Destroy All Humans – Review

In Destroy All Humans you have the chance to take charge of the Furon, Cryptosporidium, that’s Crypto to his friends (not that I imagine he has many) in his tireless campaign to wipe out the human race, from the least significant hillbilly in the depths of US 50’s farmland, to the secret society which unsurprisingly is in actual control of the country, nay the planet.

The game, set in a kind of parallel 1950’s USA with typically hilarious town names, sets off in the backwaters amongst the tee-totalling, truck driving cow farmers of the decade. Your first task being to find intelligent life – starting with cows – this gets of to a particularly messy start, but once you track down the true hub of Earth’s intelligence, things are only going to get a lot, lot messier.

Gameplay
So, armed with your trusty arsenal of increasingly monstrous weapons, provided by seemingly the only other Furon available for the campaign Orthopox, Crypto begins invading Earth in order to find and devour the precious DNA hidden deep in their brain-stems, and using it as currency to fund your invasion. However, this aim of removing brain-stems turns out in very short order to be a completely useless and wasteful practice, usually helping you get little more than a bullet in the face while you stand like the proverbial bulls-eye dragging the brain stem out, only to find that it warrants you only 10 DNA points (a paltry sum, indeed, in the grand scheme of humanity’s entirety). Eventually however you will find that by sticking around in one of the various available towns, after completing the mission Orthopox provides you, will give you the opportunity to gain extra DNA by completing Grand Theft Auto “Frenzy” style missions, usually killing a set number of humans, collecting ‘x’ brains or ‘x’ing ‘y’ ‘z’ (insert generic destroy and collect words) in a set amount of time.

Speaking of Grand Theft Auto, I would be remiss if I failed to make at least one comparison with Rockstar’s gun-toting, free roaming, prostitute kill-fest. So here goes, basically there isn’t much of a comparison at all, where GTA offered sprawling cities with numerous street walking characters and a variety of diverse and adaptable game scenario’s; Destroy All Humans offers you the opportunity of linear and repetitive missions in limited pseudo liberal towns. The size of DAH’s towns however, isn’t really the factor in this though, it’s really more to do with your limited choice actions and inability to properly free roam due to the nature of your only means of not getting the hell shot out of you being the ‘holobob’ disguise which requires constant maintenance and is far from foolproof. There is an inherent problem with drawing any GTA comparisons here, and that is this Destroy All Humans isn’t GTA! If GTA is mindless then DAH is somewhere below that, though not in a bad way, the gameplay would be excellent if only it wasn’t repetitive, and it’s brilliant for pickup and play, though prolonged play, I found became tiresome.

Sound
It is almost impossible to fault DAH in this area, the voice acting is excellent, gaming voiceover veteran J Grant Albrecht provides a faultless auditory for Crypto which sounds like Maurice Lamarche doing a Jack Nickolson impression. Otherwise the sound effects and music push all the right buttons at all the right times, subtitles are easy to find and although the sound can often be cut off by moving to quickly into another dialogue the subtitles keep up well by appearing in two different positions, so its always clear who is speaking.

Graphics
Graphically DAH is hopelessly inconsistent, Crypto is metallic (not green, gray as he may remind you), smooth and runs without interruption, otherwise the towns and villages are hit and miss either swimming in detail or grubby with all the flair and panache of Driver 2. There also seems to be a serious shortage of NPC’s as they and the thoughts you read from them are consistently reoccurring though often hilarious.

Female Gamer Angle
Destroy All Humans is very enjoyable and works well for what it is, a linear title with limited scope but a lot of enjoyment, and should appeal equally to both sexes though the humor, b-movie parodies, excellent voice acting and, essentially, strong story should keep that female nose for quality happy. Of course the main playable character – alien though he may be – is once more male.

All in all, Destroy All Humans is not a BAD game, though if you are looking for GTA with aliens, or free-roaming, sandbox, open ended gameplay (count the gaming clichés in that sentence) then you’ll have to wait a little longer I’m afraid. If you are looking for a pseudo-free, linear, enjoyable experience with more pickup and play and less continuous, or replay value then Crypto is your kind of Alien.

Review by Pete

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