Title – Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed
Platforms – PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Release Date – February 14th, 2023
Developer – Black Forest Games
Publisher – THQ Nordic
MSRP – $59.99
ESRB – T for Teen
Disclaimer – This product is being reviewed on the Xbox Series X. A review copy was provided by THQ Nordic for the purpose of this review. This review may also contain spoilers for certain gameplay and story elements. Watch at your own risk, you have been warned. Gaming Instincts is an Amazon Affiliate and does gain financial benefits if you choose to purchase this product on this page.
Destroy All Humans was an old franchise from the bygone PS2 and original Xbox Era where you play as an alien who ran around on earth and terrorized the local population. The series only had two titles in its entirety. The first game was originally released in 2005, and its sequel came out a year later in 2006. Fast forward by about 15 years, and the developer Black Forest Games remade the original game that started it all and released it in 2020, and now Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed is about to hit the shelves. It is a remake of the 2nd game that came out in 2006. Is terrorizing earth as a martian in today’s day as fun as it was back then? Well, we are about to find out! Welcome to our review of Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed.
The Story and Setup
For those who have never played the original Destroy All Humans 2 before, I think it would be worthwhile to give a bit of an introduction to what this game is all about. You play as a Furon, an alien race in the Destroy All Human universe. The main character’s name is Crypto and not not as in Crypto the currency. Don’t worry, there are no NFTs in this one fellas!
The game follows up after the events of the original, and at the start of the 2nd game, Crypto is going after the Russian KGB, who are trying to destroy America. It’s worth mentioning that, for the most part, the storytelling is rather goofy and silly. That’s not a negative thing in the case of Destroy All Humans 2. You see, the entire franchise is just a big goof and is meant to be dumb and hilarious.
Throughout your visit to earth, you will come across a variety of different quirky and entertaining characters. One of my favorite characters is 100%, Natalya. She is a sexy blonde Russian bombshell who has great voice acting, hilarious dialogue and pokes fun at the Russian stereotypes. The conversations between her and Crypto are funny as hell. Even though the story is not meant to be taken seriously, it’s still fun to watch it play out and see where it leads. The game is quite cut-scene heavy, but thankfully if you are not into cut-scenes, they are all skippable from the start. Although, I do not recommend that you do that during your first time playing the game, because a lot of the actual fun is in the dialogue and story itself.
What I respect the most about Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed is that the developers decided to stay true to the original game. The original voice lines and the dialogue lines were not changed to fit a specific standard or appease a particular type of audience. They stayed true to their fans and the source material, and that’s exactly how it should be when you are either remaking a game or rebooting the franchise to give it new life.
The game is divided into locations, including Bay City, which is essentially San Fransisco, Albion, which is London, Takoshima which looks like Japan, Tunguska, the Russian headquarters, and Solaris, which is the moon itself. Each of these locations is unique in its visual design and layout. And yes, you can free-roam to the fullest. However, they are quite small locations, and that is fine because this is a remake of a game from 2006. Obviously, this is outdated by today’s standards, but this is an exception to the rule. We are here to discuss and decide whether this is a good remake of the original game or not.
Now that we have the main premise and the story stuff out of the way, let’s jump into the gameplay of Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed, and after that, we will talk about the visual upgrades.
The Saucer, The Gadgets, and The Gameplay
I will have to admit, the design of the game is somewhat outdated, but the reality is that this remake is being made for the fans and too possibly generate interest for a 3rd game in the series if it sells well. Usually, remakes and remasters are developed because A) they are safe bets and B) they can test the waters to see if a specific franchise is still worth investing in. With that said, let’s talk about how the game plays and what you can expect from it if this is your first time with Crypto.
Crypto is quite the alien. He has his own flying saucer and a ton of crazy cool weapons. At the beginning of the game, your arsenal is a bit limited. But as you progress through the main missions, you will eventually unlock new toys both for yourself and your flying saucer. One of the funniest weapons that Crypto gets later in the game is the Anal Probe. Yes, that is the actual name, and yes, it does exactly as the name implies. It latches on the enemies’ butts and probes them to death, letting you collect their brains. It’s quite entertaining watching the police run in agony while the Anal Probe is attached to their rear and then watch them fall to their death.
Another cool weapon is the Dislocator. You can charge it to give it more power, and it shoots out a disc that traps the human and then bounces them up and down against the ground, ceiling, and walls until their health fully depletes. There is also the laser weapon that only has three ammunition shots. Crypto’s default weapon is the Zap-o-Matic, which is simply a zapper that does chain lightning across multiple enemies.
As you can already see, the Destroy All Humans series has always been about wreaking havoc with a variety of different fun and unique weapons. So if you are into games like Ratchet & Clank that focus on cool weaponry, then Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed might scratch that itch as well. As far as the structure of the game goes, the player simply interacts with an NPC and follows their directions on what to do next, and that’s how a mission starts.
Missions can range from spying on people by shapeshifting into one of the locales, such as a KGB member, police, or a civilian. Crypto can take over and snatch anyone’s mind and control them. You can then use the NPC you are controlling to read other NPCs’ minds and hear their thoughts. Some NPCs will only give you missions if you are a member of that faction. For example, one of the odd job missions had me snatch a KGB member’s body so I could speak to another KGB member to receive the mission.
Main missions are usually a bit more involved. They can be a mix of spying, destroying specific objects, killing a bunch of dudes, or even blowing up trucks. Each mission also has a secondary objective, and if you complete the secondary objectives, you get bonus materials for your upgrades. To 100% every mission, you also have to complete all of the bonus objectives. A bonus objective can range from using your Telekinesis powers to throw explosive barrels at the trucks, or killing mutants with your Anal Probe weapon, and so on.
Later in the game, you can also start utilizing your Saucer. The saucer has its own weapons and separate upgrades that you can buy in the Pox Mart. As you progress throughout the game, you will also find new toys for your flying saucer just like Crypto can unlock weapons as you get further and further into the game. The saucer is easy to control and has many different abilities, such as the Abducto-Beam, and you guessed it, it abducts things that you can later throw into the ocean if you wish. One of the missions had me Abduct vans strapped with nuclear bombs. I had to fly over them, abduct them and then launch them straight into the water so that Crypto could save the city.
And that pretty much sums up the gameplay of Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed. It’s nothing too fancy and it’s from 2006, but it’s all good and silly fun. If you are a fan of the original stuff, then I don’t see why you wouldn’t like what the remade version offers, as far as gameplay goes. Now let’s talk about the visuals of this remake that’s being solely released as a new-generation title exclusively for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
The Visuals and Performance
Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed is quite a beautiful-looking remake that was built from the ground up using Unreal Engine 4. The developer has stated that they want to stick to 60 FPS locked while upping the visuals. The remake is being developed exclusively on the new-generation systems because the previous generation systems were holding back the first Destroy All Humans remake in 2020. Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed is more complex and bigger than the original game, so the new-gen consoles were the only answer.
The five remade locations look gorgeous. The colors are vibrant and everything was running smooth as butter. I liked the art style of the game as well. During story cut-scenes, sometimes my brain was telling me I was watching a full-on 3D animated film. Honestly, an animated film based on this franchise would be a ton of fun to watch.
Throughout the majority of the review play session, I’ve encountered two hard crashes on the Xbox Series X, and both times it happened when there were a ton of explosions on the screen or just a lot going on when it came to destruction. I am going to assume that that is some sort of a bug or a memory leak that occurs when you go berserk mode with Crypto’s weapons. While this is not game-breaking, it was a bit annoying.
There are no graphical options or settings that I found in any of the options menus, so the game is running at whatever it is set by default out of the box. I thought it was a bit weird that there were no graphical choices, but it seems that Black Forst Games wanted to stick with the 60 FPS regardless of the resolution.
Conclusion
Overall, Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed is a decent remake. It’s nothing too special but nothing too bad either. I would probably say it’s better than an average remake. The biggest win for me here is that they’ve stuck with good performance over better visuals, kept the soul of the original source material, and it plays like the original but with far better visuals and some small gameplay improvements. Voice acting is also solid, and the dialogue is a breath of fresh air. While it does has its cringe here and there, it’s still funny and goofy in its own way.
A lot of the dialogue here is not something you’d find in modern games, and I feel like we lost a little bit of that over the years, so because of this, I give them a good plus. If you enjoyed the original game, then I think you’ll be a happy camper. If you have never played any of the Destroy All Humans titles, then you might find this game a bit repetitive or outdated in its gameplay design.
Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed will be receiving a final verdict of 7.5 out of 10.
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