Destroy All Humans!
The invasion has begun. See how things turned out inside.
Published: July 4, 2005
Ever tried making a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy? It's not pretty. Everyone who's tried to copy a VHS tape back in the day knows that you lose quite a bit in the transfer each time, and such is the fate that has befallen the clone-happy Furon empire. Given that they lack the junk necessary to get busy in our messy (but oh so fun) physical way, cloning is their only way to propagate the species, and the situation presents a bit of a problem for the invasion-prone aliens.
But there's an easy solution to the problem. See, long, long ago, these same Furons were in the neighborhood kicking the collective asses of a certain red planet next door, and fresh from the celebratory kegger, they decided to touch down on our blue world and get frisky with our ancestors. The result is that all humans carry with them a few strands of pure, ancient Furon DNA in our own genetic pattern, and so (of course) they all must die so that the Furon cloning pool can be strengthened.
When an initial scout ship carrying clone Cryptosporidium-136 crash lands and the alien is captured, the next clone in line, Crypto-137, gets the final low-down on the situation befalling his people, and is tasked with finding his predecessor and continuing the mission.
This is the basis for Destroy All Humans' human head-popping gameplay, and it's probably the most in-depth an introduction to anything that happens in the game, which is both good for getting things started, but bad for anyone hoping for a deep storyline. The rest of the game, which centers around overcoming a government plot to boost anti-Communist xenophobia among Americans through water supply tampering and mind control broadcasts is certainly passable, but it mainly serves as a way to make fun of all the rampant McCarthyism and sexual tumult bubbling just below the surfact of the seemingly idyllic 1950's Rockwellian suburbs.
Luckily, this source material is rife with ways to make tongue-in-cheek references to alternative lifestyles, up-and-coming government officials like Nixon, taboo studies like Kinsey's theories of sexuality, and clandestine government operations like Area 51 (er, Area 42 here), Majestic and Silhouette. There are times when the writing slips and includes the odd modern colloquialism (I don't recall 1950's Irish immigrant beat cops saying 'beeyatch'), but for the most part, it's a pretty impressive take on the period as a whole. It's also damned hilarious, and it works in the game's favor.
The humor and storyline bits move the game along, but it's the core gameplay centered around Crypto's ability to hop in and out of his spaceship at nearly any time to tear ass through a half-dozen or so sites around the U.S. and the delicious Havok-fueled physics fun that lies therein that makes the game so damned entertaining -- at least for a while.
DAH's biggest problem is just that the game becomes too damned repetitive after a while; revisiting the same levels multiple times and harvesting brain stems from humans to upgrades Crypto and his ship's powers and weapons becomes a bit tedious, and the tasks that will let you net bonus stems are the same five or six in every level.
It doesn't help either that those levels must be played through an entire mission at a time. Screw up, and there's no checkpointing cushion to help you, so as much as 10-15 minutes can be pretty easily blown if you get ambushed or raise the alert level too much and bring the might of the U.S. military upon you.
That's not to say things aren't fun. Crypto's powers -- which include the ability to cloak himself to walk among most humans, scan their minds, hypnotize them, pop their heads with enough concentration, and in a Psi-Ops-flavored sandbox approach, toss objects and people around with telekinesis to generally just stir up chaos -- are a blast.
His weapons, likewise, allow him to shock, anally probe, vaporize and incinerate his foes in slowly upgradable steps, and when combined with the cloaking and PK powers, becomes a nicely open-ended world that uses a basic set of behaviors to nudge rather than force you to accomplish goals in a certain way.
But there's an easy solution to the problem. See, long, long ago, these same Furons were in the neighborhood kicking the collective asses of a certain red planet next door, and fresh from the celebratory kegger, they decided to touch down on our blue world and get frisky with our ancestors. The result is that all humans carry with them a few strands of pure, ancient Furon DNA in our own genetic pattern, and so (of course) they all must die so that the Furon cloning pool can be strengthened.
When an initial scout ship carrying clone Cryptosporidium-136 crash lands and the alien is captured, the next clone in line, Crypto-137, gets the final low-down on the situation befalling his people, and is tasked with finding his predecessor and continuing the mission.
This is the basis for Destroy All Humans' human head-popping gameplay, and it's probably the most in-depth an introduction to anything that happens in the game, which is both good for getting things started, but bad for anyone hoping for a deep storyline. The rest of the game, which centers around overcoming a government plot to boost anti-Communist xenophobia among Americans through water supply tampering and mind control broadcasts is certainly passable, but it mainly serves as a way to make fun of all the rampant McCarthyism and sexual tumult bubbling just below the surfact of the seemingly idyllic 1950's Rockwellian suburbs.
Luckily, this source material is rife with ways to make tongue-in-cheek references to alternative lifestyles, up-and-coming government officials like Nixon, taboo studies like Kinsey's theories of sexuality, and clandestine government operations like Area 51 (er, Area 42 here), Majestic and Silhouette. There are times when the writing slips and includes the odd modern colloquialism (I don't recall 1950's Irish immigrant beat cops saying 'beeyatch'), but for the most part, it's a pretty impressive take on the period as a whole. It's also damned hilarious, and it works in the game's favor.
The humor and storyline bits move the game along, but it's the core gameplay centered around Crypto's ability to hop in and out of his spaceship at nearly any time to tear ass through a half-dozen or so sites around the U.S. and the delicious Havok-fueled physics fun that lies therein that makes the game so damned entertaining -- at least for a while.
DAH's biggest problem is just that the game becomes too damned repetitive after a while; revisiting the same levels multiple times and harvesting brain stems from humans to upgrades Crypto and his ship's powers and weapons becomes a bit tedious, and the tasks that will let you net bonus stems are the same five or six in every level.
It doesn't help either that those levels must be played through an entire mission at a time. Screw up, and there's no checkpointing cushion to help you, so as much as 10-15 minutes can be pretty easily blown if you get ambushed or raise the alert level too much and bring the might of the U.S. military upon you.
That's not to say things aren't fun. Crypto's powers -- which include the ability to cloak himself to walk among most humans, scan their minds, hypnotize them, pop their heads with enough concentration, and in a Psi-Ops-flavored sandbox approach, toss objects and people around with telekinesis to generally just stir up chaos -- are a blast.
His weapons, likewise, allow him to shock, anally probe, vaporize and incinerate his foes in slowly upgradable steps, and when combined with the cloaking and PK powers, becomes a nicely open-ended world that uses a basic set of behaviors to nudge rather than force you to accomplish goals in a certain way.
