Destroy All Humans! is the remake of the original Destroy All Humans game that originally released all the way back in 2005! Set in the late 1950’s you play as evil alien clone Crypto-137, tasked by the Furons (your species) to find your predecessor Crypto-136 who has crash landed on Earth. While there you need to gather DNA from unsuspecting humans, recover alien technology and generally just cause havoc!
The story itself feels like a cheesy old B-movie sci-fi film, something you wouldn’t necessarily say was good, but it was enjoyable enough that it keeps your attention but it’s the enjoyable gameplay that is the highlight here. The game itself plays in a third person perspective where you utilise a variety of special psychic abilities and alien weaponry in Cryptos arsenal. These include things like telekinesis (which allows you to throw a selection of things, people and cows around) and a death ray that shoots electric at your foes. You can also jump onto Cryptos UFO and cause even more destruction. It’s a shame that the UFO sections aren’t utilised more as the majority of the missions have you playing on foot (albeit with a cool little jetpack) over flying around the levels in your ship, but the time you do get to control it is fantastic as you can destroy pretty much everything! The weapons, abilities and UFO can also be upgraded. Making them more powerful and giving them new uses.
The game plays out over 23 story missions that are spread across six open world areas that have been themed on places from the United States. The game itself lasts around 8 to 10 hours depending how in depth you play each mission and if you are searching for the collectables. All the missions can be revisited from the menu too, so if you particularly enjoyed one of them you can replay them over and over. There is a star ranking for how well you complete each mission so there is plenty of incentive to replay to get all 3 stars.
The game itself features a warning screen regarding its outdated humour style. The original games dialogue and audio files that have had their quality enhanced by the remakes developer Black Forest Games. The dialogue reeks of the early 2000s style of videogame when it was a time of edgy, teen like, crude humour that hasn’t aged as well as the rest of the game. It’s a shame the audio wasn’t re-recorded with some more modern references etc but I can see why they choose to go down this route.
However the audio isn’t the only thing that received a fresh coat of paint. The character models and cutscenes were improved and they also incorporated motion capture into the animations. Whilst the core game is the same as it was in the original 2005 game, the loading times, UI and general detail has seen a significant improvement and it looks like a game of the 2020’s in terms of graphical appeal. There is also an additional mission that was not included in the original game called “Lost Mission of Area 42”. This mission was originally scrapped during the originals development so its nice to see it be completed and added to the game here.
It’s a very competent remake. You can see the care and attention the new developers have put into the game to bring it back into the spotlight whilst also keeping as faithful as possible to the original. It definitely gives me the same vibes I got from playing the Saints Row 3 remake/remaster recently in the way it feels and sounds super familiar, but it looks fantastic.
Despite its shiny new coat of paint Destroy All Humans! still feels and plays like a game from the Playstation 2 era. The jokes are corny, the voice acting is a little off and the controls and gameplay feel abit clunky, BUT that’s ok! The game itself is funny, crazy and over the top and I had a blast playing it again after all these years! The crass humour may not be for some people but the open world levels, explosive carnage and ongoing fun throughout the whole time of playing the game more than make it worth playing for all. I can’t wait to play the Destroy All Humans! 2 remake that will be landing sometime in 2022 too!
Total Score: 7.5/10
Destroy All Humans! was released onto the Xbox store on 28th July 2020. It is playable on Xbox One and the Xbox Series X/S via backwards compatibility. The game is priced at £34.99 and can be purchased HERE. You can also grab the game on other major consoles and PC. You can also play the game via Xbox Game Pass and cloud stream the game if you subscribe to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. I previously played the first 2 missions this way when the game first hit Game Pass and found it worked pretty well despite my slower internet speeds!
We were provided a copy of the game for this review. Thanks for that! We played it on the Xbox Series X.
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