Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed Review - Annihilation Never Looked So Good — Too Much Gaming

Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed flies in hot on the astral trail of Black Forest Games' stellar remaster of the first game in this wacky series. With the original Destroy All Humans 2's ambitious jump into a vast open world, Black Forest certainly has their work cut out for them. Will they lift off or burn up on re-entry?

I Make This Look Good | Visuals

Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed's visuals are probably its most impressive aspect. Black Forest has done incredibly well to reimagine and vastly improve upon the original game's environments, characters, and cinematics. While they did an incredible job polishing up the original game in their 2020 Destroy All Humans remake, Black Forest Games has outdone themselves here, going above and beyond the assignment and giving Destroy All Humans 2 a significantly distinctive look and feel that's truly their own.

Reprobed's visual mastery is most evident in the gorgeous and at times downright jaw-dropping open worlds, a vast improvement over the original's murky and barren sandboxes. Each new location that players visit is a visual spectacle with the game's unique take on the familiar real world locations (and even some unfamiliar ones *wink*). From the San Francisco inspired Bay City’s vibrant, disco-filled, seaside cityscape to Tunguska's (Russia) oppressive and hauntingly Soviet sunset that drapes a small town in the shadow of a nuclear reactor, Reprobed's locales are absolutely beautiful to behold as well as to destroy.

The destruction physics in Reprobed are probably some of the best and most satisfying in video games to date. Structures crumble and combust in a realistic and devastating way, so much so that most of the time I couldn’t help but ogle at and admire the destruction that my bare phalengeopods had wrought.

Reprobed also improves on the character designs of the original game. While the original had bland polygonal faces on bog standard bodies, now each character, NPC and enemy type has been remodeled into the games' unique, stylized, and slightly cartoonish art style. Its cast of characters now have more varied and distinctive features and run across different body types.

What's most impressive about the redesigns is that the new models fit the characterization of the original voice acting, which has largely gone unchanged. From the bodacious super spy Natalya to the oafish guru Bongwater to the nefarious Agent Orlov, the new models fit the old voices like a glove, and in some instances show off the character's personality better than the original ever did, which is quite the impressive feat of design.

Who needs a knife in a nuke fight? | Gameplay

Reprobed keeps a lot of the quality-of-life improvements established in the 2020 Destroy All Humans remake. The result is a refined gameplay experience that is fun and intuitive. What’s more, it plays equally comfortably on either mouse/keyboard or controller. However, with the refinements only equalling the experience of the first remaster, those looking for innovation in this regard will be a little disappointed.

Crypto's jetpack, his primary source for getting around, retains its more forgiving tweaks from the first remaster, making it fun to zip about, hover and glide for prolonged periods. The Crypto's Dash and S.K.A.T.E. abilities introduced in the first remaster also make their triumphant return. They’re as fun as ever to quickly move about and traverse large distances with, all while hearing the confused screams of the human populace as you whizz radically by literally and figuratively blowing their minds.

The Transmogrify ability, which lets Crypto convert nearby objects into useful items, remains the only way to source ammunition for your arsenal. While it's a better alternative to randomly spawning ammo (as in the previous remaster), it's still pretty clunky to use, especially since the ammo it generates is randomized. At the very least, though, not finding the right ammo often leads to experimentation with Crypto's other weapons of mass destruction, and there's a lot of fun to be had there.

Crypto's weapons are still an absolute blast to use - the shockingly reliable Zap O' Matic, the enemy melting Disintegrator, the explosive Ion Detonator and the terrifyingly-ranged Anal Probe are all accounted for in this second fly-by. However, this time around Crypto's brought along some new tools of the trade: The Dislocator shoots discs that stick to the target and bounce them comically up and down and all over. The Gastro Gun summons the Janitor of the Mothership Gastro, who helps Crypto shoot down bad guys. There's also the new Free Love visor that hypnotizes enemies and city folk alike into an infectious disco dance craze, and when enough people feel the vibe, they forget about their woes– and a certain little green man— and a dance party breaks out!

However, my favorite new addition is the Meteor Strike weapon, which opens a rift in space-time that allows you to call upon giant meteors to rain down on your opponents!

While I love the silliness of the game’s various weapons, on higher difficulties, you can only really depend on two or three when you’re in a pinch. Still, they're great fun for just wreaking havoc on the pathetic Earthling towns and their meager little fleshsacks.

Unfortunately, while Crypto's Saucer does get a fair helping of hot new hardware, they're not as effective and fun to use. In addition to the old standbys the Death Ray, Quantum Deconstructor, and Sonic Boom, there's also the new Anti-Gravity weapon which suspends objects and enemies in the air before sending them crashing down.

Speaking of Crypto's Saucer, there's a lot more to do with the dastardly disk of destruction aside from just flying around and being an alien menace. The Pox Mart upgrade system, the Holopox mission replay system (now with modifiers!), and Saucer Skins can now all be conveniently accessed just by going to Crypto's ship. There's also another fun feature called the Gene Blender, which will yield upgrades to Crypto's Telekinetic abilities if you abduct a certain number of unique humans.

That’s right, Crypto's Telekinetic abilities also make a comeback. You can still pick up and fling people to kingdom come, have them forget they saw you, and extract their brains with that ever satisfying pop. There are some new abilities such as the incredibly useful Mindflash, which is a Men in Black-inspired psychic blast that throws everyone around you into a forgetful daze.

In place of the previous games' Holobob, which disguised Crypto as a hologram, now Crypto can straight up just Body Snatch any NPC, jumping straight into the body and blending in with the crowd. While it's a suitable alternative, I can't help but feel that there was a missed opportunity here to make each body you inhabit unique, especially since there are so many interesting NPC types that appear, with some unique to each location. It's a shame that there wasn't much incentive or difference between jacking a slovenly Babushka, hippie stoner, or a jacked-up Yakuza Thug.

The World Is Not Enough | Narrative

This point also actually leads me to the trouble with Reprobed's open world. While there are many wonderful sights to see in each of the locations, there isn't very much to do. Between running around in Missions and Side Missions and a few collectibles here and there, there aren't many activities that incentivize terrorizing the humans and playing around in their population centers - aside from you own personal satisfaction, of course.

The main missions and overall plot, for that matter, are fairly serviceable. It's a world-trotting spy thriller not out of place in your standard 007 fare, just with a dash of kooky alien interference. Missions are rather straightforward, if not a little formulaic towards the end. These mostly adhere to the "Talk to Someone, Blend in, Get Information, Kill someone/Destroy a thing" structure more often than not. However, I won't judge this too harshly, since these are clearly its roots from the Xbox and PlayStation 2 days. With that said, there are some incredible and genuinely jaw-dropping set pieces within the missions, most notably an epic Kaiju fight through the streets of Japan, and shooting down nefarious soda-filled blimps with your saucer before they brainwash Bay City. While it's a fun ride that feels epic in scale, narratively there's little to phone home about.

Where the original Destroy all Humans! incorporated the campy presentation style of the late 50’s and 60's creature features, Destroy All Humans! 2 takes after the sleek and sexy savvy of the 70’s spy thriller and for the most part, the suave style suits it.

While the plot is nothing special, it's truly the voice acting that really sells it. Each of the star-studded main cast delivers terrific vocal performances that hold up even decades after the fact. Richard Horvitz of Invader Zim fame holds up particularly well with his trademark over-the-top melodrama and expert comedic delivery.

While the strength of the voice cast elevates the material, the writing itself is another matter entirely. Just like the first remaster, Reprobed features a heavy disclaimer when you start the game stating that devs have improved the visuals and gameplay but the content remains untouched from the original games. Playing through Reprobed, it's easy to see why Black Forest thought that this disclaimer was necessary.

The dialogue is largely very uneven, bloated and has many problems. The main issue is that a lot of the lines that Crypto spouts have not aged well. Crypto constantly throws out pseudo-slurs, calls people unflattering stereotypes, and performs regular unwanted advances. It's definitely a symptom of a game made in a different time– where the edgy, foul-mouthed protagonist was acceptable and even charming– but those times have certainly passed.

Another problem with the dialogue is that there's too darn much of it. At times there seems to be endless pre-mission dialogue, and insipid banter keeping you from the fun blasty bits. Most of it is largely inconsequential and rarely adds to the task at hand. The result is a laborious trudge through lines and lines of mocking Pox, hitting on Natalya, dissing a country and even, lord help me, a quiz about the game’s previous events.

The dialogue does have its bright spots though. I'd be lying if I didn't chuckle at some of the jokes and 4th wall breaks, but for every "hours of gameplay" joke or person screaming "It's the mob!" as they run away from you, an alien, there's a Crypto calling Russians "Ivans" and Japanese Yakuza yelling “WESTSIDE” before they shoot you. While not entirely offensive, it did elicit a few groans from me during my playthrough. Clearly some tightening up was in order here.

The Last Suit You’ll Ever Wear | Extras

As far as extras are concerned, the biggest and best addition is the inclusion of Photo Mode. While not terribly robust, with only options to reposition and tilt the camera, it's a great way to capture your favorite moments, fights, and scenery. There's also a multiplayer CO-OP mode which sees you and a friend create chaos all over human cities in split-screen madness.

There are also a handful of collectible types hidden around the world, such as concept art, prints, and jukebox music, but the best unlockables in the game are the various skins for Crypto and his Saucer. Each of these are incredibly cool and well-designed and had me replaying missions to get all the bonus objectives to unlock them. There’s even a fun Pale Rider skin based on THQ’s Darksiders property!

Finally, I did run into my fair share of bugs. Nothing really game-breaking, but sometimes mission objectives wouldn’t trigger and I had to restart; odd camera angles manifested during cinematics, vehicles on the final level would consistently just go crazy, hilariously popping up to the sky, crashing back down, and repeating the process until it gets tired and clips into the ground towards some magical destination. Just a few of the other bugs include UI to a visual puzzle not loading correctly, Crypto’s gun clipping into his straw hat on his ninja skin, and The Transmog trail effect permanently locked on screen.

Game Over Man, Game Over! | Final Thoughts

After finishing the campaign and spending many hours just wreaking havoc on the inhabitants of the blue planet (and ultimately, regretfully saving it), I can say that I enjoyed Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed. It's a fun, entertaining, and refreshingly light-hearted break from the conventions of modern games. I found myself enjoying the chaos I’m able to inflict in its gorgeous open worlds and run around terrorizing its denizens with maniacal glee.

While Reprobed’s incredible voice acting and satisfying gameplay hold up thanks to Black Forests' flair for polish, there are some elements, most especially the dialogue, that I felt needed a bit more time in the pod.

All in all though, Destroy All Humans! 2 Reprobed is a gorgeous, fun-filled, and lovingly-designed follow-up, as well as a superb remaster, of a cult classic game. Even though its cargo is starting to show its age, Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed has enough in the cockpit to soar above the galaxy… and blast it to smithereens.

8/10

PROS

Gorgeous lovingly-designed visuals that breathe new life into the franchise
Refined and satisfying gameplay that feels fun on either controller or mouse and keyboard