Destroy all humans! review: an A + remaster of a B + game

If you love Destroy All Humans! series, which only lasted three years but had four games, then the headline tells you everything you need to know: Developer Black Forest Games has done an excellent job playing the original 2005 cult classic from the now-defunct Pandemic Studios. This remaster, which I played on Windows PC, works perfectly, looks better than most games on Steam, and stays true to the source material.

That last part is why people looking at the series for the first time may want to proceed with a little more caution. Destroy all humans! is a joyous open world chaos simulator. It is also a time capsule of “comedy” video games from the early 2000s, crudely mimicking the South Park “Equal Opportunity Offender” model.

You play as Cryptosporidium-137, an alien clone produced by the Furon species. His predecessor, Crypto-136, has landed on Earth, and it’s his job to find his clone brother, retrieve any extraterrestrial technology, and extract humans for Furon’s DNA, which was woven into the human population millennia ago by Furons who he allegedly raped. hundreds of thousands of human women. The game compares Furon’s ancient exploits on Earth to the amusing “sailors”. I told you, the “jokes” are not great.

Anyway, all humans have a little Furon DNA, and you’re tasked with harvesting it.

This grand mission sends Crypto on a tour of six mini-open worlds in the United States around 1959, ranging from farmland in the Midwest to a California coastal town and then to a parody of Washington, DC Every place has its own set of story quests, along with a collection of optional side quests where Crypto must compete with a drone, kidnap dozens of humans, or destroy as many properties as possible. Completing missions gives you money on space that you can spend on upgrades. I will get to them in a moment.

Image: Black Forest Games / THQ Nordic via Polygon

Almost everything in the game can be erased with the lasers of your UFO, including the trailer parks, the houses, the factories and, of course, the parodies of some emblematic points of America. Developer Pandemic popularized and enhanced this open-world destruction with its Mercenaries series, but even in 2020, Destroy all humans!The change from micro-destruction to macro-destruction is impressive.

However, most missions keep you on foot as the tiny Crypto-137. While you can’t demolish a building in seconds, the alien has a variety of weapons and abilities. He can disguise himself as a human to enter restricted areas, and he can force humans to follow him or just dance around the place like drunken fools. Crypto carries a small army arsenal in its pockets, including a death ray that arcs electricity between human targets and a black hole that dematerializes everything in its radio.

Each weapon has its own set of upgrades, as does Crypto’s ship, shields, and telekinetic abilities. Telekinesis is the masterpiece: your little alien who lifts cows, people, and cars, and shoots them to the horizon, never tires. My favorite update turns Crypto’s feet into a hoverboard, allowing him to skate, Tony Hawk-style, in crowded suburbs and empty deserts.

There is no good reason this skateboard mechanic is in the game, other than the fact that it feels fun. What really sums it up Destroy all humans! usually.

Of course, not all nonsense is good. One of the weapons is an anal probe, which features optional updates like Butt Pressure Maximizer. “It greatly increases the damage done by successful probes,” explains the game.

Image: Black Forest Games / THQ Nordic via Polygon

This brand of humor is inescapable, shooting in all directions. In a minute, you get jokes about the brain soup hillbillies, the republicans who exploit fear, the existential oppression of the nuclear family and the nationalist paranoia of the red scare. The next minute, you kidnap a beauty queen for body experiments, or you shoot your probe pistol at the straights of government agents, causing the men to grab their asses while brain-busting their asses.

It’s not surprisingly offensive, just dated and not particularly fun; humor misses more than it hits. It’s gross when it hits and toothless when it hits … but these pranks are 15 years old right now, and political humor has a lifespan of about an hour in 2020.

The people responsible for the Destroy all humans! The remake must know how challenging it is for stale humor to land these days, as the game begins with a tonally punctual warning screen:

Humans on planet Earth, please note: while the experience has been updated, the content and historical record of the original Furons invasion remains an almost identical clone. The story, words, and images it contains can be shocking to the modern human brain!

This approach, loyalty to the source material at all costs, has dated the humor of the game, even when the game itself stands out compared to more modern games. It’s a problem we’ve seen before, and we’ll continue to see as long as this type of remastering remains popular.

Image: Black Forest Games / THQ Nordic via Polygon

Destroy all humans! it’s a relic from another time

Destroy all humans! It feels like a video game created by instinct that its creators enjoyed. That means a lot of silly jokes. Much! It also means stealthily entering Area 51 through human camouflage, reading the minds of soldiers for valuable information, flying on the roof of the laboratory and raining in hell on Earth, catching missiles from the air and launching them into tanks. approaching.

It’s not always a good game, but Destroy all humans! constantly feel good to play, assuming you can handle the “raunchy” humor that has aged like a breakfast burrito left in the sun all weekend. A great guess, I know.

Or, to put it another way: Destroy all humans! it’s a damn game B from a time when publishers bothered to fund such things. I wish there were more new games to have these weird and silly changes to goofy ideas with sizable budgets. For now, I suppose, remakes of a different time will have to suffice.

Destroy all humans! It launches on July 28 on Google Stadia, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One. The game was reviewed on PC using a Steam download code provided by THQ Nordic. Vox Media has affiliate associations. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information on Polygon’s ethics policy here.