Before E3, I primarily knew Destroy All Humans as the open-world alien game that kids in my school bought because they couldn’t buy Grand Theft Auto. After checking out the Destroy All Humans remake at E3, I now think of it as the game where you can suck out one farmer’s brain while you throw another farmer into the horizon, all while the surrounding NPCs scream goofy stereotypical phrases from 20th century America. And I love it.
The premise of Destroy All Humans is simple yet perfect for the mayhem it seems to specialize in. You’re an alien named Crypto, and you’ve come to Earth to steal human brains in order to extract alien DNA from them. You can steal the brains by any means necessary, which naturally means you should do this in the most chaotic way possible.
“I think that this choice really meshes with their approach to remaking the game- essentially ‘Destroy All Humans as you remember it, not as it actually was.’“
This is made easy by the volume of powers at Crypto’s disposal. I only saw a few in action, but I took a peek at the weapon menu while I was playing, and I can tell there’s no shortage of over-the-top weaponry present. Lightning bolts, telepathy, telekinesis– just the powers at my disposal were plenty of fun for the 15 or so minutes I spent in a single farm area. And once I got in Crypto’s flying saucer? I could just obliterate everything in my path with an earth-scorching laser that burned away anything in its way.
Interestingly enough, the developers of the remake opted to use the storyline and voice clips from the original Destroy All Humans, with only a few newly recorded lines for a mission that was left on the original game’s cutting room floor. While I have little experience with the first game, I think that this choice really meshes with their approach to remaking the game- essentially “Destroy All Humans as you remember it, not as it actually was.”
I consider this to be the ideal approach to remaking an older game, as they are often hampered by the technical limitations of the time they were released. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, so it can be easy to overlook the rough edges of our favorite games from consoles past. Deciding to base the Destroy All Humans remake on the nostalgic version of the game fans have in their heads is the best decision THQ Nordic could make, and from the short demo I played, this decision seems to be paying off. The game looks great and feels great, so I’ll be keeping an eye on Destroy All Humans until its release next year.
