Destroy All Humans! 2020 (Xbox One) Review

In addition to licensed titles, the PS2 has quite a few great games that were a lot of fun to play and have gained a sizable fanbase over the years. One of those games THQ’s Destroy All Humans series.

It’s been 15 years since the original game release and THQ Nordic is giving the game the remake treatment.

The basic premise of Destroy All Humans is:

Terrorize the people of 1950’s Earth in the role of the evil alien Crypto-137. Harvest their DNA and bring down the US government in the most brazen action-adventure you’ve ever played. Annihilate puny humans using an assortment of alien weaponry and psychic abilities or reduce their cities to rubble with your flying Sauce

Gameplay

Unlike SpongeBob Squarepants: Battle of Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated, Destroy All Humans is a third-person action-adventure game and play as Cryptosporidium 137 (“Crypto” for short).

While playing as Crypto, you have access to a number of alien weapons such as the Zap-O-Matic (that will shock enemies), Anal Probe and more. Each weapon does feel different but what becomes a nuisance is reloading, like you’ll need to wait for the Zap-O-Matic to recharge or Transmogrify objects into ammo for your Disintegrator Ray or Ion Detonator, which can be time-consuming when enemies are attacking you left and right.

Crypto also has other abilities such as psychokinetic that lets you levitate objects and people and the option to disguise himself with something called a Holobob. There is also a jetpack to let you navigate each level with ease.

Beyond Crypto’s abilities and weapons, you also have your flying saucer at your disposal that comes with a death ray to kill enemies or a tractor beam to lift up things like cars, people or cows.

There are around six locations Turnipseed Farm (a Southern farm community), Rockwell (a midwest town), Santa Modesta (a California beach town), Area 42 (a parody of Area 51), Union Town (an Eastern seaboard industrial city) and Capitol City (a parody of Washington, D.C.) in the game and while the game isn’t a true open-world, each of the locations is a sandbox that you can explore freely during missions.

Each of the locations as a couple of main objectives to complete and there are side objectives to get a 100% completion in each location to unlock new abilities or skins for Crypto. There are around 18 missions in total and you’ll be visiting some of the locations more than once.

Some of the missions would include bending all the TV antenna to face the mothership under a time limit or find a news anchor that is being held captive in a military base and infiltrate it and take him back to your ship.

One issue I had was that the game will tell you what objectives to complete but no necessarily how to do them. In one instance, I had to bring a Government agent back to my ship but the game didn’t say that I had to get out of my ship, jetpack over to him and use the follow ability on him.

When you’re on the mothership screen, you can upgrade your weapons (via the DNA you collected during missions), abilities and saucer to cause even more destruction.

Presentation

One of the benefits of a remake is updating the visuals and that’s just what THQ Nordic and Black Forest Games for the Destroy All Humans remake. The game is running at 4K resolution on Xbox One X and PS4 Pro.

Each of the character models is very cartoony and stylistic. Crypto himself looks even better with more visual details included in his character model.

The different levels in the game have a lot more details from the vehicles to the buildings in each town. Everything in the world has a lot more colour that makes everything pop.

You can see a comparison of the original game and the remake in the video below:

All the dialogue and humour from the original game are still intact but Black Forest Gamers enhanced them and introduced motion capture to character models and cutscenes. Even the audio from the original has been included but improved in quality for the remake instead of being recorded.

I played the Destroy All Humans remake on Xbox One X in 4K resolution and it looks great.

Final Thoughts

The Destroy All Humans is a faithful remake of the original game from 15 years ago and is perfect for those who are fans of the original games or curious to experience it for the first time.

The game is available for Xbox One, PS4 for $39.99 CAD and $29.99 CAD for PC via Steam.

An Xbox One review code of the game was provided by the game’s publisher, THQ Nordic.

Pros

• Great visuals for current hardware
• Fun gameplay
• Replayability with different challenges per level
• Humour and dialogue of the original remains intact

Cons

• Long loading times
• Sometimes the game doesn’t give clear instructions on how to complete an objective