Destroy All Humans! 2 (Xbox)

Following the success of the original release of Destroy All Humans! in 2005, developer Pandemic Studios released a follow-up in 2006, Destroy All Humans! 2. Much like the original game, I distinctly remember seeing this game in store displays, including a playable demo, and while I never played it, the name stuck with me. In my hype for the Destroy All Humans! remake, I bought a copy of Destroy All Humans! 2 on the original Xbox, not knowing if a remake of that game was in the works or not. Indeed, a remake of this game was announced as Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed, which made me realize I was in a unique position to compare the original release to the remake, since I went into the original game’s remake blind. Playing this game immediately following Destroy All Humans! (2020) is an interesting experience in itself, and while I liked it on a gameplay level, I had mixed feelings on it from a storytelling perspective.

The opening cutscene establishes that the game takes place 10 years after the original Destroy All Humans!, taking place in the year 1969. In that span of time, Crypto-137 somehow died and was cloned into Cryptosporidium-138 (Crypto-138), who also assumed the role of President of the United States while in disguise. Meanwhile, the KGB have managed to track down the location of Orthopox-13 (Orthopox) and blow him up, along with the Furon mothership, using a missile. Following this, Crypto-138 has to fight off KGB agents to retrieve Orthopox, who has made a digital backup of his consciousness. Once Orthopox’s digital backup is online, he wants Crypto to take down the KGB as revenge.

From a storytelling standpoint, the plot follows up on the ending of the original game well and presents some interesting bits of historical fiction that weave its new ideas seamlessly into the setting. What I have mixed feelings about is the change in Crypto’s personality. To elaborate, whereas Crypto-137 was more concerned with planetary conquest, his clone Crypto-138 is suddenly more concerned with sexual conquest, which is established as far back as the opening cutscene to the game. While his interactions with the other characters can be generally funny, this sudden shift in his characterization is to the point where I saw Crypto-137 and Crypto-138 as separate characters despite the clone connection. Not helping is that most of his interactions with new character Natalia heavily involve him hitting on her, though the game shows at least some self-awareness with the labels to some dialogue options.

Gameplay is largely similar to the original game, though builds on the foundation that game set. Missions are no longer selected from a menu with optional free-roaming, rather there are several open-world areas based on different locations around the world and you roam around them to look for Missions, side content and collectibles. If you die at any point during a Mission, you respawn at a checkpoint, however if you fail it by someone else dying or something else getting destroyed, you are forced to start the Mission over again, which can get frustrating at times. In an interesting integration of Furon cloning, dying also summons a new clone of Crypto at the respawn point, which includes the Saucer when outside of Missions, with the clone’s number counting up from Cryptosporidium-138. This number is reflected on your save file, whether by manual save or autosave, which in my case means I started the game as Crypto-138 and ended the main campaign as Crypto-176. Additionally, the weapon wheel from the first game makes a return, accessed by holding a button (X on Xbox).

Where the original game’s remake attempted to streamline Psychokinetic abilities by making actions a single button press, in this game you target a human or object and select available actions from a menu, which in the case of humans includes Extract, Follow and Scan. PK is an option for either type of target, in which case you can choose to either launch them forward or move them closer or further away from you. Using PK on an object also makes it a little unstable when walking, which makes objects a little difficult to control and hold steady when you really need them to be. Targeting an object also allows you to Transmog them into ammo for your weapons, which yields greater rewards depending on the size of the object, and a fully upgraded Transmog (more on that later) can be very overpowered in the right circumstances.

In place of the original game’s Holobob is the ability to Bodysnatch people by tapping a button (Y on Xbox) when you get close to them, allowing you to go about the game world without being seen and is necessary for certain tasks, though the Bodysnatch only lasts for a limited time. You cannot jump during a Bodysnatch, but you can run by mashing a button (A on Xbox), and getting hit by a car instantly ejects you from the body that was snatched. On the upside, Bodysnatching a cop or other high-ranking individual allows you to use a call box (remember those?) to lower your Alert Level, call for backup, or make a quick prank call, plus the Bodysnatch timer freezes while using a call box. Bodysnatching also works best if you are not spotted at all, though if anyone spots you, you can use the Forget action on them.

Bodysnatching has its own advantages.

Whether or not you're Bodysnatching, one other option at your disposal is Free Love, which causes the target and everyone in the immediate area to uncontrollably dance for a limited time, effectively serving as a wide-range Forget and enabling you to slip past undetected. As can be gathered from this, Free Love is a very overpowered ability, especially once fully upgraded (more on that later), and even it having a cooldown timer does not discourage using it as often as possible in certain situations. Later in the game, you gain the ability to Mind Flash, freezing everyone in the entire world for a brief period. While this is even more overpowered than Free Love, it requires extracting four human brain stems to recharge, though it is possible to upgrade it to require fewer resources (more on that later) and make it much more effective in the late game.

One of the game’s collectibles, perhaps the most important, is Furotech Cells, which replace Furon DNA as the main form of currency and can be spent on weapon upgrades at Pox-Mart while standing under the Saucer. Furotech Cells can be obtained by completing Missions and side quests such as Odd Jobs and the Arkvoodle Cult questline, or by finding them scattered about in the open world. Among other things, the Jetpack can finally be upgrade to enable higher flights than in the original game, which is very useful for traversal and finding Furotech Cells and is something I would recommend upgrading as soon as possible. Upgrades naturally become more expensive over time, though the most expensive ones, locked behind story progression, allow your weapons to harm a late game enemy known as the Blisk, another alien race that has a history with the Furons, though thankfully it is entirely possible to complete the main storyline without getting all the expensive upgrades.

Collecting Datacores also unlocks new weapons and abilities at your disposal, while one weapon is hidden behind finding Alien Artifacts collectively scattered around all of the open worlds. Statues of Arkvoodle, an ancient Furon God, can also be found, and completing their demands unlocks a new landing zone for your Saucer. One annoyance with the gameplay is that friendly fire is a thing for some reason, which extends to you accidentally harming a fellow NPC and vice-versa, so this is something to keep in mind during a fire fight.

Saucer gameplay is largely the same as the original, though now you can abduct unsuspecting humans to use their DNA for Gene Blends, which upgrade your Furon abilities (ex. Transmog, Bodysnatch) and enable you to affect different types of humans that you normally couldn’t. It is possible to abduct more humans than you need in the moment, however stockpiling DNA can come in very handy when additional Gene Blends become available later. Pressing a button (A on Xbox) while underneath or piloting the Saucer can let view Gene Blend progress at any time, while pressing another button (B on Xbox) under the same circumstances lets you use the Navi-Com to travel to different levels. In addition, you can press a button (White on Xbox) to activate a temporary cloaking shield that has a cooldown timer.

Saucer gameplay has been greatly expanded from the first game.

This game also introduces a two-player co-op function known as Multi-Furon, in which a second local player can join or quit at any time by pressing a button (A on Xbox) in the pause screen. This is presented in a horizontal split-screen, in which, fittingly for clones, both players have access to the same weapons and upgrades. Each player can explore freely, and friendly fire is active for some reason, however they are restricted by a tether that turns visible when far enough away from each other. If players are too far apart, Player 2 teleports to Player 1’s location, unless Player 2 is the only one in motion at the time. Both players are required to enter the Saucer in order to fly it, with the one who entered first taking control as normal through the top screen, while the one who entered second has access to a secondary fire through the bottom screen.

The graphics hold up well and look good for a game from the time, though I will admit that I found it odd seeing a more realistic art direction at first after getting used to the more stylized approach of Destroy All Humans! (2020). While London’s iconic fog serves a dual purpose in masking the limitations of the Albion level, it is still possible to view the edge of the map while flying the Saucer, as the buildings and fog can only conceal so much. There are also some instances of texture pop-in, particularly on Solaris, which also has some texture flickering in places depending on your viewing angle.

While the game is good at managing an open world while working around technical limitations, it seems to have an issue with rendering a large number of civilians. While exploring Bay City, two civilians, including a cop, were spawned inside the sidewalk and the game did not know how to draw them, so it eventually threw up the cop and then the civilian came out normally. It’s also possible for civilians to randomly fall down before getting back up again, however the aforementioned incident left me particularly dumbfounded.

Bay City heavily features hippie culture.

It’s already mildly annoying that the subtitles don’t always 100% line up with what’s being said, which has happened in other games I’ve played, however a few instances of particularly bad grammar infuriated me. For those who are curious, I noticed one instance of the word “disappoint” misspelled as “diappoint”, one time where the word “I” was written twice in a row when only said once and, possibly the worst example, writing “there” when the speaker is clearly saying “their” in context. While these instances stuck out to me, which I would attribute to accidental mistyping, this is coming from having only explored the main storyline while barely touching the sidequests, so there might be other slip-ups that I don’t know about.

The audio itself is rather funny, with a lot of meta humor poking fun at the game itself, including characters justifying the inclusion of ninjas. This is helped by the voice cast, including Richard Horvitz returning to voice Orthopox in a performance that injects more humor into the character. J. Grant Albrecht returns from the first game as the voice of Crypto and, to his credit, manages to make Crypto-138 feel different enough from Crypto-137 by altering his inflections while still sounding familiar. Naturally, the inclusion of pop culture jokes makes a return, only this time the ‘50s pop culture jokes are replaced with ones from 1960s, as befitting the time period. In addition to Mission title cards, some dialogue in the game outright confirms that the game takes place in 1969, which backs up evidence that the original game takes place in 1959. While the audio quality is overall good, there was a single instance of audio doubling that I ran into, which resulted from a rare instance where I simultaneously completed a Mission objective and ran out of time for a Bodysnatch.

One last thing worth mentioning is that among the game’s extras is a THQ Wireless promotion, in which you can text a number to receive cell phone wallpapers and ringtones, as well as the mobile version of Destroy All Humans! 2. While doing quick research online, it seems that the phone number for this tie-in no longer works, and while I haven’t tried it myself, I wouldn’t be surprised by this given THQ’s closure prior to being brought back as THQ Nordic.

While arguably not as strong as the original game plot-wise, Destroy All Humans! 2 still stands as a great follow-up to the original game and is an overall solid recommendation for fans of the original game. For plot purposes, I would also suggest playing the original game first, in which case I would point you towards its remake. It would be interesting to see what sort of quality-of-life changes would be brought into Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed, and also what direction the franchise might take from there.