Destroy All Humans Review

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(More customer reviews)"Destroy All Humans" is not exactly the deepest, most challenging, most thought-provoking game you'll play all year, unless you're about 5 and you've given up on "Monsters Inc." But if you're a "Teen" or above who's just looking for some brainless and effortless pick-up-and-play fun, Cryptosporidium-137 is your extraterrestrial.

(By the way, that green "blood" is for all you teens out there, as in "T" rating, so that you understand that it's just a game and you don't go to school the next day and try to anally extract your school chum's brains. Cuz if it was red, there goes the neighborhood. But as long as heads explode in a GREEN mass of goo in the game, no problem kids. And that's great, but I kind of wish they'd gone the whole 9, taken the "M" rating, and made this game as gruesome as it should've been, since it's already pretty marginal. When you've got freshly extracted brains bouncing around in the cornfields, they might as well be dripping with RED blood...lol.)

The graphics in DAH are decent as far as they go - especially the lovely ambient sunlight and rolling cloud effects - but they don't quite go all the way. You get the feeling that this title, like so many, was rushed into production. Much has already been said about the pop-in issue, and indeed, it's truly out of control. Bushes will grow out of the ground at distances of less than 10 virtual feet in front of Crypto, as if his alien presence favorably influences Earth vegetation. It won't necessarily interfere with gameplay since your weapons and psychic abilities have a limited range anyway, but it's pretty annoying and distracting.

The environments are fairly good-looking if you don't get too close. Certainly they do a nice job of suggesting the archetypal sunny pop-culture idea of the 50's - it's all very "Pleasantville." Some scenes on the farm almost look like Hidden Valley Ranch labels...lol. The people likewise look great from a distance, but up close they're as blocky and crudely mapped as anything in the GTAs. It's especially obvious in the cutscenes, in which you see how much they've relied on shading to suggest depth - some of the women appear to have 5 o'clock shadows. Part of this is due to the fact that the levels are relatively large (although nowhere near as large as the smallest GTA), since you explore the same areas on foot and in saucer; so some fine detail has to be sacrificed.

Gameplay is likewise relatively rude and crude. You'll never really have a problem staying alive unless you just aren't paying attention, since Crypto's life bar automatically recharges after a few seconds; so if he's about to die you just jet-pack away, find cover, and wait. The saucer doesn't automatically recharge, but you can find sheild boosters everywhere, and you can actually take damage beyond your saucer's life bar for some reason. For weapons Crypto starts off with a "Zap-O-Matic" and an Anal Probe (which, yes, literally goes up the humans' butts, which inexplicably makes their heads explode), and he gradually acquires new weapons and upgrades. The saucer starts off with a "Death Ray," which does indeed bring massive amounts of death, and an "Abducto Ray," which doesn't actually abduct, but just lifts people and things a few feet above the ground - great for picking up military convoys and slamming them into the sides of government buildings.

Crypto also has some standard "PK" (psychokinesis) abilities which are kind of fun, but nothing new (see "Psi-Ops"). He can lift objects with his mind and pitch them far away; he can read people's (and cows') thoughts and parasitically suck up their "concentration;" he can hypnotize people to create distractions or perform mission-specific tasks; he can assume the general shape of anybody he sees; and of course, he can pop heads like green pus-filled zits. There are a few caveats, but for the most part these abilities, his weapons and his jetpack place Crypto at such an advantage over all adversaries, it's never really a contest.

Not only that, but DAH is extremely short, so it would be hard for anybody to get more than 10 hours out of this. Once you finish all the missions, both mandatory and optional, all that's left is the easter egg hunt for the rest of the "probes" (different from the anal), and this could quickly get boring and tedious.

Still, don't get me wrong, I got this the day it came out, played it through and enjoyed it for what it was worth. But it's such a simple game that I can't say I'd necessarily recommend it to buy as opposed to rent. If you're an alien buff or 50's buff or you just like the pretty, almost-there graphics and fun if basic and repetitive gameplay, you might choose to buy. The game's sense of humor is another selling point, with it's "cute" parodies of 1950's pop-culture, which are often thinly veiled commentaries on modern day government-inspired paranoia and civic unrest (there are many obvious slams on the Bush Administration). I'll keep it around, cuz at the end of the day, after an hour in heavy traffic, who doesn't want to destroy some humans?

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Product Description:
Use destructive weapons and innate mental powers to take on the most feared enemy in the galaxy...Mankind! Play as Crypto, an alien warrior sent to Earth to clear the way for the Furon invasion force

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