Destroy All Humans

THQ's alien invasion might not break any new ground but it's presentation puts it over the top.

Run for your lives! The Furons are coming! The Furons are coming! Well actually, it is just one Furon: Cryptosporidium. But what the little grey invader lacks in numbers, he more that makes up in malice and advanced alien weaponry – plus a good shot to the funnybone. And while his game, Destroy All Humans!, falls a bit short in the gameplay department, it definitely makes most of it up in the presentation department.

As the game opens we find ourselves in the United States of the early 1950s. The American culture has just woken up to the reality of the Cold War and communist paranoia is rampant. During a missile test, a Furon scout ship is accidentally shot down and its pilot, Cryptosporidium 136, has been taken prisoner. This does not sit well with the Furon leadership. Letting the monkey Earth inhabitants get their paws on advanced Furon technology is unacceptable. There is also the small matter of theFuron race’s degrading DNA as they clone themselves to immortality. It seems one reason Crypto 136 was on Earth is because the Furons ages ago seeded Furon DNA into the Earth monkeys so they could have access to a pure source against just such a day of need. To kill two birds with one stone, the Furon leader Pox has called on Cryptosporidium 136’s test tube brother, Cryptosporidium 137, to go to Earth and get Crypto 136 and his accompanying technology back and to harvest as much Furon DNA as possible from the brainstems of the monkey humans.

If you’ve ever been an insomniac and watched the late, late, late show, are a Z-grade movie fan and collector like my gaming bud Paul B., or just enjoyed Mystery Science Theater 3000 during its all-too-short run, you’ve seen the inspiration for Destroy All Humans!: 1950s cheesy science fiction movies with questionable production values. They are so bad that they become comedic. Destroy All Humans! is simply full of references and homage to such stinkers as Plan 9 From Outer Space, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and classics like The Day the Earth Stood Still. These movies fed the paranoia of the communist-obsessed ‘50s American public with fears of being invaded and taken over by outsiders. But unlike those unintentionally funny movies, Pandemic went straight for the laughs with no pretense about being serious and conveying some warning message.

Destroy All Humans! is played in a series of mission that will have Crypto on the ground in amongst the human population and close overhead in his heavily-armed attack saucer. In the beginning Crypto invades an isolated farm. This stage unfolds as sort of a tutorial where Crypto will learn to use his basic Furon equipment and considerable mental powers against hayseed farmers, a couple of local cops and a few soldiers. As the game progresses, the stages naturally get harder with greater numbers of enemies as well as more deadly foes. At the same time Crypto will get the opportunity to upgrade his equipment to meet the threat. It kind of balances out and the game never really gets that hard.

In the course of each mission the goals to be attained change. One mission might just be about simple destruction while another has Crypto using his Holobob disguise power to become a human leader and use his new form to make the humans more malleable and easier to invade. Or perhaps recon and gather information on the defenses the humans are planning. In addition to the main missions, there are special challenges that can be undertaken to earn a few extra DNA points. Pox also wants you to pick up any of his probe units you find around the levels and will pay for any you find. The structure of the missions allows Crypto to go to any area he may have already completed missions in to take challenges, hunt for probes or just terrorize the locals and collect some more DNA from them.

Crypto has a nice bag of tools to accomplish his missions. As personal armament, he starts with the standard issue Zap-O-Matic ray that is quite shocking to targets and progresses up to ever-more-lethal instruments like the Anal Probe and Ion Detonator. Crypto also has a full set of mental powers that include the ability to pick up people and objects, thought scan, explode heads to facilitate extraction of DNA, and hypnotize earthlings into following simple commands. His Holobob power allows him to take the form of a human and move among them undetected. While in his saucer, Crypto has access to even more deadly weapons. The stock Death Ray is a pretty powerful weapon that never runs out of ammo but will overheat if fired continuously. It also has an Abducto Beam that allows Crypto to pick up objects and throw them about. As play progresses he’ll add the Sonic Boom and Quantum Deconstructor – which fires nice nuclear bombs. All the destructive goodies are easily manipulated with tight, responsive controls.

In addition to the normal civilians, police and military that Crypto runs into during missions, there are also the Men-In-Black Majestic agents. These shadowy government figures are armed with more advanced weaponry, can penetrate Crypto’s Holobob disguises when they get close to him, and have an agenda all their own. As the game progresses, Crypto will learn more about these dangerous enemies and their plans.

The problem is the missions and levels don’t offer a lot of variety. The game is fun, but it is most fun in smaller doses. Fortunately it is an easy game to play a level, put it down for a while, and come back to it to have a little more fun later. It is also a little short with only about 10 hours of play.

The whole shebang is held together with some great cut scenes that are really fun to watch. Crypto and Pox don’t exactly get along. These two interacting offer some of the game’s best moments. The apparently well detailed and researched sci-fi movie references and ‘50s communist-paranoia babble from the humans come in a close second. The thoughts Crypto rips from the minds of humans as he moves around levels to replenish his concentration level are a close third. Many play well off the rigid conformity that gripped the country then. The only real annoyances are the anachronistic phrases that periodically pop out. I somehow don’t think, “I got your truth right here, biyatch!”, is really in keeping with what a ‘50s federal agent would say.

Graphically the game is about 90 percent great. All the characters look good and are animated well. The level design is quite detailed and looks terrific. (I love the ‘50s suburbia settings.) The 10 percent the game doesn’t get is attributable to the highly noticeable pop-up that occurs as you move around the levels. This is especially apparent when flying in the saucer. Whole sections of a town can suddenly pop into view out of thin air. At least it does not suffer from rampant clipping. (There is a little.) That is one of my personal graphic demons.

Audio is outstanding. The soundtrack offers some very atmospheric music. Again, it was very reminiscent of ‘50s sci-fi movies. The voice acting is also good. The fellow who voiced Crypto, Grant Albrecht, walked a fine line with a voice that was similar to Jack Nicholson’s but enough different to get away with it. Sound effects were also well suited to the game’s sci-fi background.

There is no doubt that the folks at Pandemic are at the top of their form these days after the success of the extremely popular Star Wars Battlefront and Mercenaries games from LucasArts. Coming from THQ (a company that until this generation of consoles was considered a budget-title outfit that mainly catered to fading consoles), this game is probably not going to capture the gaming crowd’s attention as readily as those games did, but its quality is close to those two and deserves a look by anyone who loves science fiction movies from the 1950s. If Pandemic had not so thoroughly nailed almost all the presentation aspects of this game, I would probably have given it only three sharks. But the out-of-this-world attention to detail and sci-fi insider humor raise the score by a full point.