Scully ON THE GAME

Destroy All Humans

"Destroy All Humans, On the PS2", says the man who sounds like Tom Baker, in and around all the sci-fi programs on Sky One. There's a picture of a little Area 51 style grey alien electrocuting a farmer and throwing cows around. "Destroy All Humans, On the PS2", says the man over and over and over again. Hardly subliminal advertising, but the overkill paid off. I caved (didn't hurt that Game had a sale on). Destroying all humans sounded like a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

The game starts off fairly simply, you are Crypto193, an alien from the planet Furon sent to 1950s America in search of Crypto 192, as directed by Pox, the alien commander on the mothership, who gives you instructions and missions along the way. Landing on the planet, Crypto is run through a series of small tasks designed to familiarise you with the controls. Try out the Zap-O-Matic and Disintegrator ray, use your mind powers to push cows around, and suck out peoples brain stems to steal their DNA. Cool. A quick scoot around in the flying saucer to blow some stuff up and the first mission is over. Have I mentioned the anal probe yet?

Mission 2 takes you to a new area and you have a new weapon and mind power to try out. A few tasks completed, a spot of cow tipping, a quick scoot around in the flying saucer to blow some stuff up and the second mission is over. Mission 3, blah, blah, blah and repeat. This is where DAH starts to show its limitations. While each set of tasks are fun in themselves, you start to get a feeling of deja-vu early on. Blow up five cars, blow up some tanks, destroy the enemy buildings, do it all again. The mini-games that you can play in between the main missions have that same 'do it again, but this time do it quicker' feel.

At the end of each mission you get to roam freely around which ever area you happen to be in and enjoy destroying anything in your path. The areas are vast but with only four to choose from it gets tired quickly. There are a number of probes hidden in each of these areas that want to be found, but with less than half of them found, I really can't be bothered to go hunting for the rest. I don't need them to move on, so why bother.

That said I don't want to run the game down too much. There are hours of fun to be had and there's obviously been a lot of thought put into it. Mind reading, hypnotising, disintegration guns, flying saucer and the ever faithful anal probe. The cops are all Irish, the men are all either rednecks or college grads, with the women 50's homemakers. Crypto is Roswell Grey Jack Nicholson with guns and ammo and the banter is spot on.

The graphics aren't anything special but then again, they don't really need to be. State of the art would be wasted in this. Crash Bandicoot was always more fun to play on the PS1 than the sleeker looking PS2 episodes. The music is straight out of any Hollywood sci-fi B movie, along with the dialog and the Majestic spooks. DAH's only real failure is repetitiveness.

All in all Destroy All Humans' is a good laugh and well worth a Platinum range price tag. I got my twenty quid worth but glad I didn't pay any more.

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