Review
Release Date: 06.19.2005
Platform:
XboxDeveloper:
Pandemic StudiosPublisher:
THQ, Inc.Reviewed by
Samuel Altersitz on 9.26.2005
| Review Rating: 8/10 | User Rating: 8/10 |
Remember the days of yesteryear? When movies about flying saucers and the aliens within them were fairly common flicks at the saturday matinee or drive-in movie theater? Well, truth be told, neither do I. I may be an old fart compared to most of our readers, but I'm not that old.
Destroy All Humans!, however, takes us back to that period of the mid to late 1950s, when movies with flying saucers had aliens that often-times looked very human, and the saucers flew over cities and caused widespread panic in the masses of the movie world. However, the hero of
Destroy All Humans! is not human at all. Instead,
Destroy All Humans! puts you in control of the alien invader, sent down to rescue one of his own who has been captured by the US government. A fairly serious issue for the aliens indeed.
But, when you really look at it,
Destroy All Humans! is a game that looks back at that more innocent era of the 20th century, and adds a very nice spin of humor to spoof the movies that had been popular at the time. And it is because of this humor tha the game works so well.
Crypto Sporidium 137, as you will come to find out, is the 137th Crypto Sporidium clone. His race has been cloning itself for hundreds of years to maintain itself. Unfortunately, Crypto's race, known as the Furon race, has begun to suffer the effects of degeneration of its DNA in its cloning banks. And Crypto 137's mission begins after his predecessor, Crypto Sporidium 136, is captured by the government on a routine scouting mission to find uncorrupted DNA of his race. Conveniently enough, some Furons had visited earth thousands of years prior, and there is a chance that some of the inhabitants of the planet may contain the uncorrupted DNA the Furon race needs to reintroduce into its cloning banks to continue to survive.
Of course, in order to get this uncorrupted DNA, you need to extract the humans' brain stems. This is where the fun part is for Crypto. He likes killing things.
Crypto is armed, obviously, and as the game progresses, he can get more powerful weapons and trade in DNA to upgrade his weaponry. And, being as the Furons are an advanced race of big-headed aliens, they also have psychic powers. Unortunately, only Crypto's telekinetic power can be upgraded, but you also will be able to eventually double his psychic power reserve.
Destroy All Humans! is broken up into two parts. Each time you leave the mother ship for a new destination, you will have to complete a mission. The missions advance
Destroy All Humans!' short story mode. After you have completed the main mission for the area, you can then enter the free form mode, where you can run around and do side missions, randomly kill the evolved monkeys that seem to control this waste of a planet, or even jump in your saucer and lay waste to their entire population centers (which are conveniently rebuilt when you go back to that area again, allowing for more destruction).
Also, after an area is unlocked, and there are no more main missions, you may return to the area at any time from the mother ship to go and do any side missions you might want to do, blow things up with your saucer, collect Furon probes scattered throughout the areas, or just destroy all the humans you see.
Of course, doing so is not without some risk.
Destroy All Humans! uses a system of awareness similar to that found in the
Grand Theft Auto series. As you get noticed more and more, the humans' alert level goes up. As their alert level goes up, you have to deal with more and more well armed and powerful enemies. The lowest level enemies are your every-day pedestrians. Then there will be gun-toting hicks (depending on the area you are in), then police officers, soldiers (and their accompanying tanks), the mysterious G-Men of the top secret US government force Majestic (think your basic Men in Black types who carry around alien powered weapons and are less susceptible to your psychic disguise Holo-Blob ability), and finally giant deadly robots.
Randomly killing humans, blowing up vehicles and buildings, and just plain old being seen all raise the humans' awareness level. Your Holo-Blob disguise ability, however, will allow you to lower your awareness level fairly easily, provided there aren't many G-Men in the area-- they can disable your disguise quickly.
Unfortunately,
Destroy All Humans is a fairly short game, if one just plays through the main missions. Also, unfortunately, many of the missions feel rather tedious, and since there are no checkpoints, there are many times you will feel frustrated when going through some long and labrious ones, dying, and having to do them all over again.
On a fortunate note, however, the real appeal of
Destroy All Humans! is in its humorous approach. The guys at Pandemic Studios didn't take the game as a serious game while they were designing it, and instead decided to take this game for how it should be taken, a spoof. As such, the humor in the game comes out in many levels, from the conversations had in the game and the thoughts of the humans as you read them, to the names on buildings and to your guns and some of their effects (especially the anal probe gun).
Destroy All Humans! does have some nice graphics on it, with very nice lighting effects going on. Unfortunately, due to the streaming used to keep the areas populated, it suffers from the
GTA effect of things disappearing or just appearing when you turn around and such. The sound design is also very nice, with excellent voice acting and a musical score that feels like it was ripped from the old sci-fi movies of the 50s. There's also some nice bonuses, such as a making-of feature, a few minutes from the ever famous Plan 9 From Outer Space, as well as the entire film Teenagers From Outer Space.
I wouldn't recommend buying
Destroy All Humans! at full price, really-- due to it's overall short length and fairly run-of-the-mill gameplay. But it's a definite renter, and when the price drops down to $20, a definite pick up title.
