Well... except me, obviously.
By MadHippo

I admit, I was a teensy bit brainwashed by the constant “Destroy All Humans – One Giant Step ON mankind” adverts that fill every single advert break on Sky. It intrigued me. Here was a game that takes the over-done “Aliens invade America in the 1950s” scenario and flips it around so you are playing the alien rather than the usual chisel-jawed human hero. Once I saw it action at a friend’s place, I came to realise that not only is it a very unusual game, but that I craved it’s alien delights.

You are an alien clone called Crypto who gets to invade America in the 1950s. You can brain scan people to read their thoughts, and then make their heads explode through telepathy, and collect their brainstems to use as cash to spend on upgrades. You can electrocute the people; use psycho-kinesis to throw them across the landscape… You can even deploy the scary green-glowing anal probe gun. Which is messy, but disturbingly fun.

Make sure to listen out for the amusing things they say once they’ve been violently probed. “Oh that doesn’t hurt so much” one woman uttered calmly as she ran off “Perhaps Johnny was right after all?”

And then her head exploded.

It made me laugh coffee through my nose.

Your spaceship can use it’s flaming heat death laser weapon thing to blow up buildings, people and cars in a fiery mess, or you can use the abducto-beam to grab stuff off the street and fling them around on a strangely elastic grip.

“Ah crap, there goes my no claims bonus..”

It’s all fantastically good fun, even though your ship’s flaming death laser thing, for all it’s power to blow up massive buildings and armoured tanks – has no effect on even the smallest of trees. The AI of the agents and soldiers is so mind-numbingly bad that they’ll quite often destroy themselves before you get a chance to do it.

“Look Sarge, there’s a landmine”

“Jolly good private, make sure you jump on it good and proper, there’s a good grunt”

A landmine. Not a latte-
moccachino with 5 straws.

But that doesn’t matter one jot. It’s just nice to see a game with a look & feel that is so right for the genre. Add in loads of video from the b-movies it so succesfully imitates, and quite a lot of interesting stuff about the design process and building of the game and you realise that overall it’s a well thought out and well designed package.

All in all, and especially if you’re a fan of 50’s B-grade science fiction, Destroy All Humans will make you grin like a loon. Just don’t tell your workmates about the alien anal probe that you were using on people all weekend, they might get the wrong idea.

September 2005

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