One of the most iconic games from the Playstation 2 era of consoles is Destroy All Humans! A sci-fi parody of 1950's cinema and Cold War America. The game originally released on the Playstation 2 console in June of 2005 with a sequel, titled Destroy All Humans! 2 released the following year. You play as Cryptosporidium 137 or Crypto for short and control our favorite little "green" spaceman completing Cow abductions and Human probings through various levels spanning the entire continental United States. In July of 2020 publisher THQ Nordic released a remaster of Destroy All Humans! And Destroy All Humans! 2 with the game being developed by the Black Forest Games studio.
Destroy All Humans! is a 3rd person game with over the shoulder camera angles that feel a little dated and sluggish for 2020. A product of its remastered past. It still handles superb and feels okay for the year it was first produced. Sounds in the game are true to the original. In fact, the dialogue for the game was not rerecorded, the original dialogue for the game was used, but enhanced to sound better on modern consoles. The graphics have been updated to full 1080p resolution with a steady 60 fps framerate, a vast improvement over the blocky ps2 graphics.
Gameplay is set in medium open world maps where you have set goals to complete as well as optional objectives that will help net you even more points. Speaking of points. What you are collecting is Furon DNA by harvesting human brains (as well as completing objectives, as I mentioned before) You can explode the humans heads at will and collect their DNA to add to your... gene pool. The quests can be rather mundane and are not all that exciting, consisting of simple objectives. Scan 10 human thoughts. Create a distraction. Bend some T.V. antennas to enhance mind control abilities. Simple and sometimes repetitive tasks. They are made more enjoyable by the bonus objectives. Turning a simple "Kill all the cops" mission into a game of "how can I throw all these bastards into the pool to drown them?"
The game also includes the ability to cruise around the world in your flying saucer. Allowing you to wreak havoc all over the lower 48. It is great fun to use the tractor beam to throw explosives at buildings from afar. Once levels get completed they open up into a free roam type level where there are collectible probes for you to gather as well as other objectives to complete. Little side missions that can have you abducting cows or maybe even humans. Some of these challenges are a tad difficult and will take several attempts to attain the maximum scores achieveable.
Unlockable Skins
The thing that will stand out the most in this game is by far the humor. The game was made 15 years ago and the jokes aged about as well as milk from the alien you see above. Not good. So bad, in fact, that the game initially warns you about the crude, dated humor. Homophobia is rampant, women are vapid sex objects. The cops are skull bashers, and mostly Irish. It punches up and it puches down. And to be honest, in 2020, it kind of punches itself in the dick. This humor isn't the pinnacle of comedy it once was. And maybe it never should have been.
The game has been met with mixed reviews and that seems to stem mostly from the humor of the game. Others note that the gameplay itself is dated and that hampers the playing experience of the title. Personally I am enjoying Destroy All Humans! as a wonderful blast from the past, reliving a simpler form of video game in a simpler era of America. Goddamn commies.
7.5/10
All gameplay is my own, taken by myself. It was taken on a PS4 PRO. August 8th 2020.
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