Destroy all Humans is a 2020 remake of the 2005 cult classic of the same name this time around it is developed by Black Forest Games instead of Pandemic Studios who went defunct over 10 years ago way back in 2009.
I remember playing the Destroy all Humans series as a little one, most notably the first two in the series and remember having quite a blast with them. I remember the 2nd one more fondly as i played it first and between the two, the second is a superior game despite being pretty much the same with just a few differences. So when the remake was announced, and like most gamers who played the PS2 i was super excited. However it had been such a long time since i played the games i really wanted to replay them (especially the first) so i can review the remake more accurately so i booted up my Ps4 a month or so ago and bought the double pack of the original games for on sale £4.99, ported straight from the ps2 with all its mid 2000’s graphics but upscaled to a HD visual set. And i played them both for 2 days straight and loved all of it, it was short,sweet and took me back to when i was sat in front of my VHS/TV combo, playing games as what i now see as classics (even though it does show it age), However It’s fair to say i was excited, so how does the remake compare?
So the plot of the games is as follows, Cryptosporidium-136 crash lands on earth just outside of Area 42 and is captured by the U.S military. So of course the Furon race cannot allow the monkees know as the Human Race get their hand on ancient Furon tech however because earth contains a pure strain of Furon DNA (imperative to the survival of the Furon race) they cannot simply just destroy the planet they must infiltrate in order to achieve their goal.So Crypto’s clone accordingly titled Crypto-137, sets out with his friend and commanding general POX (who is nice and safe nestled in the safety of the mother ship) to complete the mission for the Furon race and maybe Destroy…’Some’ Humans along the way.
So as mentioned above it’s a remake not a remaster, this game was made from the ground up and visually the game looks stunning, new lighting features and crisper textures and of course just advancements in game technology makes the original game look like utter trash in comparison, everything here is improved on one way or another, and for me even the art style is improved (something in some reviews i have read is a negative) but i found the new art direction to be charming and fresh ditching the bland-realistic tone the original went for and replacing it with this new colourful, cartoon caricature-esq vibe, which despite its subject matter and objective of murdering everyone in sight seems just the right fit for this world and makes appropriate and justifiably changes to make this art style something to be admired. You can see Black Forest games really cared about the source material but knew they had give it a 2020 facelift and this is far from a botched job.
Gameplay plays pretty much the same as the original; repetitive missions, simple 3rd person gameplay with an amalgamation of linear and multi-level freeroam elements. But the gameplay still holds up.Even though you are doing a lot of the same objectives over and over again the drastically different environments and plethora of weapons and Alien tech scattered throughout Crypto-137’s arsenal just makes this game a literal blast to play and that’s down to the great additions Black Forest have implemented, such as new upgrades and revamped challenges,to now being able to now blow up a building with your death ray from the undercarriage of your ship ‘Independence Day style’.Even though it’s the ‘same game’ per say as the original and as i mentioned i only played it a month or so ago i felt like i was playing a brand new game and had just as much, if not more fun than the original game and that alone shows how much of a great job they did with this game.
Although it having a lot of praise it does suffer from a few things the original did, one of those issues is its length i completed this game in less than 2 days and that was only playing 5 hours one day to complete the story and then a couple of hours doing the challenges and cleaning up trophies i had missed. Now saying that this game isn’t valued at a full game price of £55, it was only £30 on release day which is a little better but still given its short length it still is a little much for a 7 hour game. But because i can tell how much love and effort went in to this game and how they actually tried to make a really fun game that wasn’t just made for the fact to cash in on gamers nostalgia in order to earn a quick quid i didn’t mind giving Black Forest my money as they more than deserved it.
Final Score.
Title:Great
The Destroy All Humans Remake is a really short but sweet, blast from the past,making a 5 star remaster of a 4 star game and proving that blasting humans with highly dangerous weaponry as big headed, grey, wise cracking Jack Nicholson sound alike alien could never be anything less than a lot of fun.
Head Over Reels 