Published by: THQ Nordic
Developed by: Black Forest Games
Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Release Date: 8/30/2022
The Destroy All Humans! series has been around since the early 2000’s. It recently caught a second wind by having the first game in the series remade for last generation consoles. Today, we are looking at the remaster of what is often considered the highlight of the series: Destroy All Humans! 2. In order to fully appreciate this game, it is obligatory that you played the first game either upon its original release, or its more recent 2020 remake. You also should play this game expecting a product of its time. While Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed has been given a fresh coat of paint (and some new content), it is ultimately the same game that was originally released in 2006. If you come into this game expecting a Marvel’s Spider Man experience, you are setting yourself up to be disappointed already. Enough of my editorializing, lets dive into it
President Cryptosproidum-138
The game begins with you following Crypto after he has served roughly 10 years as President of the United States. This game takes place in 1969, so the US is fully entrenched in the Cold War by this time. Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed will see you fighting off the new communist threat, along with some returning factions from the first game and some other extraterrestrials. The story is nothing ground breaking, but it is good enough to keep players engaged. Where this series shines is largely in its dialogue. The Furon race believes that humans are literally as intelligent as monkeys, and large parts of the dialogue are focused around this theme. At its core, it is an early 2000’s comedic version of 1969. If you find this humor funny, you will almost certainly love the game. If you don’t, you may struggle to find joy in this game.
The highlight of this series, and particularly this game, has always been the interactions between Crypto and his mission officer, Orthopox-13 (voiced by Richard Horvitz from Invader ZIM). Crypto and Pox have a love-hate relationship. This dynamic makes some of the most enjoyable content of Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed. Both of them really do despise each other. However, they always seem to come through for one and other when it really counts. The dialogue between them sets up a hilarious foil, and is something you can look forward to in almost every mission.
Destroying the Human Race
The gameplay primarily focuses on a shoot em up style. The second game features all of the weapons of the first game, plus a few new welcome additions. The gameplay has seen some serious enhancements since 2006, but at the end of the day still feels like a Playstation 2 game. It doesn’t feel like a bad PS2 game by any means, but it does feel a little dated by todays standards. Once again, this is meant to be a faithful recreation of the original. A light stealth element is also present, which gives you the capability to play a few missions how you want to.
The weapons variety of Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed is pretty vast, and mixing the flying saucer into this only expands the profile. You have multiple different ways to deal with your enemies. The open world destruction is another highlight of Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed. You can literally destroy all of Westminster abbey in a blink of an eye, and in 4K, it is rather breathtaking at moments. I guarantee you will spend a not insignificant amount of time just blowing up random buildings and abducting literally hundreds of humans for sport. In addition to all of this, the remake introduces new ways to play with friends and modifiers for when you replay missions.
Planet Earth
Speaking of graphics, Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed looks solid on PS5. It definitely isn’t the best looking game on consoles, but for being reskin it looks good. The audio has also been cleaned up a lot, while keeping the original lines from 2006. Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed is clearly a passion project for its developers, and it was served well by getting some love.
The game ran pretty well, but I did come across a few bugs throughout. Most of these were minor, and I am hopeful they will be patched out. A few frame rate drops and some issues with rendering were present, but none of them broke the experience for me.
Destory all Humans 2 – Reprobed: Ending the world is fun
Destroy All Humans! 2 was a childhood favorite of mine, and Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed is no disappointment. It certainly will not be the game of the year, but if you go in with an understanding of the game you are getting, you will have a great blast from the past and hopefully get a good laugh. I really enjoyed my time in Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed, and can’t wait to hop back in when I am done writing this. I will be watching to see if Destroy All Humans! – Path of the Furon gets a remake as well to round out the series. If you are looking for a little entertainment, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of the game.