Alien invaders who wish to conquer earth have been the subject of science fiction for decades. The idea of invaders from other planets wanting to exterminate the human race isn't too far fetched, as people tend to be xenophobic by nature and are generally terrible. It only makes sense that our fear of foreign invaders and a subconscious realization of how terrible we are as a species conjure up these thoughts of invaders from other worlds wanting to come to earth to exterminate, enslave and worst of all probe. The title Destroy All Humans leaves no ambiguity of how lowly Crypto thinks of us, and the sequel Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed shows that he didn't do a of good job of exterminating us.

Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed is set in 1969, ten years after the events of the original game. Cryptosporidian-137, or Crypto for short, is dead. His death is anticlimactic and it isn't explained or dwelled on. His clone, Cryptospordian-138, also Crypto for short, has taken his place and is continuing to masquerade as President of the United States. Crypto is unique among Furons. Despite supposedly being made of 100 percent Furon DNA, he's the only Furon to possess genitalia, which shall henceforth be referred to as The Package. How this came to be no one knows and why the KGB views this as a threat I'd rather not know, but these are the circumstances we're dealing with and this leads to the KGB using nukes to take out the Furon mothership.

Mentioning that crypto is in possession of The Package is a good enough segue into one of the odder elements of this remake, which appears to be a disclaimer of sorts. The game begins with a message stating that the visuals have been upgraded, but the record of the Furon invasion remains unchanged and that the cultural and linguistic scholars have determined this might be shocking to modern minds. Whether this is meant to be commentary on the perception that people are too sensitive these days or self awareness of how its humor might not have aged well, it was an unusual thing to see at the start of game. Especially since the title is a good indicator of what people who play this game are signing up for.

Crypto's adventure takes place in San Francisco, which is heavily infested by both hippies and KGB agents. Before dying in the mothership explosion the Furon leader, Orthopox 13, downloaded his consciousness into a hologram so he can still order Crypto around from beyond the grave. This leads Crypto down a mission that grows ever more complicated where a single revenge mission against the KGB gets him involved with the British intelligence agency M16 and a rogue Soviet agent named Natalya Ivanova whom he makes not so subtle subtle advances to. The people Crypto works with rely on his abilities to kill their mutual enemies which leads Crypto suspects she only wants him for his saucer. When Crypto is killing everyone he needs to keep a low profile to not draw attention from the various government forces that want to kill him. In order to do this he has a new Body Snatch ability where he takes over the form of a person. He can't use his jetpack or other weapons while wearing a human body, but can move about the people undetected and can only converse with certain individuals when he's wearing the proper form. But sometimes talking to humans doesn't work, so Crypto has to just read their mind instead.

With a name like Destroy All Humans!, there's a bit of battle involved. The combat mechanics are one of the strengths as Crypto has an impressive arsenal, but switching between his different weapons and abilities is fast and intuitive. It isn't just the sheer number of weapons, but the real variety of his arsenal. This isn't an exhaustive list, but Crypto has either psychokinesis to toss his adversaries around or can simply pluck their brains from their heads. He has his lightning bolt harnessing Zap-O-Matic, his standard issue alien disintegration ray, the anal probe and my personal favorite, the Dislocator. The Dislocator makes its targets bounce, and when fully charged can make vehicles bounce. It's hard to take combat seriously when KGB agents and their vehicles are bouncing to their own destruction. In addition to Crypto's on-foot weapons, his saucer has plenty of amusing instruments of destruction, including an antigravity ray that's simply fun to use on anti-aircraft tanks.

Crypto can his enhance his ship and weapons as he progresses through the game. Finding data packs will help recover weapons as he rebuilds his ship. Completing missions will grant Crypto points he can spend in the Pox Shop on upgrades for his equipment and weapons. Completing optional mission objectives will increase his spending power. Aside from the obvious reason to upgrade to make Crypto more powerful, these enhancements just make the game more fun. Having a Zap-O-Matic that branches out and hits more targets is more entertaining than the stock model.

Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobded does a fair amount of things right. The combat mechanics are simple but in a good way, both when Crypto is on foot or when he's reigning down hell from his saucer. Battling against swarms of government agents, whether they be KGB, military or police is quite enjoyable, especially with all the weapons Crypto has at his disposal. Boss battles, on the other hand, are on the more boring side, which is disappointing since some of them have good creature designs. The story is fitting to this homage to old sci-fi films and B-movies. Because of this it's probable that the dialogue and voice acting is deliberately meant to be bad as a tongue-in-cheek nod to its influences, but it's cringeworthy even by B-movie standards. Some of the conversations, particularly with the hippies, were painful to endure. What made matters worse is even though scenarios such as this require a suspension of disbelief, it's hard to imagine someone having a conversation with a comely young lady and Crypto's impression of Jack Nicholson coming out of her mouth. There are moments of enjoyable gameplay and genuinely funny exchanges between characters, but as a whole it was difficult to find either the gameplay or story that engaging.

Destroy All Humans! 2 was released several console generations ago which makes the graphics impressive in this remake. The character models look true to what one would see on the original Xbox/PlayStation 2 version, but the art department did a great job and making everything pop on modern HD displays. A nice inclusion is several dozen different skins Crypto can wear. There are many of these from the start, but more can be unlocked by completing missions and optional objectives.

Closing Comments:

Like many of the B-movies that inspired it, Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed isn't something that will be considered great by a general consensus, but does have a certain appeal to the right audience. The game makes many attempts at subtle and not-so-subtle innuendos and while the intention is humor, many of them fall flat. Not because they're offensive, they just mostly go for the low hanging fruit which may have been more risque in 2006, but nowadays just doesn't seem that creative. There are sections of enjoyable gameplay, but these moments come as part of a greater narrative that's difficult to care about. Fans of low-budget sci-fi are clearly the target audience, and for those this will probably be a good time, but there are better options available for the rest of us.