It is not every day that we get to play video games from our childhood on modern systems however with the recent influx of remasters and remakes, we certainly are enjoying quite a bit of classic titles brought back to life on modern systems. The latest remaster to arrive from our early gaming days in Destroy All Humans! which have been developed by Black Forest Games and published by THQ Nordic. The original 2005 version was developed by Pandemic Games and published by THQ. This is our review of the 2020 remaster of Destroy All Humans! in which we invade earth and anal probe some humans in 4K.
Destroy All Humans! follows the story of a little blue alien Crypto who invades the planet earth during the 1950s. The game is set exceptionally well in the 1950s earth as you harvest human DNA, cause absolute mayhem, and fly your saucer to terrorize the humans. The purpose of invasion is to collect human DNA since Crypto’s species depend on humans for their own cloning. Crypt’s specie Furon is unable to ensure the safety of their specie until they acquire human brain stems which contain pure Furon DNA.
Destroy All Humans! probably offers the best weaponry ever offered in any video game to date. You can lift humans, items, and even animals and throw them around causing devastation. You can also anal probe humans for their brain stems because apparently accessing the brain directly from their heads is just too mainstream. If everything else fails, just pick up some chickens and start using them to kill humans because the invasion must be complete without any hindrances. Your ultimate goal is to bring down the government and take over the planet and collect human DNA to continue the cloning of Crypto’s specie.
The remake features a complete remake of all of the cutscenes and the character design looks amazing. The singleplayer story is complemented by detailed cutscenes as well as a newspaper report at the end of every mission which is trying to hide the destruction caused by Crypto by blaming things on Communism or natural disasters. The story further continues as you continue to destroy more of the planet and the humans retaliate in various ways and thus leading the plot to introduce the human organization Majestic which becomes a major threat to Crypto’s invasion. The game does not disappoint when it comes to the main story of the game and features witty and humorous comments by Crypto throughout the game.
Destroy All Humans! is strictly a singleplayer game and there is no multiplayer of any kind. However, this does not mean that after your first playthrough, you just chuck the game out of your HDD. There is still tons of content for you to explore after you have beaten the game once. After you have initially completed a level, you unlock it to explore it afterward. During these free explorations, you can explore the area and complete additional challenges and find collectibles that will allow you to collect even more DNA. You can also replay the missions and complete any of the missed secondary objectives for unlocking new Art or getting additional DNA for your upgrades.
If you head over to the Archives section of the pause menu, you will find Holopox Deck where you can play any of the story missions that you have completed in the game and complete the side objectives that you missed the first time around. If you need a reminder on any of the in-game mechanics, the Furon Handbook will remind you of anything that you might have missed the first time around. You can also switch between different Crypto skins in the Archives which are unlocked during the main campaign of the game. If you want to simply reminisce on your past performance, the Invasion Report will keep you up to speed on all of your past shenanigans.
You also have access to the trusty Pox’s Lab where you can upgrade yourself or your Saucer. You can upgrade your shields, different abilities, and your weapons and gadgets by spending DNA which is earned by completing missions, side objectives, and different challenges. Collecting collectibles also give you additional DNA. Crypto might be the ultimate badass but he is still vulnerable and you will eventually need to upgrade his abilities and gear to make him more effective in later stages. The same goes for your Saucer as well. Upgrading its shields, weapons, and gadgets will ensure that you stay in the sky for longer in the face of adversity.
Probably the most prominent feature of the new remake of Destroy All Humans! is its visuals and you can notice then right from the menu screen. Black Forest Games has done an amazing job in creating each and every texture of the game from scratch which includes the animations, particles and more. Having played both the original title and the new remaster, the visuals alone were the key selling point for me. The PC version offers tons of visual customization options and when you slide the bars all the way to the right, the game looks just downright gorgeous. The special effects, particle system, animations, character design, and explosions, everything looks brilliant.
When it comes to PC version of titles, optimization plays a big role, and judging by the visual fidelity offered by Destroy All Humans!, it is definitely no slouch when it comes to eye candy. On Ultra settings, the game looks like a AAA title straight out of 2020 rather than a remake of a game that was released back in 2005. Apart from my main review system, I ran the game on a fairly old system running 8GB DDR3 Ram coupled with an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 with an AMD R9 290 and I was surprised to see that the game was running pretty well on Ultra with frames staying near 35-40. This just shows how good the game is and how well it has been optimized for running on the PC.
This level of optimization has been achieved by taking care of small details which are not very obvious and become only evident when you look really close to them. For example, the high-quality grass on the ground has to be only visible while you are closer to the ground and not all the time while you are zooming around on your saucer causing absolute mayhem. While you are high in the sky, this high-quality grass gets replaced with a filler low-quality grass that just remains there to show you that the grass is there but as you come closer to the ground, it becomes high-quality again and it is an extremely streamlined transition as well unlike the sudden appearance of visual details some games tend to have.
Technically, the game runs extremely stable as well. For my entire playthrough of the game, the game never crashed for me nor did I encounter any sort of glitches or bugs. There was a little thing that frustrated the hell out of me during the third mission of the game when I was supposed to be stealth but the game kept spawning me right next to an army guard after I killed the scientists and mutant cows which made it impossible for me to remain stealthy. I had to restart the mission but other than that I do not recall any sort of glitches or game-breaking bugs or even a visual hiccup that I might have encountered during my review.
Final Verdict:
Over the past few years, we have seen a lot of Remakes and Remasters find their way to modern consoles. Some of them were amazing while some of them were just okay. In the case of Destroy All Humans!, I can easily say that this is one of the best remasters of this generation. Not only because it belongs to a video game that we all loved back when it came out, but also the rework done by the developers is just amazing. The game looks amazing and the reworked visuals and mechanics do not make it feel like a cheap cash-grab. Not only does it look good, but the optimization is beyond my expectations as well. Even on lower-end PCs, this remake works like a charm and is surely the best possible way that the newer generation of gamers can experience this brilliant game from our childhood. For someone who has played this game previously on an Xbox or a PS2 console, you must play this game. If you are a newer-gen gamer who did not get to play it back then, this is the best version of the game for you to experience it. I can easily say that this has paved way for the remaster of the second title in the franchise and potentially, the third title as well sometime later down the road.
Final Score: 9.5/10
