REVIEW | Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed

LifeisXbox’s Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed review | The Furons, everyone’s favorite alien species is back with Destroy All Humans ! 2: Reprobed. Developer Black Forest Games did an excellent job with the first remake (our review), since Crypto failed to destroy humanity in the first game we’re back on mission with the remake sequel. Largely the same as before but with new larger levels, a few new weapons, and the same hit-or-miss jokes. My excitement for this franchise was high when THQ Nordic announced the first remake in 2020, Is it still the same after playing Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed? Cryptosporidium-138, the playable alien character definitely didn’t probe me and couldn’t brainwash me either, so you don’t have to worry about a false opinion. Or is that something that Crypto-138 would say too?

ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox Series X | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion of the writer.

What we Liked!

• Flying saucer gameplay | Imagine seeing buildings being destroyed by a powerful laser. That’s what you’ll be doing with Crypto’s flying saucer. You can literally bring down an entire city! Bit stupid that everything respawns again after a reload of the world but I understand that leaving the player with a destroyed environment isn’t fun for the next missions. It is also a faster way of transportation, the five different levels are massive considering when it was originally released. Nowadays it can’t be compared with other open-world games, especially with interactive stuff but the result is still impressive. If someone asked me what the most memorable thing was about Destroy All Humans! 2 I would say the flying saucer… or Crypto’s Elvis costume.

• Limited co-op | I will answer your first question, there is no online co-op! You can play the campaign with a split-screen and there’s a duel mode that tasks the players to cause as much damage as possible. It is enjoyable to play Destroy All Humans! 2 with a friend but it takes a serious dip in performance. You have a third co-op option too called PK Tennis but that sucks so hard that I don’t see anyone playing multiple rounds. A shame as this mini-game is hilarious, the ball is replaced by a human but it lacks decent controls to be any fun.

Mixed Feelings

• Hit-and-miss humor | It is debatable if humor stays funny, regardless of age. We can’t go around the fact that the original was released over 15 years ago. Even around that time the humor was pretty questionable, as stereotypes are everywhere to be found. There’s a large story emphasis on the Russian KGB, needlessly to say that’s a bit weird with Ukraine’s situation. Anyway, not only that but I’m not entirely sure if the jokes surrounding hippies still work nowadays, I can imagine that only older gamers will be able to understand the puns and jokes. A lot of Crypto’s comedy comes from puns against hippies, Russian or Japanese people. A lot of the dialogue remains ‘interesting’ because of the funny undertone, with that gone you end up with cutscenes you’ll skip as nothing really worthwhile is explained.

• Being all-powerful as an advanced extraterrestrial species comes with a huge impact | You will never hear me say that I didn’t enjoy my time with Crypto but… Fighting against human cops is so easy that there is no challenge whatsoever. It happens rarely that things heat up enough, not everything needs to be like Thymesia but a bit more difficulty would benefit the gameplay, a lot! Luckily there is a solution, secondary objectives. This will require you to change your playstyle or do additional tasks while completing missions, they go crazy with it too. For example, doing a floor is a lava type of secondary objective. Most of the time they ask you to kill enemies with explosives or a type of special weapon.
  
• Mission structure | Walking from NPC to NPC and lots of filler missions make up for the campaign missions. Here is where the original game age shows up, that’s how it feels anyway. Especially the start of the game is literally the same thing multiple times. Talk to some guy, kill some enemies and talk to the same guy again, it takes a good hour before the game opens up to quickly fall into repetitive nature again. It doesn’t cause boring gameplay but the game doesn’t benefit from unique mission types or fresh ideas in the genre.

What we Disliked

• Graphical issues and performance | I can forgive seeing the same NPC over and over again but flying cars, and no they aren’t saucers, or enemies that need to be killed that fall through the ground are more annoying. Performance wise things don’t run all that smoothly. It regularly happens that the game struggles with frame rate, even freezing completely for a few moments. There are a few severe issues too, like not being able to get out of a flying saucer or a complete game crash. Not as severe but great for a few laughs is how many times cutscenes are ruined by wandering NPCs. Walking through Crypto or standing in front of the camera blocking the view of the player. Destroy All Humans! 2 tries to be a hilarious game but I’m pretty sure this isn’t what they wanted.
  
• Boss fights | Where every normal encounter in this game is laughably easy, you literally pick up and throw away most enemies with your psychic power, the boss fights are something entirely different. They aren’t fun to play at all, they only cause frustration with unexplained mechanics and a difficulty spike larger than the Eiffeltower. They have such a large health bar that fighting the bosses become such a drag, so when you finally understand what to do you’ll be stuck doing the same thing over and over again for way too many minutes.

• Body-snatching | I don’t understand how this feature is so undercooked. You can always choose to body-snatch any NPC in the game but you can’t do anything special. Let me fire my gun as a police officer, or let me shoot rockets as a soldier! The only mission-required function is to take someone over, so you can talk with a specific character. Pretty lame if you ask me.

How long to beat the story | 10 hours
How long to achieve 1000G | 20 hours

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