Pre-order Destroy All Humans!

Destroy All Humans! is a game that while I haven't thought about in years, but I've also never forgotten it. Released back in 2003, it was a game where you play as Crypto, a "little green man" sent out to contact and ultimately subjugate the Earth for the Furon Empire. It was a somewhat darkly comedic game, and there hasn't been anything else much like it since. On the heels of seeing the Rammstein-backed trailer for the upcoming remake, I was able to sit down with some of the developers at E3 2019 and play through parts of the game's first level.

It is important to note that the game is not a remastered version, but instead a complete remake. Only the voice-overs and story has been kept intact; otherwise, all the art and sounds have been completely redone in Unreal Engine 4. It's still the same game but presented in a much more streamlined and polished way; even the cut scenes have been improved via the use of motion capture. This has also allowed for a significant amount of modernization, from better feedback for the player to enhanced controls.

In the original game, it felt practically impossible to do more than one thing at a time. You should shoot or dash or use psychokinesis to throw a cow at someone, but never at the same time. The new control scheme allows for the combination of all of this and more, which has done wonders to make the title feel fresh and easily entertaining. There is also a lock-on mode to make it easier to land shots, do multiple things at once, and keep eyes on a target while flying around.

The ability to hop into your UFO and rain death from above is still a part of the game, but you can now move the UFO and change its elevation. This makes it more intuitive to dodge incoming shots, but it's also fun to swoop in and vaporize some foot soldiers and tanks. The destruction in the game is fantastic; the death ray causes trees to burn away and houses to explode like they were packed with overexcited TNT.

The levels also have challenge areas. One such area was scored by having Crypto kill as many hostile farmers as he could in three minutes, with bonus points to kill one via throwing an object at them or throwing the farmer themselves into a lake. This let me really check out the new combat system, which proved to be quite flexible and such a vastly improved difference over the original game.

For people who played the original Destroy All Humans! but find it difficult to return to nowadays, the upcoming remake is a great place to return to the game. Meanwhile, for people who never played it in the first place, the remake of Destroy All Humans! is a fun romp through the subjugation of 1950's mankind. In 2020, we'll all be able to blast barns with death rays and flit around with jet packs to our hearts' content.