Destroy All Humans! Video Game Review
Pandemic Studios, despite receiving nothing but love from most, has thoroughly disappointed me with its roster of games. Not that the studio’s games have been terrible mind you, it’s just I don’t think many have lived up to the ungodly hype they generated prior to release. Except for the original Full Spectrum Warrior, every other game in recent memory has let me down by indescribable proportions. The Star Wars: Battlefront games have been admirable attempts to clone the beloved Battlefield series, but in the end the gameplay in both just felt sluggish and dull. Mercenaries too fell short of my expectations, leaving Destroy All Humans as my last bastion of hope, but sadly Destroy All Humans has become another victim of its own hype, once again failing to deliver on yet another brilliant premise that showed limitless potential from the outset of its conception.
Please don’t get me wrong, though. Destroy All Humans isn’t a terrible game at all, in fact it is enjoyable more often than not, however, it fails to bring any scrap of innovation or lasting appeal to the gaming landscape as it was expected to do. Take for instance the storyline: it starts out on the right track, but quickly falls off the map in no time flat. You are Cryptosporidium 137 (Crypto), a being of the self-cloning alien race known as the Furons and one of the most unlikable lead characters I’ve seen in a long time with his Jack Nicholson knock-off voice (more on this rubbish later) and completely obnoxious attitude and sense of humor. Anyways, back to the story. Crypto has been sent to by his leader Pox to harvest the DNA from the humans of planet Earth whose brainstems actually contain strands of Furon DNA inside. As the game’s title aptly implies, the basic objective is to destroy the human race. Eventually, a secret agency of men in black known as the Majestic gets involved, and of course the army is the standard opposition from the get go, but there’s never anything of grave interest to follow here and the majority of the time you’ll be best served skipping through the cut-scenes.
One element the game does do right in respect to the story, however, is capture the campy atmosphere of the 1950’s sci-fi movies like Teenagers From Outer Space and Plan 9 From Outer Space (clips from these are actually unlockable items on the disc), and even more recently a movie like Mars Attacks. Disappointingly, while the intended cheesiness works well to create the perfect atmosphere for invading earth, the attempted comedy just isn’t funny – plain and simple. The humor mostly boils down to the same sophomoric, potty humor that’s been played to death in movies, TV and games for ages now, and even the few political stabs wind up pretty pathetic. Looking on the bright side, the random comments heard when reading the minds of unknowing humans occasionally provide random jocularity, but I found that many of the comments began to get recycled quite often after a while.
If you had been following Destroy All Humans since it was announced, you are probably under the impression that the gameplay offers the open-ended, sandbox style similar to the oft-ripped GTA series. Sadly those impressions are flat-out wrong because this game isn’t open-ended in any shape, form or fashion. Most games get knocked for trying to rip-off what GTA revolutionized the gaming industry with, however in the case of Destroy All Humans taking the copycat route would’ve equated to a better game.
Instead of giving one mammoth-sized, free-roaming world to invade and wreak havoc upon, Destroy All Humans consists of six smaller areas completely separate from each other, and a mission-based, episodic game structure that has you going back and forth between the Furon mothership and the next area as you complete missions, which eliminates any sense of being in a cohesive environment. Over these six areas, ranging from countryside farmlands to bustling cities and towns to the arid desert location of Area 42, there are 21 story-based missions to work through. While it’s unfortunate that these 21 mission only take up about six to eight hours of your time, and less than 50% of the entire game, it’s even worse that every mission basically consists of the same handful of objectives. Destroying buildings, killing a certain number of humans, escorting hypnotized opposition, harvesting DNA and sneaking into secured locations via human disguises – these are the few activities you’ll be partaking in every step of the way. Side missions are available in each of the areas as well, however they don’t really ever have you doing much more than checkpoint racing or destroying specific targets within a time limit. Needless to say, playing gets repetitive during long sessions.
Another vital flaw is the lacking challenge the game throws at you. Since Crypto has a recharging health shield instead of a typical health bar, the second you are near death you can flee behind a building or some other cover and wait for his shield to charge back up. And this can be done without a lot of resistance due to the weak enemy AI. Except for the finishing stretch of missions, which do stiffen up in terms of difficulty, the basic mission structure for the first three-quarters of the game does nothing to put your gaming skills to the test. Casual gamers will certainly find the accessible nature appealing, but the hardcore crowd will likely cringe at how much of a cakewalk the experience is.
My words up until now haven’t been exactly glowing, but Destroy All Humans does have its fair share of winning qualities. Although the linear and repetitive mission structure is a sore spot, the actual third-person gameplay therein is solidly implemented and entertaining in a mindless sort of way. While on foot, Crypto is a venerable walking death machine with his upgradeable, multi-faceted blaster and psychokinesis powers. Crypto’s gun comes in four mods including the Zap-O-Matic, Disintegrator Ray, Ion Detonator and the ever-popular Anal Probe, each of which has various levels of upgrades purchasable on the mothership using harvested DNA as currency. Ejecting brains from human heads with the anal probe and blowing up tanks using the Ion Detonator is good fun, but the psychokinetic powers deliver the biggest smiles. Whether using telekinesis to launch cows, humans, tanks, cars, barrels, crates and rocks into the air or to hypnotize unsuspecting opposition into doing your every bidding, or using the Holobob to take on the appearance of your cross-haired target, Crypto’s mental capabilities are a simple joy to tinker around with. It also helps that the Havok-powered in-game physics are some of the best around, and the controls are as comfortable and responsive as can be.
On foot you can perform plenty of satisfying actions, but only when you take Crypto airborne will you experience the greatest entertainment that game has in store. While running around, Crypto can seamlessly take flight with his trusty jetpack, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is an absolute blast, however once you take to the skies in a Furon UFO you’re in for a satisfying, if not overly simplistic, session of destruction and mayhem on a massive scale. It sucks that you can only take off and land the saucer in certain areas, and the transitioning process between on-foot and UFO control is disjointed by an annoyingly unskippable cut-scene each and every time, but those are minor caveats in the face of the game’s best attribute.
Like its other titles, Pandemic has outdone itself with the graphics and overall presentation for Destroy All Humans. Crypto’s in-game model is wonderfully detailed and definitely easy going on the eyes, the ranging environments are varied and nicely populated with buildings, people and other objects, and the lighting and special effects are damned impressive. There is a problem, though, and unfortunately it’s one doozey of a problem at that. Inexplicably, Destroy All Humans showcases the worst graphical pop-up and draw-distance flaws I think I’ve ever seen in a game. When flying around in the UFO, large chunks of the environment can be seen loading in as you hover about, and while traveling on the ground objects like boulders and trees sometimes remain completely invisible until you run right into them and get stuck – it’s simply unforgivable to see graphical bugginess rise to this level.
Carried over from the story’s influence, the 50’s sci-fi flick theme is brought into the aural portions of the game to tremendous results with cheesy voice acting, music and zapping sound effects that do their inspirations proud. Of course, Crypto’s third-rate Jack Nicholson sound-alike voice actor is utterly rancid and sounds nothing like an alien should sound – I have no idea what the developers were thinking with this casting decision.
So when you add together everything Destroy All Humans has to offer, what you end up with at the end of the equation is a repetitive, simplistic and accessible game with a healthy plating of good ole’ fun-in-small-doses gameplay that makes it the quintessential rental. If you’re into games you can jump in and out of in short spurts, Destroy All Humans may actually be worth owning, but ultimately the overall package is too short-lived to hold your attention. You’ll definitely want to give the game a shot one way or another, but the best advice I can give is to try before you buy.
Rating: 7.5/10
