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> Results: Destroy All Humans!
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Pandemic have carved out a name for themselves in the game genre known as Blow Stuff Up and Blow it Up Real Good. Like their previous game Mercenaries, Destroy All Humans! will have you gleefully watching as whole towns are razed and people are jerking around on the end of your electric shock gun.
There is some semblance of a plot, however. You take the role of Cryptosporidium 137. He's a small gray alien with big sinister eyes and member of the dwindling Furon clone race. Your job is to go to 1950s-era Earth after your predecessor Cryptosporidium 136 who crash-landed and allowed Furon technology to fall into human handsﾗshadowy, secret governmental agency hands. If you think all this sounds vaguely like an episode of the cult Nickelodeon cartoon Invader Zim, you wouldn't be far off. Indeed, you hear a lot of Zim's voice, as the actor responsible was recruited to speak the lines of Pox, Crypto's superior, who guides you through the game. His voice is heard a lot more than Crypto's, who takes on a rather Jack Nicholson-esque tone. All Crypto really wants to do is destroy humansﾗall of them. To do this, he is armed with a multi-purpose gun that at the beginning can shoot out electrical sparks, but will be upgraded as the game progresses to allow anal probes, disintegrator rays, and the dropping of explosive grenade-like devices. In addition to this versatile weapon, Crypto can utilize his psychic abilities in four areas: telekinesis, hypnosis, mind-reading, and brain stem extraction (by zapping humans until their heads explode in a shower of green/gray goo). You'll be extracting a lot of brain stems too, because Crypto's primary mission on Earth is to recover enough Furon DNA to keep the Furon race genetically pure. Why do human brains contain Furon DNA? It's a long story and probably not suitable for a family website. Crypto is aided by a jetpack to get around in town, and when more destructive power is needed, Crypto can hop back in his flying saucer for large-scale mayhem. Like many other recent games, Destroy All Humans! is an open mission-based title, meaning Pox will give you a directive but once that is completed you can wander around doing your own thing. Extract DNA or read the minds of random passers-by, or take on one of several challenges that every area has. The challenges are not particularly varied, either being "jetpack around these checkpoints before the time runs out" or "destroy 15 humans before the time runs out", but you'll want to do at least a few of them as you will be rewarded in DNA, the currency you use to upgrade your weapons and saucer. At least the primary missions are more interesting, requiring you to attack or defend a target, collect a certain number of items, or assume the identity of a human in order to achieve some goal. Yes, Crypto can also shape-shift, an ability you can use at any time, allowing you to wander around town undetected for as long as your Concentration meter lasts.  That's pretty much it. As the game progresses, you face stronger enemies, and you're given more powerful weapons, but there's never anything really new opened up. Run around, blow stuff up, extract brain stems. Even though it's a short game (if you sit down and play it at length, you'll be done in a couple of days), it's still easy to get bored. Towards the end, the main missions are tedious exercises in avoiding Majestic agents while you blow something up before the time runs out. Your patience (or ability to find the easily-exploitable sub-missions to get enough DNA for weapons upgrades) will be rewarded with unlockable items such as several "making of" videos, and a very special movie that the developers make more than one reference to during the game itself. What saves the game from being a dud is the humor. The setting is 1950s America, and the whole thing is a delightful pastiche of B-movies of the time, with some modern-day cynical jokes thrown in. From the government blaming everything on rampant Communism, to the housewives' private thoughts about Bettie Page, every B-movie cliché and stereotype can be observed. The presentation is great, both aurally and visually. Every new major mission has its own sci-fi movie poster-style loading screen and title, the music is the orchestral plus theremin staple of such movies, and the characters are all well-defined depictions of what they represent (housewife, be-cardiganed family man, teen girl ready for the sock hop, etc.). Graphically, the game is lovely ﾖ once again, Pandemic managed to trick the PS2 into thinking it's an Xbox, with gorgeous lighting effects and detailed textures. Destroy All Humans! is a decent game, but ultimately it is a disappointment. There is so much rich content to work with here and the stage is set for an exciting adventure, but the game limits what you can do. Crypto can shape-shift, so I should be able to assume the form of a teacher and frighten small children. I should be able to land the saucer on top of tall buildings and terrorize the whole town at once, instead of being forced to land off in the woods and walk. I'd love to be able to actually interact with the townspeople while disguised, with my conversations subtly affecting the way they go about their lives. There's a good physics engine in here, and you can make your own fun flinging people around, so why couldn't there have been a few missions exploiting this? Anally probing people until their heads explode is fun, but it sure gets old. Pick this one up when it hits the bargain bin; until then, check out their more well-rounded Mercenaries.  
This one's a shame. Despite the fact that you're running around disintegrating people and blowing up buildings, it's all very over the top, and the gross humor and relative ease of gameplay would go over well with younger children, but the dialog places Destroy All Humans! distinctly in the teen territory. Jokes about genitalia and anal probing, innuendos around homosexuality and infidelity, it has the writing of any modern episode of The Simpsons. If you're okay with your children watching that, then you should be okay with this game.
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