Video Game / Destroy All Humans! (2020)

Ich will!

Destroy All Humans! is a Wide-Open Sandbox Action-Adventure video game developed by Black Forest Games and published by THQ Nordic. It is a remake of the first installment of the Destroy All Humans! franchise.

The game was released on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on July 28th, 2020, and later released on Stadia on December 8th, 2020 and Nintendo Switch on June 29, 2021.

A remake of the second game, Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed was later revealed, and the trailer was released on September 17th, 2021 during THQ Nordic's livestream. This time the song in said trailer is "Amerika", once again sung by Rammstein (and even parodies the music video for it!).

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Destroy All Tropes!

• Achievement System: There are 40 achievements overall; all from scanning people's minds for the first time ("Covert Thoughts"), juggling human bodies ("Fly, my pretties"), Abducting a cow with your UFO ("As is Tradition"), and transmogrifying something to get some ammunition ("Reduce, Abuse, Recycle").
• Adaptation Deviation:
  • Majestic agents (referred to "Basic Majestic") now use normal firearms in early stages, and only gain access to energy weapons ("Enhanced Majestic") in Area 42 and onwards after having reverse-engineered Furon technology; in the original, these guns were present throughout the game.
  • In the original game, when Crypto sabotaged Armquist's meeting with the Joint Chiefs, he disguised himself as a Navy admiral. In the remake he instead holobobs the Marine Corps commandant. This actually fixes a minor issue as Armquist refers to disguised Crypto as "general", which didn't make sense in original game.
  • Buildings that need to be destroyed during missions, such as the Rockwell fairgrounds or the Santa Modesta diners, are no longer permanently destroyed.
  • Areas now have day-night cycles depending on missions, and the cycle is randomized when selecting an area from free roam.
  • The live-action clip from Plan 9 from Outer Space has been replaced by one from Teenagers from Outer Space (presumably due to rights issues with the former).
  • Silhouette's mask has been redesigned, as the original resembled the logo of the now-defunct original developer.
  • Brainstem DNA variations are now more logically limited and not as based on rank or status: 50 points for mutants, 25 for everyone else... except Capitol City senators, who rank 5.
  • Instead of being unlocked after the first mission, the Anal Probe is now unlocked during "Aliens Stole my Brain Stem," the third Santa Modesta mission. The mission itself is largely unchanged, although it is used as a New Weapon Target Range for the revamped Anal Probe. Similarly, the Abduct-O-Beam is unlocked in the second mission instead of being usable from the very start.
  • The concentration meter from the first game has been removed, allowing for unlimited use of Crypto's psychokinetic powers. Holobob still has a limited duration that must be refilled by Cortex Scan, though.
• Adaptation Expansion: A bunch of gameplay elements have been refined since the first games' release:
  • Psychokinesis (henceforth now referred to as "PK") is now more oriented towards combat use. It now has more refined controls, it's more floatey than the original game, as well as being able to be used while shooting and using other abilities. You can now even throw back an army grenade at the person who threw it.
  • The game now features a "lock-on" mode that fixes the camera onto a nearby target to make shooting at them easier.
  • Recharging your saucers shield from vehicles was a mechanic from the sequel that has been directly imported into this remake. After the car can no longer be used to charge the shields up, the car will blow up.
  • The Jetpack now lasts longer in the air, as well as being significantly faster to charge up (as soon as you touch ground essentially), which makes gliding and shooting much more viable than previous instalments.
  • The death ray can now fire directly below the saucer, obliterating anything underneath it.
  • Missions now have checkpoints, so you no longer have to keep repeatedly returning to the Mothership every single time you screw up and restart from the beginning.
  • Missions now also feature optional objectives per level, which, when completed, unlock character skins for Crypto as well as awarding bonus DNA.
  • A lot more objects can be picked up and interacted with when using PK, including tires, crates, hay bales, and defenseless chickens.
  • The Anal Probe now has an upgrade path that can chain and seek multiple targets, a similar feature from the third games' Anal Probe.
  • When disguised as an NPC, you can now jump! This is more helpful than it sounds as it makes stealth much easier in missions that do not require you to kill people to proceed, and you can traverse fences and uneven ground better to avoid enemies like Majestic agents that will foil your holobob.
  • You can now pick up DNA from your saucer by hovering really close to the ground.
  • The Abduct-O-Beam now works like Crypto's reworked PK, allowing you to throw objects (and people) at a target instead of just picking them up and dropping them. The second mission even has an optional objective to knock down fair buildings by throwing things at them.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Gastro from the second game appears in the remake's training manuals, where he delivers different comments for each subject covered within.
• Adaptational Personality Change: In the original game, Pox was mostly serious and almost never made an intentional joke. Here, thanks to the new dialogue, Pox's personality is a lot more like it was in later games: Light-hearted and humorous while still retaining the serious edge. He's also more prone to congratulating Crypto for a job well done.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: In the original, PSI Mutants created energy waves radiating from themselves that disable Crypto's PK abilities and can create shields to protect themselves, but do little damage. In the remake, they instead create shockwaves around targeted points that damage Crypto directly but don't interfere with his abilities, and while they no longer shield themselves, they possess far more health than most humans.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The Holobob now allows jumping, if not full jetpack use, so Crypto can move around in disguise without being tormented by obstacles that force him to go the long way.
• Art Evolution: The art style is much cleaner and more stylised now, ditching semi-realistic textures for more of a Fortnite-esque art style, which strikes a better balance between the two. Crypto is more detailed models-wise, but his skin is less realistic and more rubbery-looking. The NPCs also look intentionally goofier, matching the 50's parody aesthetic.
• The Artifact: Crypto's dialogue while interrogating the Majestic agent in "This Island Suburbia" includes a line asking where they're getting their weapons. This made more sense in the original where all Majestic agents were armed with laser guns, not as much in the remake where the ones in Santa Modesta have conventional firearms.
• Ass Shove: The Rammstein trailer begins with Crypto dropping a cow on some hapless dude who's barbecuing in his garden. It ends with another shot of the cow, now with the guy's arms and legs poking out of its rear, flailing wildly while trying to free himself.
• Beam Spam: The Enhanced Majestic agents with laser cannons now fire a rapid barrage of Slow Lasers instead of a single exploding projectile.
• Black Comedy: The trailers are full of it, and the game itself has more than the original.
• Boss Rush: Mild example, but the game's two final bosses are fought in the same mission with only a brief cutscene in between and almost no other enemies showing up in the level.
• Bowdlerise: In the cutscene where Miss Rockwell is pulled into Crypto's ship, Crypto's response of "So vocal, so... responsive. This is gonna be gooooood" is changed to simply "Probin' time...", likely to avoid the rape implication the former line essentially spelled out — here the intention is made ambiguous, and is thus a bit more mindful of modern sexual humor.
• Call-Forward:
  • After completing the Rockwell Rampage challenge (which requires Crypto to kill cows so Pox can make burgers out of them) Pox quickly falls in love with fast food, though he tries to hide it. In Big Willy Unleashed, Pox is in the fast food business.
  • The Furon god, Arkvoodle, is mentioned in passing a few times. Arkvoodle plays a prominent role in the sidequests of DAH!2 and Path of the Furon.
• Checkpoint Starvation: Generally averted for most of the game, but played painfully straight in the final mission. There are no checkpoints during the two Boss Battles, only right before them, so if anything goes wrong at all, you'll have to restart the entire battle from scratch.
• Creator Cameo: The BFG-137 skins' name is an acronym for Black Forest Games, the remakes developer.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Crypto-138 shows up in the end of the "Midweek Madness Sale" trailer, wondering when 137 will be done.
• Funny Background Event: In the cutscene of "This Island Suburbia", when the two Majestic agents are talking, a scientist in the background messes with an EMP device and gets zapped for his trouble.
• Grenade Hot Potato: Soldiers and Power Suits will now lob grenades at Crypto. Psychokinesis can be used on these, with obvious applications. Additionally, Soldiers can now also show up with bazookas, whose projectiles can also be caught and thrown back. Enhanced Majestic Agents, however, use special grenades that cannot be thrown back and don't damage other humans anyway.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: There's an achievement for killing a human by throwing another human at them. The reworked PK controls make this much easier to pull off than in the original.
• Hotter and Sexier: Some of the random female NPCs have more skin-revealing outfits, and new Jiggle Physics to go with the remake's high definition graphics.
• Hypocritical Humor: Can be invoked by the player. The game has a Running Gag about Crypto getting mad about being called a "green" space man at every turn despite his skin being grey. However, the BFG Crypto skin from the preorder bonus pack has a lot of neon-green in its design, from his eyes to the Tron Lines all over his suit, making his claims of not being green unintentionally hilarious.
• Interface Screw: When Crypto is hit by an EMP mine, the screen will be covered by a staticky blue filter.
• Image Song: The song "Ich Will" by Rammstein is used in the reveal trailer for the first game, which is such an on-the-nose song to use for the game. It's an "I Want" Song about taking energy and getting attention, accompanied by a theremin and very gruff vocals that make it sound like Crypto is singing it.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: One of Crypto's abilities essentially wipes a human's short-term memory, making it great for making them forget that they even saw him. It also releases humans that were brainwashed to follow him (letting him take a new follower or kill them) and renders Majestic agents unable to detect his Holobob disguise until they recover.
• Mass Hypnosis: In the first trailer, Crypto hijacks the town's local broadcast station and brainwashes the entire populous to join in on his impromptu Rammstein concert.
• Nintendo Hard: The final level's difficulty has been massively escalated from the original; the Robo-Prez fires missiles that can knock out huge chunks from your health, which can only be destroyed by the Repulse-o-Tron. As the fight goes on, the missiles fire more rapidly and you barely have time to drain the (limited amount) of cars before having the time the repulses just right. Fortunately, there is an mercy checkpoint that wasn't there between the two bosses in the first game, as Silhouette is even worse, leaving only a few seconds where she can be hit when her shield drops, whilst firing tracker shots and virtually unavoidable bursts of red energy that reduce your health to one point. What's worse, you'll find yourself starved of ammo pretty quickly.
• Perception Filter: Holobob works this way, making humans perceive Crypto as a human as long as they were not aware of him taking the disguise. However, if a human is aware that he's an alien, the Holobob becomes compromised and won't fool anybody, at least until he hides long enough to take the heat off himself. He'll also undergo Glamour Failure if he tries using PK or his weapons while disguised.
• Race Lift: The setting is the same, but the humans are racially diverse, unlike how in the first game all the humans were Caucasian. It contradicts a thought that can be read, inherited from the original, remarking on the lack of colour.
• Ragdoll Physics: You can throw a cow around to knock over someone. Or throw a person around to knock over someone. Or blow them up with grenades and explosives to send them flying.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: The ability to hypnotize enemies into following and defending Crypto returns from the later games of the original run. Enemies brainwashed this way are now also immune to Crypto's own weapons and offensive powers.
• Shot-for-Shot Remake: The intention is to remaster the first game in the series by making it look prettier, refining the controls to adhere to modern standards, and rebalancing the gameplay to make Crypto more powerful and less of a nuisance to control. Even the audio for the game is recycled audio from the original for the most part (the voice actors only re-recorded for new content, such as the lost Area 42 mission, as well as for any new additions for Pox and Crypto). In terms of more traditional examples; the cutscenes themselves use different camera angles than what the original game used. Additionally, whilst every region was set at a specific time of day in the original, it now fluctuates between day and night.
  • There are a number of smaller changes too, for example in the original Bert Whither's hideout was in a simply underground passage no more than a few metres long whilst here it is a full blown underground lair, complete with a military boat. Certain missions were also slightly restructured, such as "The Furon Filibuster" requiring Crypto to go around hunting down senators before the segment of them rushing the Capitol and stealth being mandatory for "Earth Women Are Delicious".
• Shout-Out: The pre-order bonus costumes reference various media:
  • "Killing Joke"◊ references the Joker from The Killing Joke, while "Dollar Smart"◊ is a skin based on Pennywise from It.
  • Two of the Majestic agents that can spawn look very much like Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, who play J and K respectively from Men in Black films. Here's Not-J◊ and Not-K◊.
• Variable Mix: As you progress through a level, more instrumentation is unlocked for the track you listen to. Similarly, there's different music for when you become more or less hostile towards your enemies.
• Video Game Remake: This game is a remake of the first game in the series, just with prettier visuals and more refined gameplay. Before this remake arrived, there was also a remastered version of the first two games compatible for PS4.
• Zerg Rush: Thanks to the upgrade in engine from Unreal 3 to Unreal 4, the remake can now handle more NPC's per level, meaning that it's quite easy for the police and the army to overwhelm Crypto if you're not careful. Once you've raised the alert level, expect to be swarmed by soldiers and agents almost constantly.

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