Imagine, if possible, the love child of popular video game “Grand Theft Auto 3” and not-as-popular movie “Mars Attacks”.
The game is set in the 1950’s “Leave it to Beaver” era and revolves around the very outspoken extra-terrestrial Cryptosporidium 137’s quest on Earth. His mission is as follows: extract human DNA from the locals while gaining information on the whereabouts of clone predecessor Cryptosporidium 136 who was sent out earlier on a similar mission to Earth.
Cryptosporidium 137, or Crypto as he is later nicknamed by his Martian overlord, is surely the Jack Nicholson of all alien races. He’s rude, loud, and his hilarious one-liners will have gamers laughing out loud. But it’s the powers that Crypto develops that really give his character depth.
Throughout the game Crypto is able to learn and utilize more and more special powers that he can then turn on the poor human race in order to do his evil alien bidding. Among these powers include hypnotizing humans, reading their often hilarious thoughts, moving objects with his psychokinetic mind, extracting human brains/DNA, and even cloaking himself in human form to sneak into those crowded hard-to-reach areas.
But Crypto is packing way more than just simple mind powers to assault our precious planet, after all part of being a futuristic being from outer space is breaking out the big guns.
The standard Zap-o-Matic gun Crypto carries is more than enough to get the job done on its own, however much like the mind powers, as you progress in the game your weapon selection becomes more plentiful. Before long, gamers will be treated to disintegrator rays, ion detonators, and even the most popular device among disturbingly curious aliens: the anal probe.
If that’s not enough destructive material for gamers, they are also treated to taking Crypto’s flying saucer out for a spin to try out the numerous weapons and abilities that it can possess, albeit for the more widespread attacks on buildings and the Army.
Although the various weapons are great fun to use, the game does have its rough spots as far as complete freedom goes. Unlike being able to freely roam the giant location of Liberty City in “Grand Theft Auto 3”, this game sends users on missions that are required to complete in order to advance in the game. This destroys the aspect of gamers being able to go about their own business in the city and makes it feel a lot more restrictive and confined.
Another borrowed concept from GTA3 that doesn’t turn out as well as planned is the human alert bar that shows what level of detection the authorities are aware of Crypto’s presence. The reason it doesn’t work as well as it does in the GTA series is due to the sensitivity of it. Usually an attack on a person during GTA3 wouldn’t even spark one star on the meter, however in “Destroy All Humans!” just being spotted by a human gets gamers their first star filled. From there on it’s pretty easy to get the whole meter filled and have the US Army on Crypto’s intergalactic butt (and not the more cautious Army of present day mind you, but rather the 1950’s version of “shoot first and ask questions if there is time between reloading.”
While the game suffers from the few restrictive problems with the mission selection, the various weapons will help overcome the previously mentioned woes. Yet once the fun of using the different types of weapons is over, gamers will be left with a shallow mission based game of collecting numerous items, escorting humans to your ship, and stealth missions.
Overall the game is a solid piece of fun that should be rented for a few weekends of fun, but other than that wait for a decent price drop to purchase it from local stores.