Destroy All Humans!

"Pathetic Humans!"

Destroy All Humans is an unusual free-roaming game in which the usual premise of Humans against Aliens has been flipped on its head. Many people will say this is a carbon clone of GTA, but they will be wrong. This game is almost completely different from GTA.

[Gameplay-8/10]

In this game you play as Cryptosporidium 137, an alien who is sent to Earth. You are free to freeroam as you please, and accepting missions by returning to the mothership. Missions consist of objectives like destroying buildings in your saucer, reading people's thoughts, abducting people, collecting objects and many combinations and variations. There are only 22 missions and with each of them taking about 5 minutes, the story mode is not very long. However, at any point you can visit one of the six open areas and mess around. You can extract brains out of people's bodies, read their thoughts, hypnotise them to dance or sleep, read their thoughts, shoot them, pick them up, disguise yourself as a human or get in the saucer and blow stuff up. All buildings can be destroyed and all vehicles. There are also a certain amount of probes to find in each level. You have a concentration bar which uses up when you chuck people around and disguising yourself. It recovers when you read people's thoughts or don't use it for a while. The humans thoughts are varied and usually extremely funny. However, Holobobbing(disguising yourself as a human)takes up concentration so quickly that you constantly have to read thoughts, and varied as they are there are just not enough to stop you becoming bored. But this is a minor problem.

There are four weapons on foot and in saucer(8 total), which vary from unlimited
ammo-but weak-and can only fire in short bursts to extremely limited ammo-but ridiculously powerful. You start off with two weapons for the saucer and yourself and receive the other four later on, one at a time. You can upgrade your guns, psychic abilities and U.F.O by spending D.N.A, which you can extract from humans and earn in challenges. These challenges are of the do-things-in-a-time-limit variety that range from destroying cows to blowing up buildings and extracting brains. There are some neat details like the fact that everytime you die it will say 'A new clone has been created. Cryptosporidium <insert number here> is ready for duty! Completing the story and finding probes unlocks lots of bonus features such as concept sketches and movies. However in the PAL version alone, most of this stuff comes already unlocked, with the only things still hidden being the things you get for completing the game, making collecting probes pointless, and shortening the games lifespan. But if you have the NTSC version of the game this doesn't affect you.

The controls aren't customizable but they are perfect as they are. In terms of difficulty, the game starts off easy and does get noticeably harder, but aside from one or two missions it never gets that hard. The game has not got a great lifespan due to the fact that the story mode is short, and it is not too hard. But the lifespan gets a boost as you can just mess around, and there are probes
to find and lots of unlockables.

[Story-7/10]

The story is that as the Furons (aliens) are dying out they need precious D.N.A to clone themselves. Fortunately there is D.N.A in every human being. But there is a shadowy human organisation known as the Majestics trying to stop you. The story flows smoothly and is funny but nothing extraordinary.

[Graphics/Sound-9/10]

The graphics are cartoony and generally quite good although there is some pop up, but it does not affect the game too much. There are a decent amount of civilian models some of which are level exclusive. A surprisingly large amount of stuff can be on screen at once. The only other real flaw is that sometimes the camera gets messed up leaving you temporarily incapacitated. Although you can move the camera around, it moves slowly, which doesn't help if you happen to be in a gun fight at the time. The graphics are kind of simplistic, but they suit the game. In terms of sound, each civilian type has their own voice which always suit and main character voices are very well done as well. There is not much in the way of background noise, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but the sound effects are varied and numerous. All in all, very good audio and visuals with just a couple of minor hiccups.

[Rent or Buy?]

This game is quite short, so I would not recommend buying it, however if you wait until it reaches platinum/ greatest hits then in might be worth buying. Otherwise, rent it, as you can easily complete in a weekend.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/22/05, Updated 12/24/05