The original Destroy All Humans! 2 was released in 2006 for PS2 and Xbox the same year as Madden NFL 07, Call of Duty 3, and Guitar Hero 2 to name a few. It quickly made a name for itself at the complete outrageousness and B-movie quality weapons, a departure from the classic Japanese fantasy-style games, sports, and COD shooters. The main character, Crypto, provided comedic relief throughout with quick one-liners and a huge appetite for wasting people.
Emulating the original DAH2, Reprobed lets you become the brashest and most annoying alien invader ever to set foot on Earth. Luckily, he has all the fun toys. You will uncover an arsenal of alien weaponry only imaginable in your worst nightmares – the anal probe is the first that comes to mind.
While the first game was set in the 50s, DAH2 jumps into the 60s. Being a more colorful decade, the 60s is also more relatable today and allows the game to double down on familiar parodies about hippies, commies, and cults.
Rest assured, the timeline is not the only major update. Along with the flower power, a new game engine was added that included more detailed textures and realistic modeling. None of these updates go unnoticed. The city, buildings, and all its inhabitants look fantastic. You will be hard-pressed not to periodically stop and enjoy all the richness of the surroundings. Particular details with lighting and textures are especially noteworthy.
This does, however, occasionally cause some minor issues. Everything comes with a digital cost and frame rates have been known to drop in some of the busier scenes. Running this on Xbox X, these issues were few and far between though, and did not cause any deterence from gameplay.
The story follows the events of the first game with the KGB uncovering the plots of the alien invaders and their responsibility for happenings in the 50s. Locating the Furon mothership, the KGB takes revenge for their fallen comrades and blows up the ship with a missile.
This proves costly to the aliens and leaves our alien friend Crypto with the high task of not only eliminating the KGB but also replenishing the stockpile of DNA that was blown up on the mothership.
You’ll need to quickly master your weapons control. Admittedly, this is something that I fumbled with and it took some time to get into the groove of it all. Shooting is done with the right trigger, while movement is controlled by sticks – standard with most modern games. Changing weapons is what I mostly had trouble with. To do so, you use the left button to activate the weapons display selection. Choosing your weapons from a circular dial is done with the stick controller and can prove to be challenging. It is not the most accurate or quickest way to cycle through weapons. This was especially challenging in the spaceship. Instead of activating the beam to collect people, I found myself disintegrating them by mistake. Although a bit frustrating, I found myself laughing out loud more than a few times. This most certainly fell in line with the kind of bad humor the game successfully plays out.
Getting your hands on new guns is pretty easy. As you progress through the storyline, the game hands them to you at key points. Starting off, you are given the handy Zapomatic that shoots lightning and electrocutes those nearby. Next up is the disintegrator, probably a necessity in an alien game, which toasts people into dust. Further along, you’ll get the dislocator, an anal probe (you read that right) and an ion detonator to name a few.
Changing weapons quickly during combat is not a large element of the game and weapons are conveniently not lacking ammo. The gameplay storyline will, however, encourage switching up the weapons you use as the story progresses. Using the most effective weapons in a timely fashion proves to be a big competitive advantage.
On the cosmetic side, Crypto can equip a number of different outfits and you can unlock spaceship skins and upgrade your ride. Another interesting tidbit is that the game is also playable in split screen co-op mode with a friend, which is a total trip.
This is not going to give other modern open world games a run for the money. It is not built for that. What the game does well is keep to the “old school” style of the original – a crazy alien running around and electrocuting people and blowing stuff up indescriminantly. As long as you relax and take it for what it is, it’s a really fun ride.
