Alien Hominid HD Lands

The Xbox Live Arcade has, thankfully, been invaded by a newish title, in the form of an HD update of 2004's Alien Hominid.  Was it always this tough to play?

Having never experienced the original cartoon alien action, I've been looking forward to an arcade game that was going to feel new and fresh to me.  After a lightning fast download, what I found was absolutely fresh and fun and newish, but the game still feels like a Flash-based game to me, and hard as hell, to boot.  Alien Hominid puts a spin on the E.T. story by giving the little outer space protagonist a big fat gun and the power to jump.

It may be my advancing age or my pork rind addiction, but my brain can't seem to move quickly enough for just my first few minutes with the game.  You're given a mountain of lives with which to practice killing evil, illustrated FBI agents, but I couldn't catch a break.  Though a simple platformer in nature, it seems you have to be amped up on caffeine just to keep your alien alive - what with the knee-jerk jumping and shooting.  FBI robots can be nasty mini-bosses.

The game supports up to 4 players over Xbox Live and is stuffed full with 16 main game levels, 7 mini-games and 50 PDA levels.  The art style, even in the PDA levels, is a funny mix of HD vibrance and hand-drawn simplicity.  The game will cost you 800 Microsoft points, which is $10 US.

Give the game a spin; you may find you're much more skilled than I.