Destroy All Humans Review (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Continuing their trend of bringing new life to their IP, THQ Nordic remade Destroy All Humans. Originally released in 2005, this game was all about causing chaotic mayhem fun with the technology of extraterrestrial life forms. In many ways, this remake recaptures that early 2000s AA game feeling while elevating the visuals to a whole new level.

The plot behind Destroy All Humans is straight forward and only really acts as a plot device to provide a foundation for the gameplay. Aliens are slowly dying out and have begun to clone themselves while they seek out some sort of solution. Luckily they came across Planet Earth, a planet with the exact DNA construct they need in order to survive.

Thus, our invasion of humanity begins It's not the most fleshed-out story but it isn't a narrative-driven game either. It does what it needs to, in order to provide that sandbox destruction experience and that's where the real meat and potatoes are. Destroy All Humans is broken up into missions taking place all over the planet Earth.

These missions take you to all sorts of places from the midwest farmlands to the sunny California coast side. Each of these missions is constructed around sandboxes filled with humans perfect for extracting DNA from or just abducting. Usually, the missions had me extracting DNA, pretending to be a human figurehead, or just straight up destroy everything in sight.

With alien technology, these all become pretty darn fun as the toolset at our disposal is a nerd's dream. Our zap ray lets us pop out the heads of humans, our psychic powers let us carry just about anything, and our hologram device lets us impersonate any other human.

That's of course just scratching the surface. At the end of each mission, the DNA we've collected is used as a currency to further upgrade our toolset or our space ship. Speaking of which, of course, we have a space ship. It acts as a buffer between missions where we're on the ground causing havoc.

When we're in the space ship, we're usually tackling military forces while also eradicating everyone in sight, I guess that's why it's called Destroy All Humans. The mix and match between these two gameplay types, complete destruction, and partial stealth was a nice variety of gameplay.

However, I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel a bit repetitive or shallow throughout the 10 hours of gameplay. For example, a new mission taking place on a military site experimenting on alien tech was a cut mission from the original game now fully restored.

Now if that wasn't advertised, I wouldn't have known because it fits that much into the gameplay formula but doesn't really stand out for being innovatively new either. Where this remake really stands out is in its visual upgrade that honestly looks way better than I expected.

I'd put this on par with the recent remakes of the Crash and Spyro trilogies. Cutscenes have been completely redone with the new look to the point that even the framing is redone, looking a bit more cinematic than its predecessor. When in gameplay, there's a better sense of life to the environment.

Fields of grass and crops don't feel flat anymore, characters look much more lively and the destruction is more beautiful than ever. The thing that could use a bit more work is the human character models that look a bit bland at times and repeat across the same environment.

It feels like a remnant of the technology in 2005 and in 2020, I feel like some variety in NPCs could have been made. Where the visuals were immensely improved for this remake, the audio remains largely untouched. The developers behind this title mentioned that there have been some quality improvements to the original's game audio but to my ear, it sounds roughly the same.

When synced up to the new visuals, it's pretty easy to tell that this audio wasn't recently redone though that in itself would be challenging while keeping the same voice actors. Speaking of actors, since the audio is being reused, all the original actors are still here.

Richard Horvitz from Invader Zim fame once again reprises his role here and fits perfectly into this world. John Albrecht on the other hand sounds more like Duke Nukem than a believable alien and his performance feels a bit out of place. Destroy All Humans is a solid remake of the original, paying homage to the series' roots of destruction fun while upping the presentation for modern standards.