If the current generation of consoles is looked back on in a few decades, chances are they will be remembered for one thing- the birth of the remakes and remasters. Over the course of the last few years, we’ve been treated to visually upgraded versions of everything from Gears of War to the likes of Spyro. The newest addition to the list is Destroy All Humans!. 

If you never ventured into the series, the story follows Crypto-137 on a mission to retrieve fresh alien DNA to boost the quality of the Furon immortality process, as the race is slowly dooming itself by watering down their DNA pool, basically making each new Furon mentally retarded each time they die and are reborn anew. At the bequest of his alien overlord, he ventures into 1950s era Earth to steal DNA from the human race, which is an adjacent cousin of the Furon race due to past crossbreeding. It’s not H.G. Wells, but it provides a light narrative that doesn’t require too much effort from the player. For essentially being the villains of the story, Crypto and his overlord Vox (voiced yet again by Invader Zim’s Richard Horvitz), they are extremely likable yet inept invaders (much like Zim himself) that warrant some decent chuckles here and there from the occasionally dated humor.

The semi-open world gameplay centers around small tasks, usually involving probing, destroying objectives, and abducting livestock or human NPCs. This takes place until the police, military, or shady government forces get wind of your existence, resulting in them giving chase akin to the standard GTA style formula with some light stealth mechanics thrown in to combat the monotony. The high point is when you pilot your space ship to really dish out the destruction, which is where the game excels. Upon completion of story levels, you can revisit the locales to search for collectibles, partake in a handful of side missions involving abducting specific objectives within a set time limit, or destroying everything in your path as quickly as possible; of course, you can also simply create as much destruction as you wish. It’s a fun gameplay loop, albeit a mindless one that after a few hours feels extremely dated, making the fact that this title was originally released in 2005 all the more prevalent.

The game’s biggest issue, which carries over from the original, is the overly dated stealth segments. Crypto gains an ability early in that allows him to disguise himself as one of the human NPCs, some of which require you to take the guise of a specific person, others only needing you to be a human. This ability runs on a timer, and more often than not, only allows you to take over the person just long enough to get to the goal or to the next small group of humans. The issue is not only the timeframe is super slim, but it’s also that the NPCs can’t see you change your disguise without failing, or in some cases, seem to see through your costume much like the overly frustrating Hitman 2 (the original, not the 2018 remake) without any rhyme or reason. This was frustrating in 2005 and feels almost inexcusable in 2020.

The one area that gained some additional polish in the remaster is the aiming function, which was passable in the original version and now offers an ultra-magnetic auto-aim that negates most of the challenge from the gunplay – simply spray and skip the prayer moving non-stop and you’ll be well on your way into the next overly annoying stealth segment. This doesn’t take away from the joyous carnage that ol’ 137 can deal out on a regular basis, which only increases as you pluck points into the various abilities and tools, but it leans heavily into the easy side of the difficulty spectrum.

Overall, this is a pretty cut and dry remake, with only minor improvements and a single new area that was left on the cutting room floor, outside of fresh visuals. The slick new graphics are nowhere near being groundbreaking, nor do they push the current consoles to their limits, but they look leaps and bounds ahead of where the original still lies, even when you boot it up on the Xbox One X. The landscapes look great from the sky hovering above the world in the UFO and the level of detail shown off on Crypto’s face is simply beautiful, in an ugly kind of way. However, the same amount of polish is lacking in other areas, especially the facial expressions of the human NPCs, most of which look like they received fresh current-gen character models but they are wearing PS2 era masks that never sync up with the voice-overs and carry static facial expressions outside of the various cut scenes. It’s almost like the animators threw all of their time and effort into making Crypto and Vox look as amazing as possible and only had the time to cut and paste the original faces onto the human models. The same lackluster approach was taken with the buildings as they explode in huge chunks that would’ve been acceptable on the Xbox 360, but look downright awful on the current hardware.

If you’re looking for a brand new Destroy All Human!s experience, there really isn’t much here that will keep you coming back after the twelvish hour time span that it would take to 100% every facet of the game, but it’s a fun day in front of the TV while it lasts. If you’re new to the Furon world, this is a great jumping-off point, and hopefully will pave the way to remasters of the game’s sequels, or dare I say, a brand new adventure.

7 out of 10

Pros

• A Fresh Coat of Paint Visually
• Richard Horvitz Voicing Another Inept Alien
• A Fun (Yet Mindless) Gameplay Loop

Cons

• Lackluster Stealth Gameplay
• Lip Syncing Issues
• Human NPCs Look Downright Ugly

Destroy All Humans! was developed by Black Forest Games and published by THQ Nordic. It is available on PC, PS4, and X1. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Destroy All Humans!, check out the official site.

 

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