Since the remake of Destroy All Humans was so successful, it was inevitable that THQ Nordic would give the sequel the same treatment. Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed does an excellent job of capturing the charm of the original, while also delivering an mostly enjoyable modern experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl8fokvSrTw
This time, the player controls a clone of the original Crypto, who is also named Crypto. The dark and dreary 50s are long gone, the player is now running rampart in a free love 1969 sandbox, which makes for some excellent powerups and attacks such as the Free Love beam that causes everyone and everything in the vicinity to bounce up and down and dance. Hippies line every street and special mind-altering substance pickups are always nearby.
Adverse to the original FBI enemy from the first game, the KGB is the main antagonist in Reprobed, playing on the Cold War era nicely. There are a smorgasbord of interesting characters to interact with, such as the aptly named Coyote Bongwater, a Hippie that is in league with the KGB, and many other fun personalities. As a veteran Crypto player would know, half of the fun quips and jokes in the game are extracted via the mind reading ability. It’s very amusing to be walking down the street and listening to who a random citizen would rather sleep with out of a bunch of famous celebs.
In Destroy All Humans 2, the player is less focused on world domination. The missions are more trivial in nature. The game seems to lack direction a lot of the time, with many fetch style quests fleshing out the 10-15 hour playtime. This, however, isn’t necessarily a flaw in this game as the developers set out to recreate the original faithfully, so changing the missions would hurt that. They even included a note in game to explain that the story is faithful to the original. That being said, the developer has included some of the great updates that were also present in the Destroy All Humans! remake such as the Power Suit Soldiers and the Jetpack Dash/Thrust.
Like the first remake, the graphical update to DAH2 is beautiful, although it is heavily plagued by visual bugs. Screen tearing occurs a decent amount, although I believe this was addressed in the latest update, it was still present in my playthrough. Assets also pop in and out randomly which doesn’t help with immersion.
Despite all that, taking control of hippies and KGB agents minds, throwing rubbish bins at police officers, and causing all round destruction is still quite enjoyable. The weapon system is updated from the first game to include a few new entries like the Dislocator, a blaster that shoots disc like projectiles that attach to enemies and objects and causes them to fly around hitting the ground and other surfaces hard until they die or explode. The player still has the same issue as the first title with the large number of weapons, wherein there isn’t really any incentive to use half of them. The player will likely settle on two or three weapons from the selection and use them throughout the whole game, simply because there isn’t a need to change, and some weapons are much better than others.
The flying saucer is pretty much exactly the same as the first game, providing another way for the player to wreak havoc and destruction on the humans, and also being mandatory for some story missions. The main gripe I had with Destroy All Humans! was that there was no way to invert the flight controls of the saucer, despite there being an option to invert the standard look controls. I hoped beyond hope that the developer would have remedied that in Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed, but alas, us inverted players were left forgotten in a ditch again. Flying the saucer is a chore and if I wasn’t reviewing the game, I would have stopped playing as soon as I realised they once again didn’t allow inversion. To help describe this to players who don’t have this issue, it’s like someone forcing the player to write with their non dominant hand. Not fun. However, since I am reviewing this title, I managed by setting up a second profile on my Elite Series 2 controller that had the right thumbstick inverted and switched to that whenever flying the saucer was required. Not an ideal solution, but if the player has this issue, that’s something they can try.
The game difficulty could be a turn off to some players, as it goes from a walk in the park to spiking heavily during boss fights, causing an unnecessary shock to the system and likely forcing multiple deaths.
A great addition to the second game is split screen and online multiplayer. A second player can pick up a controller at any time and jump into the players game from the start menu, allowing the team to cause twice as much havoc! This feature was sorely missed in the first remake so it’s excellent that it was included this time around. PvP modes are available this time around also. While I didn’t spend much time with them myself, they seem like a fun addition that will definitely keep players coming back.
All in all, the player will enjoy running around as Crypto, getting high, dancing to funky tunes, and blasting humans across the map in a beautifully remastered world. The fun may wear off towards the latter half of the games story, but by then the player would have likely already got their money’s worth through enjoyment of the sheer chaos Destroy All Humans 2: Reprobed offers.
This game is definitely not for the kiddies. While the charming, cartoony graphics and characters may look like they’d attract younger players, the content is rather explicit. The constant sexual tension, gyrating, drug use, and explicit jokes mean this game should be played after the younger children are in bed.