published as a budget title by 0-3 Entertainment; but at present, a prospective European release is still up in the air. But for the £15-£20 mark, this would surely merit plenty of interest amongst gamers old and new. And although nothing has been announced as yet, stay tuned to SPOnG news to see if anything changes. Otherwise it may join the ever-swelling list of ‘cool things that you can’t have’, that we do have and that we are annoyingly smug about. Ha!