Destroy All Humans!

"Robots and spaceships and Commies oh my!"

Pandemic is quick becoming a popular game development group. They started off their fit of popularity with Star wars: Battlefront, then followed up with Battlefront II and the sleeper hit, Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction. Mercenaries was a revolutionary game, breaking the barriers for third person shooters. While many thought it a cheap Grand Theft Auto clone, it sported a massive arsenal of weapons (if you see it, you can pick it up), a deep political system between four factions, three playable characters, two gigantic play-maps, and perhaps most incredible of all, the ability to pilot or gun almost every single helicopter, tank, or vehicle you saw in the game. Indeed, Mercenaries was a gigantic step forward in non-linear third person shooters. Now, they've released Destroy All Humans. But where does this odd game come into play? Destroy All Humans? What could that possibly have to do with Mercenaries, and more importantly, is it worth playing? Well, I'll tell you.

Destroy All Humans is best summed up as a third person shooter with a "behind-the-back" camera angle similar to Mercenaries, Max Payne, and Grand Theft Auto. You have a crosshair/cursor just like in Mercenaries which you use to aim your shots, and the stage is set in a series of progressive missions, but the levels in which you complete your missions are extremely non-linear. As an added bonus to the non-linearity, you can visit previous levels in between missions to finish up other tasks that you didn't get around to earlier. But first: Why are you Destroying All Humans in the first place?

The storyline takes place as you, Cryptosporidium 137, set as the main character. You are a cloned warrior of the Furon Empire, a race of alien creatures that look disturbingly as though they were taken from a 50's alien invasion flick. Crypto's race has achieved effective immortality through cloning as their only means of reproduction. Lately, their DNA banks have been breaking down, making the results of each new cloning process more and more unpredictable. Something must be done about this, and that's why Crypto's master, Pox, has sent him as a one man army down to the planet Earth (after his predecessor, Crypto 136, crashed and was captured near Roswell) to enslave the humans of the planet. The reason for enslavement: long ago, Furons managed to somehow bring their DNA into the human gene pool, and now every human carries a strand of Furon DNA. This DNA must be harvested from the humans to restore their DNA banks, and enslavement is the simplest way to get the DNA. And so you set out, to blow some stuff up as you attempt to enslave all of Earth.

The control set is pretty simple, a concept going along well with the gameplay in general. You can jump, use a jetpack, fire a weapon, "holobob" someone, and display a real-time menu that allows you to use your psionic abilities

You get an extremely small number of weapons in Destroy All Humans as compared to other games like Mercenaries. There are only four guns that you will be able to use in the game, and only three weapons for your flying saucer. The guns don't have much of an inspired design for them. One zaps enemies to death and recharges, one must be charged and then can be used to harvest DNA from humans, another just disintegrates the humans, and one is a type of grenade launcher. The saucer weapons are more or less all the same. There are two grenade-like weapons that both do massive damage, and the basic rechargable heat ray. The weapons you get aren't by any means special in this game, but they get the job done. Aside from weapons, you also gain the Furon power of psionics, which allows you to pick up people and vehicles and mess with them as you want. While it's a nice ability, it's impractical, since you can't use your weapons while you move the objects (often times at extremely slow speeds, like with vehicles), leaving you heavily venerable to other enemies in the area. You can also use the psionics to extract brain stems from dead and intact enemies, which you collect to gain DNA.

Aside from harvesting DNA from humans, you can also get DNA by collecting alien probes that are scattered throughout the level. They're all over the place, and there are usually at least thirty probes in a level. You'll have to do a lot of searching to get to them however, as they are all hidden behind crates, in warehouses, in swimming pools, on rooftops, and so on. DNA can also be gotten by completing progressively harder sidequests. Usually these side quests require you to destroy a certain number of humans, harvest a certain number of brain stems, or get through a certain number of checkpoints, all within a set time limit.

Once you collect DNA, you can spend it like currency to purchase upgrades from the Mothership (the place you go in between every mission). There are three upgrades for each gun (except for one which has none), three upgrades for your psionic abilities, and two upgrades for each saucer weapon. The upgrades can range from simple things like increasing a gun's ammo capacity, but eventually build up to gigantic things like firing three shots of a gun instead of one (for absolutely ridiculous prices of course). The upgrades are essential to gameplay, and you'll have a very hard time in the late game if you don't pick up each one you can.

Stealth will also be an essential part of the game. You have the psionic ability to "holobob" another person, which allows you to take on their form. This will allow you to walk through enemy territory without being spotted, which will be a requirement for several missions. While you are in holobob form, your psionics meter will slowly decrease. Whenever you use a psionic ability, like holobobbing or telekenesis, the meter decreases. When it runs out, all psionic abilities in use stop instantly. To counter this, you need to "scan" enemies. Scanning is the equivalent of reading your enemy's mind, and it fills your psionic meter up a little bit whenever you do it. You can also use the scan ability to find out things such as passwords into bases, locations of important individuals, and other things vital to your mission.

The plot isn't anything incredible. You get your assigned mission at the start of the game, and the focus never really shifts from it, although there are some interesting twists and turns in the plot. However, if you are looking for an epic story, you should look elsewhere. Very much like the weapons in the game, this story only does enough to get by and get the job done. A gigantic plus side of the story, however: it is downright hilarious. The dialogue is extremely witty, and every environment you visit is a parody of a 1950's town or city. Rampant patriotism, side-splitting paranoia (if something goes wrong, it's always those darned commies at work), as well as references to celebrities and phrases of that time are all over the place. The atmosphere simply can't be beat, but it's something you have to play to experience to the fullest.

Destroy All Humans takes place over five environments, two of which you only play one or two missions in. They range from places such as Washington DC, an oceanside California city, Midwestern farms and tiny towns, secret government military bases, and more. Each environment has a different feel to it, but at the same time, you can tell many of the trees and crates and textures and house patterns are being recycled for use in other cities. Though this takes away from the graphical bliss of the game's cities, you'll usually end up concentrating more on the particular mission you're on or the enemies you are facing off against at the time. Much like what has been listed before, it does just enough to get the job done.

Destroy All Humans sports an eerie soundtrack for its main theme (think the cheesy ooooOOOOOoooo sound effects from alien movie parodies). The rest of the soundtrack is enough to keep the mood and atmosphere of the game up, but you won't remember much of it except for the sound clip that plays at the start of each mission. The explosions and sound effects, however, are superb. There isn't much you can say to describe the sound a house makes when it collapses, or the noise you hear whenever you fire a "Zap-O-Matic" or a Disintegrator Ray, but the sound effects are surprisingly a high point of the game, and actually manage to make up for what the soundtrack and game environments leave out.

The basic mechanics of the game, like sound and graphics and gameplay, are all well done and round off well. Sadly, the game is extremely short. You play through only about twenty-two missions, and then the game is over. The only attempt at providing replay value is half-baked, unfortunately. Whenever you complete a higher percentage of the game (by completing side missions and collecting probes), you unlock media material, like old alien B-Movie clips (funny, but only watchable once or twice before it gets boring), trailers, and generic "making of the game" movies, as well as some other expected propaganda. None of it will catch you interest, I promise. By the time you've unlocked it, you know the game well enough that you'll just be watching an explanation of things you already know, and you'll be hitting the back button within the first five minutes of it.

Destroy All Humans is an excellent, fun game, with witty dialogue and a funny (if not simple) plot, but suffers from several flaws that destroy much of the potential the game had. If the game had been longer, had more weapons and abilities (and upgrades to go along with it), as well as undergoing many graphical tweaks here and there, it could have been an excellent game at the same caliber as Mercenaries. This was not to be, but anyone who enjoys a good third person shooter should pick it up. It's certainly not a rock solid game, but it's solid enough that it's worth playing at least one time through. Get it, and give it a shot.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/24/05