Destroy All Humans! Review

The game itself is divided into story levels, challenge levels and Open World. The story layers take you through the story and challenge you to perform certain optional feats, such as killing 5 people with a rocket or harvesting the DNA of 10 people. You have to complete certain missions - most of which involve wanton destruction - but there is also a small sandbox in the open world, where you can destroy everything in sight, read human thoughts, or slip away in a flimsy disguise.

One can extract DNA from certain tasks, such as harvesting the brains of deceased humans, and the DNA can be used to improve Crypto 137 and its flying saucers.

It's easy to forget to pump up boost points into the saucer, as opposed to the personal skills that you need, and the final mission is identical to the original game, except for a new mission chain in Area 42, a map where you infiltrate and sabotage the Air Force to create your own version of the flying saucer. It fits at this point, but I don't know if it's new or not, and that's neither good nor bad. The modern mission landscape is short and overwhelming, with open worlds barren except for a handful of collectibles and ancillary activities.

It's the old fashioned gameplay that ends up as the stuff that doesn't hold up - and that's not helped by the fact that the biggest difference between this remake and the original is that it has a huge graphical makeover without any meaningful mechanical improvements. Sure, the farms and the open world have been upgraded, but that is no reason to revisit old sites. Destroy All Humans has ambitious ideas more ambitious than the original, from body-swapping gameplay to the seamless transition from ground to -UFO gameplay, but you can find a retreading of old terrain here and it is not the best way to present it, even if the developers would be willing to raise it to more modern standards.

While efforts to preserve a long-forgotten series are admirable, Destroy All Humans is the perfect example of what can go wrong in restoring an aging B-class game. The below-average mechanics of the game are wrapped up in a science fiction plot that strongly resembles an alien movie from the 1950s, even though the game is set during this period. The overall low budget feels outdated, and the design makes the game seem like a relic that could have benefited from a complete modern reinvention, rather than a flawed remake.

The ease of the game makes for easy upgrades, and you will find little to no strategy in Destroy All Humans. You do not have to play this game because it is a fun game, or because you are playing as an alien causing chaos, but I need say no more than this description before you are convinced that I know that this game is not for you.

You can infiltrate areas with holographic disguises to refresh and read the thoughts of those around you, forcing you to relive the same dialogues over and over again. One of the late detonators has to hold down the jump key to the right and you have to press the shutter release to win.

Whether or not it is worth destroying all human beings is another question altogether. The game starts by warning the players that it was created at a time when jokes about things like police brutality made it hard for everyone to be on the same wavelength, so the laughs about the game are out. Black Forest Games has developed a better looking version of the game, but it is still 15 years old, and the original was a success in this regard.

You also need to take peace with outdated game mechanics, tired dialogues and story beats that many of them feature a number of offensive stereotypes. For those who missed it in 2005, it's a long-awaited refresher with new graphics and a range of gameplay subtleties from the Black Forest games. The remake of the Black Forest Game Destroy All Humans is a worthwhile adventure for fans of the series who grew up with crypto escapades on PS2 and Xbox.

True to the 15-year-old source material, the player becomes the typical trigger-happy gray alien Crypto 137 when he lands on Earth to rescue his captive brother Crypto 136. Crypto is on a mission as member of Furon Empire to explore the humans who hold the key to the preservation of their species. The remake remains close to the original plot, giving Crypto and his mission the support of Pox and shameless banter about the craziness of the human races.

In Destroying All Humans, the player takes on the role of Crypto, a vicious little alien who sounds like Jack Nicholson when he arrives on Earth to collect Furon DNA and investigate the whereabouts of his predecessor, a clone that disappeared during the same mission. The great adventure sends Crypto on a tour of six mini-open worlds located in the United States circa 1959, from Midwestern farmland to California beach towns to a spoof of Washington, D.C. Each location has its own story missions and a collection of optional side quests, and the drone-based Crypto race abducts dozens of people to destroy as much property as possible. What sets the game apart is its setting and depiction of a fictional 50s America with white picket fences, intelligence officers, Area 51-style facilities and a brainwashed, paranoid public that fears the red menace and trusts corrupt government officials.

Completing missions rewards you with space money that you can spend on upgrades, but that's for another moment. Like the game Age of the Show from 2005 (15 years before Furon was cloned) Crypto 137a's adventure is charming and full of potential.