Two years ago, Cryptosporidium-137 made a long-awaited return with the long-awaited with modernised remake of Destroy All Humans. Now, his clone Cryptosporidium-138 is getting to follow in his footsteps, returning to meddle in the affairs of Earthlings and stop them from foiling his dastardly plans. Destroy All Humans 2 – Reprobed is another ground-up remake, wrapping renewed graphics and gameplay around the content and references of the original.
Destroy All Humans 2 is a bigger, globe trotting affair compared to the original, taking Crypto to nations other than the USA, and exploring the tail end of the Swinging Sixties through England, Japan, and the USSR. Each map hub is fairly contained, so you can get to one side from the other quickly using Crypto’s jetpack and boots, and that’s before you consider hopping into your flying saucer, for which you can unlock more landing pads by completing tasks for the god Arkvoodle.
These tasks are simple such as shooting Arkvoodle with a specific weapon or removing some rubbish, and I suggest unlocking the landing pads whenever you get to a new location as the saucer also acts as your upgrade location. These upgrades use points that you earn at the end of each mission, and you can earn more if you complete the optional objectives, feeding them all into boosting your weapons and saucer abilities.
The different locations of Bay City, Albion, Takoshima, Tunguska, and the Moon Base all have their own unique styles and types of residents. Bay City is inspired by San Francisco with the residents split between hippies, soldiers, and regular folk. In Albion (aka London), there’s a mix of Londoners from the upper class to the working class, while the Russian peasantry live alongside the KGB in Tunguska, and Takoshima has the yakuza, schoolgirls, and ninjas running around. Reading the minds of these people will give you an insight into what they are thinking about, most of the time something quite silly or rather lewd, but occasionally the information is valuable. Each location also looks starkly different with Takoshima and the Moon base really standing out. You won’t want to spend long in the very dreary Tunguska, though
Each hub has a similar set of missions to complete. The main campaign missions see Crypto working with femme fatale and Russian spy Natalya, who he constantly tries to hit on – he’s the first Furon to have genitalia in a long, long time. Then there are the side missions which are split between the Arkvoodle and assassination arcs. In the Arkvoodle arc Crypto will complete missions to convince different factions to worship his god, which usually means doing things like placing vans on buildings or completing ninja trials. In the assassination missions Crypto goes undercover to take out targets. You will find that in a lot of missions it’s best for Crypto to bodysnatch an NPC and go into an area before letting loose, but that can get a bit repetitive. Eventually, where I could, I would just go in all guns blazing.
Crypto has a vast array of weaponry to choose from, including the Zapomatic that fires electricity at enemies, Disintegrator Ray that burns enemies to a crisp, Dislocator that makes enemies bounce around, and the classic alien go-to, the Anal Probe. Every weapon is entertaining to use, especially the Dislocator.
It’s best to keep on the move when in combat, as enemies will swarm you pretty quickly. It’s chaotic in a good way for most of these situations, as you swap between weapons and use Crypto’s telekinesis to take enemies out. It can, however, get a bit too chaotic at times. Even with the game only being on the new generation, some areas could see the framerate drop if too much was going on.
Destroy All Humans 2 – Reprobed also comes with a litany of bugs. During my playthrough I witnessed vehicles on the road just spinning in circles doing unintentional donuts, vehicles passing through each other and clipping through the environment, vehicles just floating up into the sky and falling through the ground, and characters floating along in invisible vehicles. The sounds of people screaming in pain could start to loop, and would only be resolved when triggering a cutscene, and it was in cutscenes that the texture pop in issues were most noticeable. Heck, even the options menu would occasionally start to flicker. This was all on PS5 so I do not know how the game will fare on other platforms, but it needs updates to save the game.
The plot for Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed focuses a lot more on stopping the Russians from carrying out their plans, with a bit of a twist, than it does on destroying all humans as Crypto, which he does mention a few times. The dialogue is generally pretty cheesy, especially when Crypto is trying to hit on Natalya and constantly getting rejected, but can be amusing, such as when he’s talking to Pox. In generaly, the story is not something that will really stick with you, but some of the set pieces will as you rampage across the planet.
