Review: Destroy All Humans!

I loved the original Destroy All Humans on PS2, it was a phenomenal experience on the limited tech available. In 2005, large destructible open game worlds with lots of different gameplay elements were pretty unseen. Nowadays we are so spoiled in massive open worlds from Assassin’s Creed, Crackdown 3 or RDR2 that people wonder what the big deal was back in 2005. Now in 2020 German developer Black Forest Games made this remaster for Xbox One, introducing the same game as back in the old days with enhanced and highly improved visuals, motion capture for cutscenes, a new mission and improved gameplay.

What we liked!

• Comedy: Not everyone laughs with the same jokes or funny moments but anal probing a radioactive cow or humans is my kind of thing that puts a smile on my face. Destroy All Humans is also full with lovely satire in cutscenes and the story. Crypto-137 hates every single thing humans do and isn’t shy in showing it non-stop. It might be a little overdone but for me it remained hilarious.
• Improves the original game in every way, especially visuals and controls: Except the audio everything received lots of attention to make the original game much better. I would say having much more control is the greatest achievement with the remaster, for most of you it will be the vastly improved visuals though. From the gliding with the jetpack, the skate-like faster movement after using the jetpack, it is really remarkable how good Crypto controls. On a visual standpoint things really look fascinating, while it isn’t the greatest looking game out there Destroy All Humans still manages to impress

Somewhere between

• Weird stuff that happens while playing: In my ten hours playtime I saw many weird things happening. And no, it isn’t playing as a human hating alien. Trucks driving through buildings, floating humans, physics doing silly things. While it never caused broken gameplay, and frankly was regularly funny most of the times it still happens way to often.

What we disliked

• What the hell is up with the audio? I’m not entirely sure how they did this but the press release mentions that the audio has been reused and improved from the 2005 version. The main voice actors do a fantastic job voicing Crypto or Pox but all of it sounds rather flat, it is hard to explain but it is really noticeable, especially if you play with a headset. It is a shame that they reworked everything visually but didn’t do the same excellent job with audio.