Destroy All Humans! 2 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 11/14/2022)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Destroy All Humans! 2

Developer: Pandemic

Publisher: THQ

Genre(s): Third-Person Shooter, Open-World

Platforms: PS2, Xbox

Release Date: October 17, 2006

Destroy All Humans 2!, the sequel to my favorite childhood mayhem machine, was an exciting prospect at its release. I always deemed it a satisfying successor to the first game, but I always believed that the first one was still the superior of the two. The main reason for this was because the premise of alien invaders in a game spoofing the 1960s didn’t make any sense to me. Horror films of the 1960s catalyzed what I would consider the beginning of the elements we still associate with the genre. The 1960s revisited gothic horror and made it gorier, Night of the Living Dead laid the foundation for the zombie subgenre, and controversial movies like Psycho and Peeping Tom chilled us with killers that felt too close to home. The “atomic age” of horror films that featured alien invaders immediately became laughably quaint, and Ed Wood’s notorious Plan 9 From Outer Space only contributed a minute fraction of the cause. Obviously, the overall premise of Destroy All Humans does not represent the horror landscape of the decade. Fears regarding the Cold War still lingered, but events like the war in Vietnam shifted the context of our overseas tribulations. Alien invasions in the 1960s seemed all too out of place. However, I now realize that Crypto still has an integral role in the 1960s. Destroy All Humans! 2 (Make War, Not Love as the original additional subtitle) shifts the atomic age horror tribute direction from the first game to focus on the satirical aspects, with Crypto as the roastmaster general. Also, one must consider that sticking to the familiar ground of the 1950s could’ve inhibited the evolution that comes with a sequel, which Destroy All Humans needed.

A decade might be a lengthy period, but Destroy All Humans 2 is still a direct sequel that continues the story after the first game's events. Crypto’s unimpeachable reign as “president” of the USA has been swimmingly for the past ten years. Everything has been smooth sailing for the malevolent, pint-sized extraterrestrial until the KGB intercepts the location of the Furon mothership hovering over Earth’s gravitational pull and blows it to smithereens with a launch of heat-seeking ballistic missiles. Pox is pulverized on impact but manages to store his essence in a mobile holographic device as a convenient means of communication. Crypto’s mission of recovering the flotsam of the Furon mothership isn’t only a task spurred by necessity; it’s also fueled by vengeance to make the Ruskies pay for hitting the Furons closer than any other earthling ever has.

The areas in the first Destroy All Humans were confined to American soil. While the restrictions made sense in its attempt to concisely illustrate the culture of America during the 1950s, the narrative direction limited the span of areas the game could cover. We cannot forget that Crypto’s imperialistic endeavor in the first game was to conquer Earth, and simply seizing power over America is small potatoes for the Furon empire. Ten years later, Crypto’s mission of world domination is still a work in progress. Fortunately, the United States is a small fraction of the globe left unsubdued. One of the biggest appeals of Destroy All Humans 2 is expanding the settings of areas past the entrapments of America’s territories as the player gets to take Crypto on a world tour. The game starts on American ground in Bay City but soon after spending some time in Crypto’s kingdom, he will fly his saucer over the Atlantic to the cloudy streets of Albion in Britain, the Asian metropolis of Takoshima, the remote tundra of Tunguska, all the way to landing on Earth’s moon. An alien’s operation to overtake the Earth isn’t thorough enough without claiming our orbiting celestial body that shimmers in the night sky. Each of these areas directly correlates with real-world places that hold historical significance with the 1960s. Bay City is intended as a broad metropolis that could be any city along California’s central western bay, but it’s pretty obvious that it’s mirroring San Francisco, the de facto capital of the American hippy movement in the latter half of the 1960s. Albion, also known as London with the moniker of England’s original name, depicts the stylish Mod culture that ran rampant across the country's youths throughout the decade. Tunguska is a contrasting taste of the Soviet Union, and let’s just say that the moon setting coincides with the game’s time of July 1969 for a reason. The only area whose connections to 1960s counterculture and the historical relevance is unclear lies with the Tokyo-inspired Takoshima area, but who needs an excuse to be able to wreak havoc all over this picturesque island metropolis?

As one can imagine, broadening the range of Earth settings in Destroy All Humans 2 satisfyingly expands the bounded scope presented in the first game. While I much prefer laying waste to a wider selection of cultures, there is more substance to each of these areas besides being spaced out more widely on the globe. Each area in the first game acted as a compact sandbox for Crypto as he hops around, causing chaos. Santa Modesta was the only level in the first game that effectively exuded that sense of freedom due to its wide area and a reasonable level of backlash against Crypto. The wrath of the humans progressively became more immense as each subsequent area increased the rate of fire, which unfortunately created an imbalance of the earlier levels feeling too relaxed while the later levels could potentially trounce Crypto in seconds. Crypto’s continued presence across every area in the second game will progressively increase five alert levels instead of four. The forces that come with accumulating these levels are less defined. Nevertheless, they attack Crypto with the same amount of fervor. In the first game, Crypto simply walking among the humans was enough to garner the attention of the Majestic, the loftiest alert-level faction, in only a few minutes. The sequel’s highest alert levels will only commence if Crypto really flexes his might and does some serious damage. Police squadrons and military forces are also relatively the same in size and presence in every area, which greatly aids a sense of equal opportunity for freedom matched with its consequences across each area.

As for the areas themselves, the developers wisely chose to compound what Santa Modesta presented and used it as a template for every area in the sequel. Specifically, Santa Modesta offered a breadth that fostered more exploration than the other small compact areas in the first game. Capitol City might also be an exception, but it hardly feels fair when giant tesla coils immediately eviscerate Crypto’s saucer, and the entire Majestic agency is waiting for him with their guns locked and loaded at every landing site. Each area in Destroy All Humans takes inspiration from Santa Modesta’s example by offering vast playgrounds with a consistent geographical theme while presenting districts throughout the area to diversify the layout. Since most of these areas are thematically based on some of the most populated cities in the world, mapping out an assorted urban plain most likely wasn’t difficult. Bay City features the most notable San Francisco staples like the outdoor hippy mecca of Golden Gate Park, the steep streets of Haight-Ashbury, and the American base of the KGB situated in the middle of the map is vaguely similar to Alcatrazz Island. Takoshima presents the most congested city setting in the game, with backroad streets littered with beautiful cherry blossom trees that connect the concrete jungle to a maze-like Zen Temple. Off the main road, islets feature feuding ninja communes, a castle on a hill, and an active volcano. While the remote setting of the frigid Soviet industrial town Tunguska recalls that Destroy All Humans areas are better when they are sprawling, it still manages to exude the same design philosophy as the others. Solaris, the name of the Russian research settlement on the moon, is the only area not formatted like the others, mostly due to the barren nature of the setting. However, it can be excused here because the moon is the perfect last area, for no other place on Earth could serve as the pinnacle of the planet’s expedition. With the addition of a much-coveted map highlighting every district, the areas in Destroy All Humans 2 finally emulate the quasi-open world format of the first game consistently and adequately.

These areas also feel more lived in because they all offer more content. The main missions in the first game seemed implemented by the developers due to obligation more than anything. Most missions in the first Destroy All Humans end as quickly as they started, with only one or two objectives before the player could hightail off to murder people at their own leisure. Destroy All Humans 2’s story is far more intricate than the one from the previous game, so the developers accommodated the campaign with weightier missions. Every area has at least five main missions, and each of these offers a hearty range of objectives to keep the player occupied. One may assume that longer missions would bloat the experience, but elongating the tasks is exactly what the missions needed to uphold the story without seeming like an afterthought. A better sense of organization aids these missions because returning to the mothership to unlock the next mission in the first game and hopping around the map tended to be a jarring upset in pacing. Since the mothership has been wiped out of the stratosphere, Crypto begins a mission by conversing with Pox or another NPC somewhere on the field, and it feels much more like how missions are started in typical open-world games. All the missions in Destroy All Humans 2 are all killer with no filler and surpass any of the missions from the first game. The climactic point of Takoshima, where Crypto and Natalya scale Mount Seiyuki and take down a Kaiju rampaging through the city streets, is so bloody epic that the game runs the risk of peaking halfway into the campaign. Besides the main missions, the player can also complete odd jobs that range in objectives or Arkvoodle missions where Crypto manufactures an international cult using that lascivious idol who grants him places to land his saucer as its omnipotent figure. The missions across the game still have a difficulty curve wonkier than a slinky, but perhaps that’s just a trope of the open-world genre.

Action seems to take precedence over any other gameplay elements in Destroy All Humans 2. The James Bond-esque intro sequence in the main menu makes it easy to see which fictional 1960s icon the game draws its inspiration from. The bevy of stealth missions that the first game offered is blown to the wayside in favor of more overt destruction. Given that the game's name is “Destroy” All Humans and not “Evade” All Humans, the player can be eternally grateful. The game endows Crypto’s arsenal with new toys to foster a more bombastic direction. Every weapon from the previous game is back in its full glory, with an upgraded Anal Probe now serving as a useful weapon instead of an extraction tool. Destroy All Humans 2 doubles the total of Crypto's weapons on foot for what already proved to be an extensive bunch. The Dislocator launches discs that send people and vehicles on a nauseatingly bumpy ride, the mothership’s janitor, Gastro, blasts at foes from a hovering hologram, and the Meteor Strike summons a barrage of meteors that can level skyscrapers. Not since the peacemaker nuke from Jak 3 has a gun inspired so much awe with its destructive potential. The Burrow Beast is an optional weapon unlocked by completing the Arkvoodle missions. Unlocking a monster that gulps up people from under the ground would’ve been more exciting if the player didn’t have to beat the game first. Each saucer weapon from the first game also reappears, with only one lackluster Anti-Gravity Field added to the roster. The weapon selection in the first game was practical, but it’s hard to return to what is now a piddly number of options with so many tools of chaos at the player’s disposal here.

Even without weapons, Crypto can create enough of a commotion with just his mind. The essentials of Crypto’s psychic powers also carry over to this game, but they’ve been tweaked instead of being directly built upon like the weapons. Crypto’s abilities are no longer inhibited by a psychic gauge, so now he can continuously whisk anything off the ground and suspend them in the air. However, this does not mean that Crypto’s brain is an inexhaustible source of unlimited potential. Upgrades are much more commonplace in the sequel, with the plentiful Furotech Cells funding the expansion purchased at Pox’s mobile marketplace. Crypto’s psychic powers, however, are upgraded via the “gene blend” system, where he slurps up people across many nationalities and vocations using his saucer’s Abducto Beam and splices their genetic material. Although the process may seem like a fetch quest grind, Crypto’s perverse scientific experiment pays off because the ability to transmogrify any vehicle for ammunition is a godsend. Instead of using the transparent holobob, Crypto rather “body snatches” an unsuspecting victim off the street and can literally walk miles in their footsteps before their life meter depletes completely due to Crypto’s presence in their bodies. It’s disturbingly parasitic. To avoid causing attention while body snatching, Crypto can use a timely named distraction technique called “Free Love,” where every human in the vicinity will dance around nonchalantly to a groovy guitar lick. I appreciate all the new abilities, but psychokinesis was more fun in the first game. I don’t know what’s changed over a decade, but everybody in the 1960s is so resistant to being flung into walls by psychic powers that the impact barely leaves a scratch. One could argue that this was part of an improvement to fix something broken from the first game, but Destroy All Humans 2 is already rife with graphical glitches and framerate issues as is.

The satirical scope may not be as pronounced here, unlike the first game, but at least the sequel is as side-splittingly hilarious. I lamented that more missions in the first game didn’t feature conversations where the player could cycle through dialogue options, but in the sequel, the player can make Crypto spout countless lines of caustic comments while talking to NPCs. I never get tired of hearing him talk. I’d implore the player to try a drinking game whenever the game makes any timely pop culture references or intentional anachronisms, but I do not want to be responsible for any alcohol-related deaths. Some of the humor is racy (especially in Takoshima) and based in stereotypes, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t guffaw whenever Crypto made immature prank calls, a Japanese cop spoke unfitting jive, or when Crypto enacted his plan to sic the Russian cosmonauts on the Furon’s Blisk rivals by telling them that they plan to take away their vodka. Crypto gleefully rides away with the bedlam that this causes with the hippy-dippy song “She Changes Like the Weather,” playing like the stinker he is. It’s comedic gold. However, none of these humorous moments are enough to establish a concise ethos, but there is still something substantial here.

The prime point that Destroy All Humans 2 seems to convey with its satire is that even in what was perceived as a new age of enlightenment, mankind and the society they created hadn’t changed all that much. No amount of LSD can cure human vices or their stubborn obliviousness. Reusing some of the same jokes while reading people’s minds might have signaled a lack of new humorous material, but it could illustrate that nothing has changed. Crypto consistently comments that his cult is the “opiate of the masses,” a phrase that correlates drugs with religion. Dirty, hubristic iconoclasts that defined the counterculture of this era throw down their values in exchange for the most appealing thing Crypto can offer, which of course, is a bunch of empty promises. The first game expressed that people were stupidly impressionable, and the sequel comments that things like drug-induced “enlightenment” and “free love” are just as big of a farce as the patriotism that fueled the 1950s. Crypto’s status as an alien gives him a position of an outsider looking in, an unbiased being without the follies that beset mankind.

That is, Crypto was the perfect specimen for critiquing human nature in the first game. Crypto was an exceptional alien soldier with a sense of snarkiness behind his venomous contempt for the human race. In the sequel, he’s practically gone native. Too much time masquerading among the humans has caused Crypto to adopt a sense of appreciation for their ways of life and has softened him up quite a bit. One could argue that this is due to the sequel’s Crypto being a clone of the one from the first game after that one unexpectedly died, but Planet Furon just doesn’t possess the same frills of sex, drugs, and rock and roll as Earth does. That, and his newly acquired sexual appendage, almost makes him one of us, and Pox detests it more than anyone. Crypto’s character is explored thoroughly here as more than an intergalactic harbinger of death and persecution. His arc is detailed through his relationship with Natalya, a rogue KGB spy and Crypto’s love interest, who aids him throughout the game. Despite approaching Natalya in a sleazy manner that makes Andy Dick look gentlemanly by comparison, the two have an odd chemistry with one another that works. Eventually, she starts to warm up to Crypto’s advances and likes him. When Natalya gets killed by Blisk/Russian leader Milinkov at the game's climax, the player almost feels as devastated as Crypto. Maybe I can sympathize with Crypto trying to bat out of his league here, but maybe Crypto’s newfound admiration (in many forms) is a testament that Furons and humans aren’t so different. Through fraternizing with humans and understanding them, it could lead to a peaceful society between the two (although it's not likely). Crypto ends up saving the human race from the Blisk at the end of the game, and if that's not ironic, I don’t know what is. After all, Arkvoodle, the benevolent creator of the Furons, is just as self-righteous and hedonistic as any hippie.

It is now apparent to me that Destroy All Humans 2 is vastly superior to its predecessor. The game is a sequel that knew the previous title had much to improve upon and thus made an effort to do so and succeeded. Destroy All Humans 2 adds so much to the first game’s template and augments everything from the weapons, areas, missions, etc. I thought that continuing the premise of an alien imperialist taking over Earth in the 1960s was inappropriate, but delving into the material has proven to me that it can still work. The augmentation has even uplifted the B-movie fabric of the premise and presentation to a depth unseen in the first game. The most unfortunate aspect is that despite all of the improvements, the myriad of technical issues in Destroy All Humans 2 that were already present in the first game deter its overall quality. I wish I could overlook this with its positive attributes, but it’s too significant of a detractor. Nevertheless, at least Destroy All Humans 2 maintains the same maniacal thrills that the first game had.

Destroy All Humans! Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 10/14/2022)

[Image from igdb.com]

Destroy All Humans!

Developer: Pandemic

Publisher: THQ

Genre(s): Third-Person Shooter

Platforms: PS2, Xbox

Release Date: June 21, 2005

The 1950s were an overrated time in history. It was the first full post-war World War II decade that began the information age that we are still currently living in, marked by a greater emphasis on progressing social changes and the quality of human life once we maximized exploration and industry production in decades prior. The economic boom created by the impact of WWII ushered in an era of prosperity, and it seemed like the American dream had come true. Squeaky-clean, conservative values defined the idyllic society that the 1950s upheld: waspy nuclear families where dad wore a suit and tie to his 9 to 5, and mom stayed home all day making dad dinner and cleaning the house. At the same time, little Timmy played baseball with his friends, and little Susie played with her dolls. Not only was the American dream of the 1950s eerily pristine, but it was also boring. Even the leather-jacketed, rock-and-roll counterculture seems like a quaint facet of the decade, or maybe we have Fonzie to thank for making a mockery of it. To retain this halcyon society, the 1950s upheld a strong sense of conformity with zero leeway for any abstract thought or anything outside the very anglo-centric, heteronormative bubble encapsulating the decade. Extreme examples include the Red Scare and all of the anti-gay propaganda. Jim Crow segregation was still in full effect! Fortunately, we’ve progressed substantially past this point in our history. Because the ideals of the 1950s seem antiquated and corny, the decade is ripe for being made fun of. Five decades later, Destroy All Humans! serves as a lampoon of 1950’s culture in the medium of gaming.

In reality, the idealized society that 1950s America portrayed was a lie. One can’t forget that despite the picturesque facade, the dread of the Cold War permeated through the atmosphere. Americans expressed their fears of a looming alien threat through horror cinema. Instead of the gothic monsters that were a source of escapism for Americans during the 1930s, horror media transformed into the science-fiction latent horrors that projected our fears of burgeoning technology and the invaders that might possess it. Of course, the alien depictions seen in films were an embellishment. However, they did represent real-life anxieties. Destroy All Humans’ satirical scope takes the direction of tributing “atomic age” horror by setting up the premise of an alien invasion of Earth in the 1950s. The game’s high-concept science fiction plot is that an alien race from the far reaches of the galaxy called the Furons are running low on the genetic supply they use as fuel for their cloning devices, for their microscopic genitalia prevent them from reproducing sexually. They discover that Earth and its inhabitants possess a similar DNA, so Furon imperialist official Orthropox sends one of their warriors, Crypto Sporidium-136, down to earth to conduct a takeover of Earth and harvest their brain stems. Unfortunately for them, complications arise when Crypto goes AWOL, so his clone 137 is sent to find his whereabouts.

Of course, the films always assuaged everyone’s fears with their resolutions. Chaos ensues, and the city is in ruins, but at least the humans were always victorious over the invaders in the end. In the mid-2000s, however, there were no longer the sheltered sensibilities of the 1950s to abide by. The core difference between those films and Destroy All Humans is that the story is from the villainous perspective of the invaders, and Crypto is the playable protagonist. The heroic, defensive role of the humans seen in horror movies of the era is entirely flipped on its head. Surprisingly, this wasn’t just a subversive deviation of the atomic age horror film. So many video games featured human supersoldiers like Master Chief and Duke Nukem mowing down aliens as the Earth’s badass, benevolent protectors. As fun as spraying intergalactic monsters with a full magazine is, Grand Theft Auto taught gamers that there’s a certain thrill in being the bad guy. The player’s mission is not to save mankind from aliens but to bring them to their knees as their enemies.

To illustrate how easy it would be to usurp Earth from under the humans, the Furons have tasked the full-scale invasion with one soldier. Crypto Sporidium (or simply Crypto for brevity) may be patronized for his short stature and ignorantly referred to as the wrong color, but he’s not to be underestimated. If you didn’t know, his name is a direct reference to a parasite, an appropriate name for the small, malevolent threat he is. This one-man plague from outer space has nothing but anger and destruction behind those bulbous, amber eyes and fierce contempt behind his derisive sneer. He isn’t merely a pawn caught up in the imperialist interests of his species: he’s a scrappy little devil who revels in the carnage. Crypto also makes up for his gangly dwarfism with psychic powers that elevate his stature over any human being. His psychokinesis powers are the first of his abilities that the player gets to tinker with when holding down the left trigger. Holding people, animals, and vehicles in the air is both amusing and debasing enough, but the real thrill of the power comes with launching them across the map with the force of a sonic boom. The controls and point of the trajectory may not be as accurate or refined as, say, the Gravity Gun from Half-Life 2. Still, the overall execution of what the move is intended to do is functional, and the borderline broken ragdoll physics makes Crypto’s power seem more otherworldly. Crypto's other extraordinary powers are in the same left trigger menu as psychokinesis. Pressing the circle button while targeting someone will activate the “holobob,” and Crypto will take the holographic form of that person to blend in with the crowd. The disguise seems shoddily transparent to me, but I think its effectiveness is intended to drive the point that people are stupidly unobservant. If Crypto’s ruse is compromised, he can hypnotize people to create a distraction, usually making them do some dance or impersonate Elvis Presley. He can also bend people's will with the same action to make them sometimes do his bidding. Out of all these abilities, the most shocking is the “extract” option which sees Crypto expending a lot of his mental energy to pop someone’s head like a grape as their mucus-covered brain ejects itself from their body with a visceral squelchy sound. Crypto’s abilities, especially the last one, are the stuff of nightmares.

If all of Crypto’s innate abilities don’t sound exciting (or terrifying) enough, he’s also got a whole host of cosmic weapons in his arsenal. Destroy All Humans only offers four firearms for Crypto that are acquired one by one as the game progresses, but they cover all the bases. The player will first become acquainted with the Zap-O-Matic, which expels a violent current of pure electricity as the target(s) convulse in screaming agony. It makes a taser gun look like a hand buzzer by comparison. If the player is looking to dispose of people more quickly, the fiery blast of the Disintegrator Ray will reduce them to nothing but their skeleton, which will turn to ash and blow away with the wind. The remote-triggered grenade launcher called the Ion Detonator achieves the same effect as the Disintegrator Ray but with a blast radius that dissipates the molecular structure of several people along with vehicles. The anal probe involves charging up a shot of some green goop that will burrow inside a human and make them clutch their asscheeks while sprinting before their head explodes. It’s not a practical weapon for combat, but retrieving the brain stem in a fresher state instead of extracting it after death will net Crypto more DNA currency. Crypto’s saucer expands an already deadly array of weaponry to biblical proportions. The four weapons available for the spacecraft mirror the four Crypto uses on foot but on a greater scale of destruction. The Death Ray is held down until the gauge runs out like the Zap-O-Matic, but unleashes a red hot beam of energy. The explosive Sonic Boom and Quantum Deconstructors have the same relationship as the Disintegrator Ray, and the Ion Detonator in that one is the lighter, more plentiful version of the other. The saucer also features an Abducto Beam that grabs vehicles and suspends them in midair, but this is more for novelty than for anything useful. With so many ways to annihilate, Crypto’s versatility makes him an incredibly thrilling character to play as.

While the humans are outmatched against Crypto, they refuse to go down without a fight. We’re the dominant species on this planet for a reason, and our tenacity in the face of danger is certainly a fraction of that reason. After too many screams and shoutings of “little green men''(!!!), the cavalry will come to dispose of Crypto with all the firepower they’ve got. However, the severity of defense ranges depending on Crypto’s presence. It’s here where Destroy All Humans explicitly borrows from GTA, as the alert levels mirror those from that series. The blue exclamation point signifies that Crypto had been spotted if people's yelps and derogatory comments didn’t already give the player that hint. The anguished cries of the people will then alert the police, then the army, which includes tank infantry. The last alert level involves the black-suit-wearing federal agents known as the Majestic, who will ambush Crypto with futuristic, government-grade guns and pile up their black cars in the road like a New Jersey tailgate. Every faction will accumulate with one another to aid in an all-out war against Crypto, with heat-seeking missile launchers taking the skies if Crypto uses his saucer. It escalates to total pandemonia, like in any atomic-age horror film.

The scale of blowback from the humans coinciding with the alert levels also depends on where Crypto is causing a disturbance. Six areas serve as the levels of Destroy All Humans, all on American soil, with an eclectic variety to showcase the amplitude of this great nation. All six levels are also themed around areas where aliens are typically known to invade from the lore of science fiction films and loony conspirators. Each subsequent level also gets progressively more chaotic and increases the presence of their defenses. The first level is the humdrum Turnipseed Farm, an appropriate genesis point for the game considering crop circles on farms are noted as the first indications of alien sightings, and the remote nature of it makes for a less jumbled tutorial level. Rockwell's small, middle-America town is an obvious nod to Roswell, and Santa Modesta ditches the country rubes for middle-class, white picket-fenced “Leave it to Beaver-land” suburbanites. Area 42 signals a stark shift of severity as the obvious parody-sanctioned nod to Area 51 consists of nothing but soldiers, Majestic agents, and giant defense robots that stomp around the grounds. The last area, Capital City, is essentially Washington D.C. with another name. The defenses in America’s capital are naturally as vigilant and combative as vaccine antibodies, and Crypto is the virus. The hazy port of Union Town is a place in between Area 42 and the capital that somewhat fits the progression, with everything from schmucks, socialites, and agents running around. All these areas are unique, yet a part of me wishes that they expanded past the USA.

Of course, featuring levels in other countries would be counterintuitive to the game's satirical substance. America makes up the entire map of the game because America was the only place that mattered in the xenophobic 1950s. In fact, the people aren’t running away from Crypto because he’s an alien from outer space. Their fears stem from confusing him for a Ruskie communist who “wants to destroy our way of life,” as a hysterical joe-schmoe character on the street will exclaim. The ignorant irony of the situation is the crux of the satire and while the parallels seem all too obvious, Destroy All Humans is still one of the funniest games I’ve ever played. One of my favorite things to do in the game is using the holobob disguise and reading the minds of the people out on the town. Plus, it’s the only way to extend the mirage by refueling Crypto’s mind power gauge. It conjures up the hypothetical scenario of Twitter being around in the 1950s with inane yet illuminating thoughts ranging from character-specific stereotypes and ersatz homosexual desires to cultural references and intentional anachronisms. No matter whose mind Crypto is reading, every thought is just as funny as the next. An exceptional aspect that boosts the humor is the stellar voice acting. Besides all the screaming the general humans do, the expressiveness and tonality of their speaking voices are perfect for encapsulating the clueless, old-world airheadedness of 1950’s American citizens depicted in films from this time. Why are the cops in every American town Irish? Because it sounds funny. Also, the Dragnet-sounding way the Majestic agents speak always cracks me up. Richard Horvitz performs an over-the-top version of his Invader Zim voice with the maniacal Pox, and the shameless Jack Nicholson impression makes Crypto’s voice delightful. The banter between the two is especially humorous with their contrasting vocal cadences.

With all of its positive aspects in mind, why isn’t Destroy All Humans as well regarded as Grand Theft Auto or any of the other games from the PS2 era where the player plays as morally reprehensible protagonists? Sadly, Destroy All Humans is marred with more mistakes and questionable features than I remember. Besides a few unattractive graphical glitches, the game doesn’t foster freedom as well as it should. Destroy All Humans is ostensibly a stealth game, and not just in particular situations in missions. A Grand Theft Auto protagonist has to cause chaos to prompt a heavy-duty SWAT team to come after him, but all Crypto has to do is simply be around the humans minding his own business. The alert level will still increase drastically without even touching a hair on any human’s head. This, coupled with the high number of defensive factions firing at Crypto at all angles, makes later levels insufferable to roam around. All the while, earlier levels like Turnipseed Farm and Rockwell are too quiet, making Santa Modesta the only choice level for free roaming. It doesn’t help that if Crypto dies, the player is escorted back to the main menu of the Mothership. Narratively, this is because Crypto has to be cloned again here after dying, but it makes for a tedious demerit for the player. Crypto also can’t last too long in the later stages because he’s far too fragile. Granted, Crypto shouldn’t be too well-equipped, considering all of his offensive advantages, so then why does the game offer upgrades? On the Mothership, Pox sells upgrades in exchange for a certain amount of DNA. Everything except Crypto’s health can be upgraded, and this is something he desperately needs. The stampede of everything will kill Crypto in seconds if he doesn’t run away, and that’s simply not in character. Even the fall damage taken from falling too far after the jetpack craps out depletes much of Crypto’s health for comfort. I do not want to feel like a sitting duck while playing as a decked-out space invader.

The game also has an erratic sense of pacing. Most people claim that Destroy All Humans becomes far too difficult as the game progresses, but I disagree that it’s due to the missions. The mission difficulty curve is incredibly wonky, with middle-game missions like the stealthy escort mission “Duck and Cover” causing so much grief and Capital City missions like “The Furon Filibuster” being so underwhelmingly simple. The length of these missions throughout the game also ranges drastically, with some missions having six different objectives and some having a measly one. Longer missions also seem to be employed just to make the mission a test of endurance. The last mission in the Capital, “Attack of the 50-Foot President,” is only considered difficult by the masses because of the cheap extension of two different boss fights without checkpoints. Individually, the executive monster android with the president’s brain and Silhouette, the female leader of the Majestic, wouldn’t have drawn any frustration because they’re both unimpressive boss fights. The same goes for the fight against General Armquist, which is just a more durable robot enemy. I think the developers tried their best to expedite the story so the player could return to killing people of their own volition, but I’ve already expressed the complications with this.

Destroy All Humans! sounds like the greatest game ever on paper. The premise of playing as a sadistic little alien bastard invading the Earth and firing down a bombardment of death and destruction should’ve made for one of the greatest games of all time, and it was a favorite among my friends and me when it came out because of the amount of mayhem we could make. As an adult, I now appreciate other facets of the game, like its humorous dialogue and the spoofing of 1950s culture that flew over my head when I was younger. Unfortunately, I can’t appreciate this game as much as I did when it was released, and this isn’t due to being spoiled by gaming’s progress as a medium. Destroy All Humans doesn’t feel as free as similar games from its era, and the spotty campaign could’ve used a little more love and care. Even for its glaring faults, Destroy All Humans! still manages to be a good source of maniacal, misanthropic fun.