An instant cult-classic but with some flaws
User Rating: 8.4 | Destroy All Humans! PS2
Destroy All Humans (hereon referred to as DAH) is a parody of the classic 50s B-movies. The story goes that the Furons, an advanced extraterrestrial race hungry for war lost their genitalia during a war with the Martians. To overcome this problem they have perfected the art of cloning but with every new clone their DNA grows more stagnant. Without some fresh DNA the Furons will die, they are already down to only about 2000 people. Luckily for them some Furon sailors landed on Earth eons ago and now in every human on the planet some Furon DNA is nested deep in their brains. Cryptosporidium 136, Crypto for short, is a Furon scout and is sent down to Earth to harvest Furon DNA. Things go pear shaped though when we flies directly above a launching nuclear war-head and you start as Crypto 137. Your task is now two-fold, find Crypto 136 and harvest the Furon DNA from humanity. DAH is mostly a 3rd-person shooter but it also has stealth and arcade shooter sections to break up the action. While the game is spread across 6 different levels each is completely free-roaming so while this is not GTA it does let you run rampant and getting from one side of a level to the other on foot would take a while. The 3rd person shooting sections, which comprise over half of the game, are very well done and nothing is more satisfying than disintegrating, ionizing and anal probing those pathetic humans. The stealth and arcade shooter sections do not fair so well though. The former is clunky because these sections are just take the form of a human, scan minds to keep the illusion up and avoid Majestic, and since Majestic randomly spawn a lot of these sections are hit and miss. The UFO sections are better though but they suffer from a lack of diversity. You do feel like a superior military power but with only 4 weapons, two being similar and one having limited applications these sections feel like they either needed to be beefed up or cut completely. They do pickup though once you get over half way since by then the opposition is fiercer and your upgraded ship even more so. The graphics in DAH are great. Most of the textures are highly detailed, the model and animation of Crypto is spot on and the destruction of buildings is pretty cool too. Most of the enemies are good also but the random pedestrians you find walking around the streets are of only about 15 different types and are much less detailed than Crypto. The big problem with the graphics though is the draw-distance. With the game only running at 30FPS and nothing being too amazingly detailed you do wonder if they could not have raised the draw distance even a little since you will sometimes be able to stand right in front of something and have it appear one or two seconds later. For the few short comings in the graphics the sound is brilliant. The voice acting is done with feeling, none of the dialogue will make you cringe (unless it intends to that is) and a lot of the voices are recognizable. For example Crypto sounds like Jack Nicholson and Orthopox (your commander and weapon supplier) has the same voice actor as the beloved Zim in the cartoon Invader Zim. The sound effects are fitting and never get annoying, the music fits perfectly with the 50s B-movie feel and the shear amount of voice work is incredible with every piece of dialogue whether in cut-scenes, mind scanning or screams for mercy being fully voice acted and done to a very high quality. The length of DAH is really where it falls though. With only 21 missions, annoying little side missions on every level are all drawn from 4 different types and the collectible probes scattered about are like GTA secret packages but somehow even worse since there are almost 200 of them. The probes are used to unlock things in the archive section though and these extras are surprisingly good with my favourite being a Developer Darwinism movie showing the game from the very earliest version up one of the most recent. In all DAH is a great game and is already a cult classic. Humour plays a big part in the appeal and uniqueness of this game and its done spot on. Whether its worth paying full price though is debatable but if you love aliens, rampant destruction or 50s B-movies then this game is at least worth a rental. 
