DESTROY ALL HUMANS!
It’s alive! Again…
Can this thing from another time cut it on PS4? Will your Earth stand still? Is it a space invader to cherish or a saucer man to chuck? If you can stomach all of these B-movie references then you already know the answers.
Even in 2005 Destroy All Humans! was a curiosity. PS2 was awash with GTA clones, serious sandbox adventures, and games aiming for grounded realism. But here was a game that took Rockstar’s template, added anal probes, and often literally demanded you destroy all the humans. It’s a cult classic but even this fan had to question the need for a remake.
Having recently spent hours on the new, miserable experience of The Last Of Us Part II, the return of Crypto 147 comes as a welcome palate cleanser. The lean setup and comical violence – ray-gunned enemies leave behind fizzing skeletons, and brains separate from victims with a satisfying pop – is a far cry from Naughty Dog’s torture porn.
As the Furon invader you’re sent to Earth to harvest human DNA, found in brains, to fuel your race’s cloning technology. Venturing across 1950s America with your overlord Pox giving orders and comically mispronouncing everyday people – Prezeeedent – is fun. Handily, Crypto has a creative arsenal of ways to lay waste to the game’s innocent pageant queens, frustrated housewives, and bored teenagers.
Your B-movie weapons enable you to electrocute, fry, and probe your victims. The little alien’s psychic powers ensure you can pick up and throw enemies too. Everything can be upgraded using brain DNA; by the credits you’ll be arcing electrical beams across multiple targets, picking up and hurling tanks, and tugging brains from the rear ends of three victims at a time. Likewise Crypto’s saucer has upgrade paths to spend DNA on, ensuring all-out destruction.
WORLDS COLLIDE
The immediacy of the improved visuals is evident from the off; the lighting model and destruction is a thing of beauty in full flow. It’s the under-the-hood improvements, however, that help Crypto on PS4. You can now attack in multiple ways at once. For example, it’s possible to frazzle enemies with the electrical ZapO-Matic gun while psychically pulling brains and levitating a tank. You’ll need to play to the credits of the story campaign, upgrading all Crypto’s tools of destruction, to feel the benefits of this change of approach, but once done Destroy All Humans! comes alive.
Flipping such freedom of destruction on its head many missions demand Crypto stealth to objectives, using the ‘HoloBob’ to steal human
“YOU’LL BE TUGGING BRAINS FROM THE REAR ENDS OF THREE VICTIMS AT A TIME.”
likenesses and move about the world undetected. The
Men In Black-like agents from Majestic can see through the tech, as can strategically positioned scanners. Reading humans’ minds refreshes Crypto’s hologram disguise, as well as revealing the comical inner thoughts of these era-parodies. While humour too often relies on ‘closeted’ homosexual thoughts (Area 42’s desert hearts need freeing) there’s some fun winks to McCarthyism and the decade’s paranoia. Like its love of destruction, however, Destroy All Humans! is never subtle.
THEM! AND NOW
While the story is relatively short (around six hours), and many missions show their age with repeating dialogue and functional objectives (follow the car, don’t get seen, protect the probes), dipping back into unlocked maps to play minigames and chase objectives is surprisingly enjoyable. We happily spend 30 minutes destroying every building in the newly added Area 42 just because we can. Buildings explode inside out in the same satisfying way the roof blew off the White House in Independence Day.
Technically Black Forest Games has done a great job of modernising a 15-year-old game. It helps, as with Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, that Destroy All Humans! is a stylised cartoon world. Only the restrictive scale of the open world maps and reductive missions give away that this is a game of yesteryear. Overlook that, and you’ll have a blast.
VERDICT
Mission objectives are simplistic and the multiple sandbox maps are small by modern standards, but creative abuse of the game’s destructive weapons never fails to raise a smile. A welcome reinvasion. Ian Dean