Destroy All Humans 2! – Reprobed Review: It’s Back! Did It Need To Be?

Remasters and remakes are always tricky because there’s no one out there who has the authority to decide what games get a revival other than the publishers who own the rights, and they aren’t always the best judge of what needs to come back. Many people enjoyed the tone and goofy action of the Destroy All Humans games when they were released back in the mid-aughts, and that seems to have been enough for THQ Nordic to bring them back. The first game was released a couple of years ago (you can read Francis’ review here), and now we have Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed.

Up front, I should say that I have no real nostalgia for these games. I played about thirty minutes of them at some point almost twenty years ago and wasn’t pulled in. So I can’t say for sure everything that has changed since the original. A quick look at old videos, though, makes it clear that the graphics have taken a stupendous leap forward.

Looking Good

The team at Black Forest Games has recreated Destroy All Humans 2 from the ground up in Unreal Engine 4, and it really shows as the visuals have a ton of personality. Character models are expressive, your funny weapons pop off the screen, and the city looks great. This is a long way from what anyone could play in 2006, and the developers have done a fantastic job of updating the game’s look.

Outside of visuals, though, this definitely feels like an open-world game from 2006, and that’s often not a good thing. While there are some positives, you spend much of Destroy All Humans 2! – Reprobed running around a mostly empty world with very little to do between missions. The sort of quality of life choices a modern game would make, such as making it easier to hop in and out of your spaceship when needed, are missing and drag the game down.

A Psychedelic Fantasy

Taking place in the 60s instead of the first game’s 50s, the psychedelic vibe comes across from the beginning. Hippies, drugs, psychedelic visuals, the KGB, and the Cold War are all represented here and mostly make for a fun backdrop for Crypto to explore as he tries to get revenge for the destruction of his mothership. Destroy All Humans 2 loves referencing the period, especially when it comes to movies. I’m a huge classic movie fan and loved catching references to favorite films of mine like The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I often wished that the developers made these references meaningful, though, instead of just throwing them in. They often feel less like the development team were fans of these films and more like someone looked up a list of names from the period and figured out which ones they could come up with a pun for. Speaking of film references, the voice actor for Crypto spends the whole game performing a Jack Nicholson impression that makes a little more sense here in the 60s than it did in the 50s. It certainly contrasts interestingly with the swinging 60s though more often than not, I just found it grating.

A Product Of Its Time

While the various cities you run around throughout the game are too empty, it’s still often fun to play through the various missions in Destroy All Humans 2. You have a fantastic selection of moves and weapons at your disposal, some of which are wildly creative. Forcing cops and hippies to dance in harmony before stealing one of their bodies and blending into the environment is a great time and using Crypto’s psychic powers to fling foes around the screen reminded me of Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, a true hidden gem from the same era that I would kill for a remaster of. While I spent way too much time trying to get to the good parts of the game, when I was engaged with enemies, I found myself consistently having a good time.

That was less the case when having to deal with Crypto’s spaceship. Flying around in a freaking spaceship should feel epic as you grab items from the ground, fling things around, and wreak havoc on terrified earthlings. It sort of does at times, but controlling it never feels particularly good. It’s floaty and imprecise. It could have at least been a nice way to skip over the huge empty portions of the map you often have to traverse between missions, except you can only land in set locations and take off in those same locations. It usually just isn’t worth the hassle.

Conclusion

If you’re expecting Destroy All Humans 2! – Reprobed to be more of a remaster of the original game than a remake, you’ll likely be happy with the results. The game looks great and feels extremely faithful to the time it was released. Those with nostalgia for the original will get what they need out of it. After finally spending some time with it, though, I can say confidently that this was only ever an okay game, featuring the same lack of content and empty areas that open-world games of that era were known for. Today’s open-world games are better at creating an overall experience worth your time.

Final Verdict: 2.5/5

Available on: PS5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X|S, PC; Publisher:  THQ Nordic; Developer: Black Forest Games; Players: 2; Released: August 30th, 2022; ESRB: T for Teen; MSRP: $39.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of Destroy All Humans 2! – Reprobed provided by the publisher.