Two years later and another Destroy All Humans! remake is out. I had a good time playing through the first one in spite of its flaws, so let’s see if the second is any better.
So the first thing I noticed this time around is how much better this game looks compared to its predecessor. I’m not talking the art style – that still maintains the same goofy, retro look – but more so the map density, the level of detail, the models – all of that. The studio has done a great job not only in faithfully recreating the look of the original 2006 game, but improving upon what they did just two years ago in the first remake.
Like, the environments were already pretty good there, but in 2 they feel much less barren and WAY more varied. You’ve got a total of five different open-world areas to explore and each is full of people walking around, collectibles to find, and you can tell a lot of effort went into making each fun to explore. Takoshima, my favorite area for example, is a mini replica of Japan complete with a high-density city, a volcano, two different ninja factions, a military base, a temple complex, a classic Japanese castle, and even Yakuza roaming about.
It’s some solid stuff and gives you a lot of room to play around with the numerous abilities the game gives you. Right at the start you already have access to a bunch of them, but that only grows as you progress and while not all of them land, the ones that do are very fun to use and the pacing is managed well enough that there’s always something new to look forward to.
The gameplay in general maintains that distinct mid-2000s vibe where the focus is on just having fun and not really worrying about little things like what equipment is the best to upgrade or “is this the best way to tackle this mission”? It’s very freeform and I honestly miss this kind of game design – it’s one of the reasons why I got into gaming in the first place.
That said, this is not a remake without its problems. Just like the first remake, the mission quality varies wildly here. In this game’s case though, I found it to be overall worse than before. You get the occasional really good mission that introduces a new ability and weaves it into the gameplay in a fun way followed by another three or so boring missions that alternate between simply “go here, destroy this, repeat” missions and the dreaded escort missions.
There are so many escort missions that it kinda ends up feeling like the default, even if some alternate between walking and riding the saucer. Other missions too though. There’s this one pattern that the game really likes to repeat where you have to go to an area, scan brains to find where to go next, scan brains there, and repeat a couple more times until you find the objective. Once or twice? Sure, but this pattern is repeated like over a dozen times not just in the side missions, but in the main story too.
It really brings down the experience at times, makes it feel monotonous in spite of all the fun equipment and such you have access to. I still had fun playing through the game, but I’d be lying if I said that it was all good there. For an experience that is roughly seven or so hours long, it is very disappointing that they had to resort to such repetition to fill that time.
Then there’s the story. In the first game, I found it to be enjoyable enough. Here though? It’s kinda average. The same cheeky humor is here, but some of the jokes kept getting repeated over and over and it just wasn’t funny anymore. I don’t know, it just felt the first had a better handle on things and was more witty, less reliant on crude humor, making this one feel like an overall downgrade.
And on the technical front I also had a few issues. As a side effect of the visual upgrade, the game is definitely more taxing than the first – with higher system requirements too. That’s fine, I far exceed those requirements anyways. However, that did not stop these absolutely wild fps fluctuations I kept running into. Playing at 4k 144hz at high settings, the game would hover around 90-100 fps and then dip to 40 or so in certain areas or during certain missions. It was still playable and I definitely could have remedied the issue by lowering settings even further, but an fps fluctuation of 60 is quite a lot and more optimization would be very welcome here.
I also ran into a few bugs, including NPCs not moving at all, textures flickering during cutscenes, and micro freezes when opening certain game menus. I didn’t have anything else outside of those issues, but they felt worth mentioning regardless. As for controls – no problems there. I played entirely on mouse and keyboard and felt no need to change the defaults, they were both snappy and intuitive – unless if you are controlling the saucer. There, the controls are still terrible as they were in the first remake, but at least I was used to them by this point.
Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed is a decent remaster of a decent game. Although not quite as refined as the first remake, it does have better environments, more weapons to play around with, and a larger scope. However, it also suffers from the same monotonous mission design as that first game along with having a subpar story and some technical issues too. Really, if you liked the first remake, then you’ll probably like this one and won’t need a review to tell you otherwise. But if you are new? Just give the first one a play, you can get it for cheaper and I found it to be a slightly better experience overall.
Quote: Destroy All Humans! 2 Reprobed is a decent remaster of a decent game. Although not quite as refined as the first, it does have better environments, more weapons to play around with, and a larger scope.
Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed retails for $40 USD on Steam, but you can get an official Steam key for 15% off using code REPROBED through my Gamesplanet partner link. This also applies to the Dressed to Skill Edition. It is also available on GOG, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
I was provided a review copy of the game in order to write this review. Read more about how I do my game reviews here.
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