DESTROY ALL HUMANS Review for PlayStation 4

Destroy All Humans, by developer Black Forest Games and publisher THQ Nordic, is one of those classics that you played when you were young. Its wacky humor and capacity for freedom enraptured a massive audience. In 2020, that experience was renewed, rediscovered, and better than I ever remembered.

The main character, Crypto, says “When do I get to blow things up?!” in the opening cutscene. You’d be delighted to know that the answer is: almost immediately. Destroy All Humans is an open-world adventure sandbox game. The player is set loose, sometimes with goals, and given free reign to explore and terrorize the town at their feet. With abilities like telekinesis, jetpacking, and brain extraction, you get to indulge in your every alien desire.

DESTROY ALL HUMANS Review for PlayStation 4

The remake aimed to completely overhaul the game’s visuals and remaster the outdated controls. And while that’s all it did, it was done to perfection. The modern era graphics put a fresh coat of paint on the game without detracting from the charm of its original. The new art style is reminiscent of newspaper caricature-like cartoons and emphasizes the exaggerated gameplay. The original title had attempts at photo realistic human character design. I feel that the rework more accurately represents the gameplay and overall game themes. Along with the visuals, the controls were heavily reworked to feel more like a modern title. The 2005 controls were clunky at times, often detracting from the game if you weren’t already acquainted with it. Reworking it to have a modern control layout makes the gameplay far more intuitive than its 2005 version. This paved the way for the rest of the game to do its job.

This game knows exactly what a fun game looks like and it’s throwing exploding radioactive cows at human scientists. While the gameplay may not have changed since 2005, it’s still a delightfully fun experience. Playing as Crypto, you get to look at the worst parts of humanity from an alien, comedic perspective. Pageants get destroyed. Politicians manipulate the public. You get to blame the world’s problems on communists and then anally probe the people that listen. The game isn’t trying to take itself too seriously and it works. I feel like I’m in an episode of South Park whenever I play and can’t help but laugh.

Destroy All Humans is simple. That simplicity is part of its charm. But its gameplay is rather repetitive due to that simplicity. It tends to follow the patterns of either blowing everything up or disguising yourself as a human and then blowing everything up. The mechanics and mission requirements are very obviously from 2005. You won’t get a wide variety of missions and gameplay, so once you’ve done a few you’ve done them all. The game feels like an arcade mashup version of Grand Theft Auto and Hitman. It cartoonifies the best parts of both these games. So while there is stealth and mass violence, the stealth and mass violence isn’t as intricately constructed as my proposed relatives. Of course it should be mentioned, modern versions of GTA came out after this game, and Hitman came out far after as well. So it’s more than likely that they learned from this game’s development.

Destroy All Humans! 2020 does a lot of things right. It establishes a simple premise and clearly translates it to the player with new and improved visuals, design, and intuitive controls. Players can spend hours just playing with the sandbox it provides, anally probing and exploding whatever they find. My only criticism lies in the simplicity itself, but it should be expected to an extent due to the game being originally designed before 2005. The game is heaps of fun and should entertain anybody who picks it up for at least a few hours.

8.5/10