Destroy All Humans!
This review was written by a human. I swear!
Tags: Destroy All Humans! Categories: Reviews, Xbox Reviews
Posted by Jake McNeill on Jul 27th, 2005
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Destroy All Humans! (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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Greetings, pathetic humans! This is your master… I mean…. frieeeeeend, Jake Mac-Neel, bringing to you a nice, normal video-game review. It’s not filled with subliminal messages that will brainwash you into becoming a slave to an alien race or anything like that! Don’t be so silly! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. No, this is a review of THQ and Pandemic’s new title, Destroy All Humans!
For those of you stupid primates who haven’t heard of this title before, it features the story of the lovable alien Krypto-138, a perfectly innocent little fellow who just happened to be sent to Earth, and may have been instructed to… oh, I don’t know… mutilate livestock, level whole cities to the ground, brainwash the populace, kill every last human on the planet, and harvest your DNA by collecting your brains. Um… but in a good way!
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Many have compared this game to a series called “Grand Theft Auto”. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? The two do have some things in common. Namely, the setting is a parody of a specific time period (the 50s, and the cheesy sci-fi movies that came to be associated with the decade). Also, the gameplay is relatively open-ended, letting you opt to take on various random goals spread through an area, taking a mission to progress the plot, or just going around causing panic and mayhem. Ah, yes… panic and mayhem, how delightful!
In fact, the game truly shines when you’re just going around bringing chaos to the pathetic lives of the dim-witted peoples of the United States of STUPID! Laugh maniacally as you make farmer Brown’s head explode in front of his wife, to extract his glorious, delicious brains! Hop in your flying saucer and use your laser to burn every last building to the ground! Use your Telekenesis to take a secret agent’s car and drop it on him, and then grab his corpse and fling it into his partner! Yesssss…. Eeeeeeexcellent.
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The telekenesis powers (and the UFO’s counterpart, the Abducto-beam) are two of the most fun toys in this game. While not quite as precise in their control as Half-Life 2’s gravity gun, their physics (and the reactions of those caught in their grip) bring far more hillarity. Just look at that overweight policeman squirm as you lift him into the air! Now, slam him into the ground! Now into the tree! Now the ground again! Muahahahahaaa.
Ugh, I suppose I should placate the parental units by informing them that, for all of the violence, the exploding heads, the anal probes, and disintegrating bodies, the game is actually relatively light on the blood and gore, and almost everything is laughably cartoony. But we all know in real life, it would be raining the blood of the human scum!
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What stands out most about the game, however, is the wonderful sense of humor. The game deliciously parodies everything from 50s America, bad Sci-Fi films, the political climate of the time period (and its similarities to the world today). It has been many Earth days since the last time I have experienced a game this funny, and it even shakes things up every now and then.
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For example, in one scene, you abduct a town’s mayor and take his place (in a holographic disguise) at a rally where he was going to address his townsfolk and tell them what was going on. Here, the game takes a multiple-choice format as you try to fool the stupid humans, giving you options ranging from “tell the truth” and “feign ignorance” to “blame Communists”, “act patriotic” and “babble incoherently”. Yes, after this game you truly will feel like you really learned a thing or two about pathetic American politics!
Making things even funnier is the game’s wonderful voicework, in every character from the corrupt Irish cops, prudish housewives and monotone secret agents, to Krypto himself. While a fellow like this would normally be given the personality of Invader Zim, he instead seems to be channeling Jack Nicholson in full-on A Few Good Men mode (the Invader Zim personality is still present to some extent in the form of Krypto’s boss, Pox, which makes sense, being that he’s voiced by the same voice actor). While this personality seems ill-fitting the character at first, you soon grow to love the little guy, who despises humans with a passion and takes great pride and pleasure in their annihilation, as well he should!
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I do have some complaints about the game though. First off, the controls, particularly for aiming, are somewhat clunky. I mean, I love killing you puny, pathetic humans, but it is bothersome when I have to take a moment to aim my kill ray when the human I’m aiming at has one of his primitive earth-weapons firing at me. I demand speed and precision with my human-killing!
Also disappointing is the fact that, outside of missions, there isn’t much variety. I mean, I love finding different ways to kill humans, but it would have been nice if I could kill them using different vehicles, as in Grand Theft Auto, or in less simplistic environments, or with more options. I want to be able to poison their water supply or release a flesh-eating virus or topple buildings onto them! Variety is the spice of life, so why is there not more variety in killing life?
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And as long as I’ve touched on it, for a game that makes its biggest selling point the destruction of humanity, I’m disappointed that this destruction isn’t more detailed. It would have been nice to rip buildings apart piece by piece, destroying their foundation or using the UFO’s laser to slice a building in half. Alas, a building is either destroyed or standing, and aside from scuff marks and fire, the only way to tell how much you’ve damaged a building is to look at its life bar. Fools! I want to revel in the destruction of my enemies, not watch bored as their life bar is depleted!
This seems to feed in with the game’s main graphical problem: Every alien and alien technology is very nicely detailed, but humans, and their vehicles and houses look very bland and boring. Bah! Bah, I say! I suppose it is some consolation that at the very least virtually everyone is nicely animated.
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All in all, Destroy All Humans is an excellent title that’s a blast to play and hilariously funny, although it’s a tad lacking here or there. Still, this is a fine addition to the collection of any gamer who craves destruction, and an excellent study material to prepare you stupid humans for our coming invasion.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ Destruction, death and mayhem. All in a day's work! + Extremely funny. Killing people has never been this hilarious! + Wonderful sound and great voice acting. |
8.5 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- Could use a bit more variety - Controls aren't fantastic - Graphical presentation is a mixed bag |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| If you want a game to destroy all humans, this is the one to get. If you want "Grand Theft Auto" with aliens, you may be disappointed. | |
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Tags: Destroy All Humans!
Posted by Jake McNeill on Jul 27th, 2005 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
