Destroy All Humans!

"Live through the B-Movies of yore"

The short of it:
First off, this is not strictly a GTA clone. Any game that has fairly open gameplay and mini-missions is not a GTA clone. If anything, it's a Spider-man 2 clone, as the game structure is more similar to it.

The premise of the game is you are an alien race who have lost their nuts and can not reproduce through half-cloning (sex) but only full cloning. Humans, unfortunately for them, have a little bit of your DNA in their brain stems, so you must extract it to save your race--preferably through their exploding heads.

Gameplay:
The game play is highly unique and very fun. The physics of the game is such that it's fun to merely run around and play the game without any mission. You interact with the world through guns, psychokinesis, and your UFO.

Guns - Their are four guns and they're adequate but not highly entertaining. You use them to kill people and to get through the boss stages.

Psychokinesis - This is where the fun starts. Using psychokinesis (brain power) you can do various things to people and things. The most amusing thing is to simply pick things up and throw them around. You can pick up people, cows, cars, and even tanks, and fling them mightily around. It's fun.

You can also control humans through hypnosis. The options are limited though, most people only having two: sleep or distract. Certain missions will add more options to key humans, but they're restricted to the mission.

Scanning thoughts is the main thing you will do as it refreshes your concentration. For each scan you will hear an amusing inner thought of the person scanned. They're light hearted and funny at first, but you scan people's brains so much that they quickly become annoying and repetitive. And other than replenishing concentration, scanning brains is fairly useless. More to the point, I don't mind using scanning to replenish concentration, I just don't want to hear a sound bite every time I do it.

Lastly is the holobob. This allows you to disguise yourself as any human you see at the cost of concentration. This adds a stealth aspect to the game that makes it a little more interesting and fun to play. It also allows you to explore without having to kill everyone.

Your UFO - This is where the destruction comes in. You fly above the town in your ship and have four weapons that allow you to destroy buildings and vehicles. While the destruction of a whole town is fun, it ultimately gains you nothing and emphasizes how small the map is.

The Story:
It's pretty standard 50's/commie/UFO fair. Relative to most game scripts, it's great simply because it's complete and doesn't suck.

Overall:
The best aspect of this game is that sequels are sure to come. The gameplay is good and the story interesting, but the missions were short and the world was small. I fully expect the next game in the series to be a step above this one. Even if it's only a 1.5 version, it will still be a great game. Given the timing, though, odds are it will be a PS3/360 game, which could mean a long time before we see it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/28/05