Destroy All Humans! Demo First Impressions

I’m going to be completely upfront with you right off the bat, folks. This article has only just begun and it’s already proving very difficult for me to contain my excitement about the topic I’ll be covering today. Because of that, I say we waste no time in getting down to business. You see, Black Forest Games, Pandemic Studios, and THQ Nordic will soon unleash upon humanity a remaster of one of my personal favorite games from the PlayStation 2 era.

The game in question is none other than Destroy All Humans!, a title whose Steam store page lauds it as “one of the funniest ever created.” That accolade is more than justified in my opinion. In case you weren’t aware, there exists a readily-available playable demo of the remaster you can grab right now over on GOG. I just played through all twenty-odd minutes of that demo with my recording software of choice capturing every glorious frame of it, and I am positively bursting with joy because I get to share my thoughts on it with you.

In case you aren’t familiar with the original Destroy All Humans!, let me quickly set the scene for you before we get to my thoughts on the remaster’s demo itself. The game’s premise dictates that you play as a rank-and-file member of a massively technologically-advanced alien race known as the Furons. The Furons are in danger of losing their immortality, which hinges on their mastery of cloning themselves.

According to your character’s direct superior, Orthopox 13 (nicknamed “Pox”), they face the threat of extinction because the banks of Furon DNA used in the cloning process are degraded further with each use and will soon be rendered totally unusable. The Furons are, therefore, in dire need of a new source of fresh DNA if they want to continue conquering the cosmos without the threat of potential eradication.

It just so happens that Pox knows of a certain planet which the Furons visited eons before the game’s events take place (which, for the record, is the year 1959). Fortunately, this planet is coincidentally filled to the brim with pure Furon DNA which Pox intends to forcibly harvest for the sake of preserving the Furon race.

Thus, Pox sends your character, named Cryptosporidium-137, to said planet in order to collect this DNA. The only issue is that the planet in question happens to be named Earth and its particularly feisty denizens aren’t exactly known for offering up their genetic material without a fight.

Now that we’ve gotten the plot out of the way, allow me to directly present the primary point I wish to make in this article as directly as I can. You see, I nearly wore out my original PlayStation 2 Destroy All Humans! Disc from playing it so much. That should give you a general idea of how much I loved the first game in the franchise, although I actually can’t remember playing any of its sequels.

Regardless, my adoration of the original game has been tempered up to this point by the possibility that the remaster wouldn’t live up to my expectations. Now, having played the demo, those worries of mine have entirely dissipated. The demo even opens with a reassuring message which states that “while the experience has been upgraded, the content and historical record of the original invasion of the Furons remains a near-identical clone!”

Admittedly, the use of the word “near” when attached to the word “identical” in this context does make me the most microscopic bit uneasy, as its usage implies that some aspects of the original game may have been altered in some way. However, based on what I experienced during the delightful twenty-minute duration of the demo, at this point, I’m more than willing to cast those worries aside.

If you’re curious as to why that is, allow me to alleviate any doubt. I didn’t spend two entire paragraphs a moment ago expressing my adoration of the original Destroy All Humans! for nothing. That is to say, this remaster appears to be every single thing I loved so much about the initial iteration of the game, just massively improved upon in terms of things like graphical fidelity and overall performance.

Beyond that, I was actually slightly surprised to find that the keyboard and mouse controls work flawlessly in my experience, although it took a couple of minutes for me to get used to certain mouse-based movements (e.g. controlling the altitude of Crypto’s flying saucer). If keyboard and mouse controls aren’t your thing, though, don’t fret! The game’s Steam store page states that the remaster will feature full controller support.

Moving on to my final thoughts, for now, I just want to say I absolutely can’t wait to get my hands on the full version of the remastered version of Destroy All Humans!. The thought of Pox’s legendary voice actor, Richard Steven Horvitz, praising me with his maliciously singsong glee as I lay waste to a fictional human society has me nearly giddy. I assure you, folks, I don’t get quite this hyped up about upcoming games very often.

In case you’re wondering, the full version of the remaster will cost you $29.99 USD. It’s currently scheduled to release on Sunday, July 28th, 2020. Additionally, if this sort of thing matters to you, you’ll get a free cosmetic skin pack for Crypto if you pre-order the game before that date. For now, I wish to leave you with a screenshot of the quote that has stuck with me from my time with the original game, even fifteen years on.