Watch our review of the Destroy All Humans! remake!
We’ll tell you everything you need to know before you play this cult classic gem, including how it plays, how it looks and how the updates affect the experience.
Transcript
Hey how’s it going guys! Welcome to our review of the Destroy All Humans! remake, available on PC, PS4, Xbox One and Stadia. We’ll tell you everything you need to know before you play, but before I do, make sure to hit subscribe and the notification bell for reviews, interviews, features and more. You’re not going to want to miss it.
It’s hard to believe Destroy All Humans! came out 15 years ago. I still remember it so vividly, and broadly speaking, so positively. Inspired by the UFO craze of the 1950s, you play as Crypto, an alien clone sent to earth to harvest long dormant Furon DNA from humans to improve your own gene pool. It’s deliciously satirical of the Red Scare attitudes of the time, and things quickly escalate as you go from zapping country bumpkins, to setting your sights as high as supplanting the President of the United States!
Beyond the hilariously dark comedy, it also introduced some pretty revolutionary game mechanics for the time, and although it didn’t perform particularly well, it firmly cemented its reputation as a cult classic.
Now in 2020, we have a complete rebuild of the original game to get our little green mitts on. But before we start, just a caveat that this review will focus on the updates brought in by the remake, and how they impact the overall package. With that in mind, is Destroy All Humans! any good? Watch on to find out…
Firstly, the biggest and most important improvement with this remake is how it feels to play. I recently replayed the original game on my dusty PS2 to get myself ready for this release, and with rose tinted glasses firmly removed, it’s pretty clunky by today’s standards. Fortunately, this time around controlling Crypto is a lot more fluid. Little things like being able to dash, go up and down in your UFO and having longer to use your jetpack before it needs to recharge all make it feel so much nicer to a modern palette. The developers said they wanted to create a game that replicates how you remember the original, rather than how it actually was, and I think these little quality of life adjustments are the biggest evidence of that.
And this extends to the combat too. Whereas before you could only perform one action at a time, now you can combine multiple actions at once, like shooting while performing psychic attacks. This adds so many more options for dynamic gameplay, and ways to approach certain situations.
And a quick note on that. This game still impresses in how well it allows you to approach levels in your own way. If you want to try stealth, you can disguise yourself as an NPC, but if you fancy a more full frontal offensive, you now have a bigger arsenal than ever to get the job done. And new upgrade trees allow you to tailor your abilities to how you want to play.
Beyond what you control, there’s also been significant improvements to the saving system, which again goes a long way in making the game more enjoyable to new and old fans alike. Especially if you’re rubbish at video games like me!
Visually, THQ Nordic have done a great job of making Destroy All Humans! look as good as I remember it. Rather than trying to be realistic, it leans into the fun, cartoony graphics of the time. It’s only fitting that a game that serves as a caricature of a bygone time evokes the same spirit in its appearance. Each level offers open world, sandbox elements with plenty of easter eggs, secrets and jokes to find. Some of my favourites came from reading the minds of unsuspecting NPCs. I’d implore you to take time just to screw around and enjoy the silliness of it all. The only caveat I will make is, some of the jokes haven’t aged that well, and although I highly doubt there’s any malice involved with leaving them in, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that they probably should’ve omitted anything that could be construed as offensive.
Anyway, for any long time fan worried that it’s all much of the same, fret not. The developers have revived a lost mission that was removed from the original game, set in the Area 42 world. This makes the overall experience feel like a director’s cut of the 2005 version, complete with everything we missed the first time around.
However, it’s worth pointing out that some of the quirks of the original game annoyingly still persist. I found the loading times to be excruciatingly long, and it became a real chore waiting between levels. What’s more, while it’s awesome to have almost all the original dialogue recordings revived, they sound so compressed, particularly when compared to the updated sound effects and music. It’s a little cosmetic thing, but I couldn’t help but notice it.
To wrap up, Destroy All Humans! is a fantastic, faithful adaptation of the original game. It goes a long way to modernise the mechanics and visuals, without compromising the spirit and charm. The only thing I will say is, this is a remake for the fans. It’s a pretty niche concept, and the scale of the base game might seem small to anyone coming into it fresh. With that being said, I had a great time with it, and I’d implore anyone to give it a go.
But what did you think of Destroy All Humans!? Let us know in the comments below and don’t forget to like, share and subscribe for more videos like this every single week. See you next time!
While you’re here, please subscribe to Upside Down Shark on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts!
If you’d like to support us, please check out our Patreon!
