Chris InglisDestroy All Humans! is an open world action-adventure game series that dates back to 2005. The series is a light-hearted and humorous parody of Cold War-era alien invasion movies. Four games were releases by Pandemic Studios and Locomotive Games, and then in 2020, Black Forest Games teamed up with THQ Nordic to reboot the series. Now the latest version has released titled Destroy All Humans! 2 Reprobed and kicks up the action, graphics quality and humourous puns up to level 11.
In this latest game, Crypto is back with a license to probe, returning groovier than ever. It’s the swinging 60’s so there are groups of hippies spreading free love and sexual healing, and the jokes that hit hard back in the mid 2000’s are back here today, unfiltered and as raw as ever. There is so much political correctness in the world so it’s pleasing to see developers sticking to their guns and leaning into the humour they want to deliver for their game. I can see how others would take offense but to me it’s a game, it’s funny and got me laughing, and I had a blast when the game wasn’t crashing.
I recently purchased a GeForce RTX3080 12GB GPU and it’s glorious. It runs most games with ease, though my CPU is now in need of an upgrade. Still, a game like Destroy All Humans! 2 Reprobed should run flawlessly, and for the most part it does. It gives you options of playing the game with Directx 11 or Directx 12. It looks fantastic in both versions and is noticably better with the Directx 12 version, however I experienced crashes every 20 minutes or so of gameplay. Sometimes it was in heavy firefights with a lot happening on the screen so it’s understandable to crash, however other times it was while I was reading the newspaper clippings at the end of a mission. Very frustrating.
Outside of the crashes though, the game is a lot of fun to play. The game is set across five locations: Bay City, Albion, Takoshima, Tunguska, and the Solaris moon base. It’s an open world area to explore, broken up into segmented missions, which made the world feel instanced and smaller than its potential. That aside, the missions were funny and varied in their objectives. Some had you finding a particular NPC and escorting them places, while others had you collecting things from the world so you can build a big satellite dish on the tallest building in the city. You can unlock launch pads spread through the city to make traversal easier. This was especially helpful because when you take over a human NPC, you can’t sprint and don’t have the hoverboard or jetpack, so movement is slow on foot. A quick flying saucer ride between launchpads meant little downtime between missions.
I loved how Crypto’s voice didn’t change depending on the npc you take over which added to the humour. Whether you were an overweight policeman, a male hippie with an afro or a woman, his voice, maneurisms and puns were on point. You also unlocked various weapons which were versatile and useful throughout the whole game. In other games, guns you find early become obsolete once you unlock the uber powerful ones, however I found myself switching between weapons often, particularly those that required you to generate ammunition.
I did find the overall gameplay of Destroy All Humans! 2 Reprobed repetitive after a while, so I tended to keep my play sessions to 45-60 minutes and would come back the next night to continue. The structure of the missions means you can do some side quests and a main quest in an hour and feel like you have achieved something before repetition sets in. The missions that had you in the flying saucer were cool too, having to dodge missiles come at you while destroying ground targets. Being able to use similar skills in the saucer as when Crypto is on the ground was cool, like grabbing an object like a tank and throwing it to take out others while in mid-flight was a lot of fun.
Many of the missions have optional objectives, such as destroying X amount of vehicles or gathering people to have a laugh at the NPC you’re escorting. Completing these will give you additional resources to upgrade your weapons and abilities, and there are collectibles to find in the world. It’s these little things that give you a chance to change the pace of the game depending on your playstyle, and completionists have plenty of skins for Crypto, the weapons and the flying saucer to unlock. You can also play the game in split-screen co-op and the beauty for me was the ability to utilise Steam Remote Play Together for a mate to join me without them having to buy the game.
Overall, Destroy All Humans! 2 Reprobed is a visual feast over the original game and is full of blowing shit up and hilarious gags and puns. I did experience some crashes and some missions got repetitive, so I found playing in smaller doses was a better experience. It’s great mindless fun and what a good remake should be. Take all the best bits of the original and improve on the gameplay with modern visuals and effects, and that’s what Black Forest games has done really well.
This review utilised a Steam key provided by Gametomb.gg and Destroy All Humans! 2 Reprobed is out now on Steam, PlayStation and Xbox.
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Written by: @ChrisJInglis
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