Destroy All Humans Review

Destroy All Humans

Release: July 28, 2020
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Developer: Black Forest Games
Genre: XBox One Reviews
PEGI: M
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The original Destroy All Humans came out in 2005, and became somewhat of a cult game for many players, myself included. The crazy sandbox that was created that allowed mass carnage, mayhem, and fun wasn’t common in games during that era. So when THQ purchased the rights to the IP a few years back, I genuinely got a little excited over the thought of Crypto making a return in an all new adventure. Hopefully taking advantage of all the modern amenities gaming provides today and getting a GTA like overhaul into today’s gaming landscape. While that hasn’t happened yet, we are treated to a remake of the original game.

For those not familiar with what this game is, let’s catch you up. You play as Cryptosporidium-137, an alien clone produced by the Furon species. Your predecessor, Crypto-136, has crash-landed on Earth, and it’s your job to find your clone sibling, recover any alien technology, and mine humans for Furon DNA, which was woven into the human population millennia ago by Furons. How do you get that DNA you ask? Well you do so by plucking brains out of their skulls, or worse later in the game…you can obtain some tech that will allow you to anal probe folks and rip their brains out their anus. Yep, I just had to type that sentence in a game review.

The game is compromised of 6 different mini open world environments, ranging from Turnipseed Farms, to beach side areas, to a mock Washington DC area. All of which you will traverse in different types of missions ranging from stealth (where you can disguise yourself as a police officer, innocent bystander, or even the mayor) to complete destruction (either on foot with your entire arsenal at your disposal, or using your UFO and it’s weaponry to light the landscape on fire) all of which can be extremely satisfying as you can clear the map of all life.

Black Forest Games who developed this remake really brought a lot of life to a very dated game. In the original the environment were dust-bowl like with bland colors, lifeless sandboxes, etc. But they brought so much color and life to this game it’s hard to go back, everything from character models to even the buildings were touched up or rebuilt from the ground up and it shows. They kept the entire story and jokes in tact (for better or worse…mostly worse) which is problematic in today’s environment. You have to remember this game was developed in the high point of popularity for things like South Park, and the jokes are on brand as you violate women and cows, read minds that have lots of implications around homophobia, racism, etc and such. Every politician speaks with a Massachussetts like accent remeniscant of JFK and are womanizers. The game does give a disclaimer at the beginning that warns you of the dated jokes and references, but part of me wishes they re-did alot of this as well. The voiceovers are all in tact as well, which is fun as Pox (your overlord) commands your every move…with his Invader Zim voice (for all you nicktoon fans) is a highlight of the game for sure.

Overall the game has more positives than negatives, but some of the things that stick out do bother me. Probably the biggest one for me is the audio, since they are using the same original ones, it sounds very compressed and poor quality overall. Which is exaggerated by the fact the game looks so good, but doesn’t sound it. There was some pop ins (nothing major) and some instances of folks driving invisible cars (which was funny), and longer loadtimes than expected for such small environments. Some of the gameplay as you get a few hours in can get repetitive for some of the less fun activities like stealth and such as well.

In the end, if you are a fan of the series this is definitely a must play. I sincerely hope that THQ decides to continue the series in the future and gives us a proper sequel and modernizes this game further. If you haven’t played it before, just be forwarned this is a 15 year old game that’s been polished up, but in the end it’s a 15 year old game mechanically.