Of the list of games I expected to see remade in 2020, Destroy All Humans! wasn't even on the table. Not due to any personal dislike or anything - I just didn't think anybody still cared. Sure, I remember it getting a huge marketing blitz and a batch of rushed sequels back in the day, but I figured it was fleeting, temporal hype.
Fifteen years later, with the remake under my belt, I can firmly say this is one title that deserved the glow-up. While some dated design choices and frustrating controls can hamper the fun, Destroy All Humans! is a rollicking, chaotic game with biting political edge and a remarkably likeable lead.
A Probe Into American Life
Set in 1950's America, Destroy All Humans! follows Crypto, a wry and somewhat spiteful little alien that lands on earth to investigate the disappearance of a missing intergalactic comrade. But no sooner does he start to get answers than does he run afoul of the local police and the military. With the cops and the jackboots making his recon mission needlessly frustrating, Crypto ultimately determines that humans aren't worth leaving alive, and begins a crusade to purge the world of them for good.
In a time where expensive and glitzy games are too afraid to make political statements, Destroy All Humans! is a refreshing breath of leftist fresh air. It's made very explicit that Crypto is radicalized by the fascist, racist surveillance state of McCarthyist politics, and that "white picket fence" America is what ultimately helps him decide to bring Earth to its knees. This game has a very clear disdain for values instilled in America post-WWII, and I'm incredibly here for it.
Cops brag about their "moral superiority over fellow citizens"; the US government hires war criminals to keep the public under control; random NPCs will note "that Fidel is kinda making sense." Made in the throes of the Bush administration, Destroy All Humans! is a beautiful example of taking sacred American values and roasting them with gleeful aplomb. This game is anti-military, anti-cop, and anti-imperialism, and honestly feels more modern than it might have on release.
To Serve Man (On A Spit)
That feeling of modernity mostly translates to the mechanics when Destroy All Humans is at its best. Full disclosure: I haven't actually ever played the original game in its entirety, so most of this was pretty new to me. So, as a newcomer, I found myself impressed with the game's large sandboxes and varied arsenal, as well as its satisfying physics-based carnage. Humans can be chunked for hundreds of feet, and buildings can be reduced to piles of crumbling ash in the blink of an eye. Once the game lets you have fun with its mechanics, the world is truly your oyster.
That's the thing, though: "once the game lets you." Because this was a game made in 2005, it's pretty intent on forcing you to jump through lots of hoops to get to the good stuff. That means mandatory stealth missions that exist purely to show off your abilities. It also means only being able to approach certain situations in a small handful of ways. Given that the game has the capacity to just give players a giant, destructible sandbox, I wish that it did that more often instead of forcing them into learning stealth mechanics they're never going to use again. It's tiresome, and the finicky controls and nonsense AI only serve to compound that frustration.
While I understand that gaming has changed a lot in fifteen years, it's definitely jarring to go back to open world games when they were in their infancy. Destroy All Humans! definitely isn't bad from a mechanical statement - just a bit rote and a touch dated. It's still fun, sure, but that fun often comes with an asterisk attached. "Tossing around civilians and eating their brains is fun, but I wish I didn't have to tail random civilians beforehand." "I love wreaking havoc on this military base, but I really hate how bad this UFO controls." It's a game of winning some and losing some, and while it ultimately wins more than loses, one can't help but to imagine that a looser re-imagining of the concept could've worked better.
Beam Me Up
That isn't to say Destroy All Humans! is a misfire, or that I wouldn't recommend it - it's an imaginative game with great political messaging and some solid mechanical ideas, not to mention some truly impressive visuals. But that recommendation will always be pitched at a certain crowd, with a certain disposition. The types of players that can work around tired mission structures, sloppy AI, and cumbersome vehicle controls. If you can push through all that, you'll find a charming and arresting game with plenty of content to sink your eager fangs into.
As I've always been an advocate for imagination over mechanical perfection, Destroy All Humans! is something that works for me. Perhaps it isn't the most polished or modern game of 2020, but it's definitely one that I'll keep coming back to, and it's absolutely the best remake to come out of THQ Nordic yet.
A PlayStation 4 copy of Destroy All Humans! was provided to TheGamer for this review. Destroy All Humans! is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Google Stadia, and PC.
Destroy All Humans!