Destroy All Humans! 2 Reprobed Review
Destroy All Humans is a series of games where you play as an alien invading Earth. It’s an open world action game where the protagonist, Crypto, has a wide array of powers to use, from telekinesis, mind-reading, and copying a human’s form to aid him in his goal of destroying all humans. The plot of this game is never overly serious and the game itself is meant to be an avenue to make fun of humanity, specifically 1960’s culture.
You don’t need to play the first remade Destroy All Humans to enjoy this game, nor do you have to play the original non-remade versions either. The plot does continue from where the first game left off, but the plot basically boils down to “alien invades Earth and causes chaos”. I’d recommend you to definitely check out the remake of the first game if you can, it’s a very fun experience and this sequel only improves upon the first.
This game has very great visuals. Although the game map appears small initially, there are 5 distinct areas to explore as you progress. The graphics aren’t cutting-edge, but the art direction is top notch with areas inspired by 1960’s American suburbia, a Japan-inspired island, to even Russia.
(Image credit: THQ Nordic)
The gameplay is very addicting. It’s an open-world action game where you can choose to do missions or just fool around. There are 28 main story missions to complete as well as a variety of side missions and collectibles such as artwork scattered around the game’s five maps. The maps have areas for your ship to land, which I’ll explain in more detail soon, but you need to complete easy challenges on a alien deity to unlock them. Some of these are mandatory in the story mission, such as using a particular weapon on the alien deity. With these areas unlocked, you can quickly traverse through the map with your ship.
Main missions will also have optional objectives you can complete. They’re not required to complete to progress, but they will give bonus items required for leveling up. If you pass a story mission and want to go back later on to complete all the optional objectives, the game has a level select for complete missions when you get a ship.
The great part of this is that the bonuses are not too substantial compared to the rewards of completing the mission. To give a quick example, a mission may reward 10 upgrade items, whereas completing the bonus would give perhaps another 1 or 2 of those items. So if you choose not to complete the bonuses, you can still get most of the upgrades just fine. The bonus objectives in this title are typically not hard at all, usually it involves killing a certain enemy with a certain type of weapon.
You start off the game with the Zap-o-matic weapon, a gun that allows Crypto to shock an enemy. As you progress through the story you’ll unlock more weapons and abilities, as well as the option to upgrade your weaponry. For example, after I had upgraded the Zap-o-matic fully I was able to shock all enemies in a nearby range at once and it was able to tear through enemies’ health far faster than in the beginning of the game.
As you progress Crypto will be able to rebuild his ship, which can be used on the map to cause a lot of destruction. The ship starts off with a basic laser, but you get more abilities for it as you progress the story.
I was able to upgrade Crypto’s health and unlock more abilities for him such as being able to turn Crypto’s dodge move into him floating around with jets on his feet acting like a skateboard, allowing me to traverse the map far faster and allowing me to dodge the enemies’ attacks more easily.
The jetpack you unlock early on makes flying over obstacles and buildings effortless. The psychokinesis ability, or PK, allows Crypto to lift and fling both objects and humans around. The physics is well done in this game and I had too much fun just lifting and throwing enemies off of cliffs and buildings.
You can disguise Crypto into almost any human you see by pressing a button. Sometimes you’ll get caught, but if you run away quickly or if your target is isolated your cover won’t be blown.
It’s fun to disguise Crypto as many different kinds of characters and you can blend in and listen to people’s thoughts. Listening to the thoughts of NPCs give a lot of funny pop culture references, but sometimes mind-reading enemies is required to find out where to go next during a story mission. Thankfully it’s never hard, usually the first enemy or two you mindread will give the location of the next mission target.
You can also use “Free Love”, an ability not present in the original game, where Crypto hypnotizes the enemies into dancing, just like the Groovitron weapon in Ratchet and Clank. It sounds silly, but I used Free Love in a military base and the trucks and tanks started dancing on their wheels too, it was amazing to see all the animations.
You can use Free Love to reduce the alert level and to blend in again with a disguise if your disguise was blown. It was great using this ability because I didn’t have to stress out about escaping from enemies.
Another ability is transmogrify, which allows Crypto to turn almost any object into ammo for your weaponry. This was great during stressful boss fights where I could quickly make my own ammo when I couldn’t find any ammo around. Ammo pickups in this game are rather sparse, so I was able to make great use of transmogrify.
It’s worth noting that this game is a remake of a game released in 2006. That being said, the jokes in this game can be crude at times and the game does give a big disclaimer when you first launch it warning you of this. If you are sensitive to inappropriate jokes, this might not be the game for you.
(Image credit: THQ Nordic)
Most of the humor in the game isn’t bad at all thankfully. Since the game takes place during the 1960’s, they make fun of how society used to be, such as making fun of the whole “capitalists versus communists” mentality, as well as making fun of hippies in the beginning of the game. The atmosphere of the game is very immersive and there are a lot of pop culture references spread throughout the game such as The Beatles, 1960’s James Bond movies, and even Ghostbusters (“don’t cross the streams!”).
Sometimes Crypto will make sexist jokes towards the female supporting characters, which can get nasty at times. For some reason Crypto is a lot more thirsty in this game compared to the first game, which instead had a lot more humor making fun of politics in 1950’s America. You can ignore it and enjoy the game fine, but it’s worth noting that that kind of humor is there.
Crypto’s voice acting as well can definitely be hit or miss though the writing is great. One of the supporting characters, Pox, is voiced by Richard Horvitz, known for voicing Invader Zim, so you have plenty of well-known talent present in the game as well. Crypto’s voice actor isn’t bad per say, but the voice direction is odd and perhaps it was inspired by Duke Nukem or a drill sergeant.
Another difference from the first title is that this sequel has branching dialogue choices. It doesn’t change the main missions which will always be the same, but you’ll often get funnier dialogue depending on how you respond to characters.
Some missions are really fun, such as throwing nuclear rods into reactors to blow them up and running away in time. One of my criticisms of this title, however, is that the missions can get repetitive after a while. It does have a lot of escort missions where you need to defend a supporting character and it can get boring after a while.
The missions and side missions provide upgrade items that allow you to upgrade your weapons and the ship’s weapons. With upgrades and through acquiring more weapons over the main missions the game is never excessively hard. You can set the difficulty level as well to suit what you’re looking for, whether you’re looking to enjoy the story or if you’re looking for a challenge.
You may get a cheap death here and there, such as accidentally exiting the “mission limits” or standing too close to a turret that can mow down your health in mere seconds. Sometimes if you don’t pay attention you can get surrounded by waves of enemies rather quickly.
Otherwise, the game is very friendly with checkpoints during missions and doesn’t have a “lives system” like old games. The only difficult part of the game was the final escort mission, where the supporting character kept dying and many waves of enemies kept spawning while the supporting character had to destroy columns and wasn’t able to defend themself. Some of the bosses were challenging, but they were very fair and I was able to learn their attack patterns after a few attempts.
Overall it’s a very fun game, whether you’re just getting into the Destroy All Humans series or if you’re revisiting them after playing the originals years ago. There aren’t many other fun open-world games releasing recently where you can just have fun with superpowers. This game always felt like a predecessor to the Prototype and Infamous games, and if you enjoy messing around with a character who has a lot of crazy abilities you’ll definitely enjoy this one. The gameplay is very addicting and the humor and its many pop culture references is most of the time funny.
(Image credit: THQ Nordic)
Destroy All Humans! 2 Reprobed
Our Score: Great
Pros
- Very unique protagonist, where you play as an alien causing mischief instead of the typical hero saving Earth you see in other games.
- Gameplay is fun and not difficult, and it feels satisfying destroying everything.
- The game is hilarious with plenty of good writing. Not all of it has necessarily aged well, but a lot of the game is funny especially when you mind-read humans.
- Some voice acting is amazing, but some of it is bad. The protagonist doesn’t have good voice acting, I’m not sure if they were trying to make him sound like Duke Nukem. On the other hand, one supporting character is voiced by Richard Horvitz known for voicing Invader Zim.
- Although the game has been remastered, some of the controls still feel clunky.
- The game length is on the shorter side, and some missions can get repetitive after a while.
- Lack of challenge (except for difficulty spikes during some boss fights) and a lack of replay value.
– Brandon Harris
Reviewed on PC
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