Destroy All Humans 2 – Reprobed Review – Crypto’s Back

When I look back at my childhood, there were a number of big titles that caught my eye and ended up becoming my favorites of all time, from the likes of the Spyro Trilogy all the way to Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. And while the reception to the remakes and remasters of these games have been mixed, for me, there is one title that has managed to stay completely true to its original counterpart. Destroy All Humans 2: Reprobed is that game for which we have prepared a detailed review to see if it is worth your time or not.

First and foremost, it is important to understand that this is a remake of the sequel to the original Destroy All Humans, which was released all the way back in 2005. Furthermore, the original game also received a remake in 2020 which still, to this day, maintains a solid 90 percent positive reception on Steam.

Destroy All Humans 2: Reprobed gives the original title a run for its money, as Black Forest Games revamps a ton of features ranging from the upgrade system to introducing a variety of accessibility options that were deserving of praise in my time reviewing the game. It is safe to acknowledge the fact that the game rises above the odds of modern times, and with a fresh coat of paint on it, Destroy All Humans 2 is a Sandbox shooter that fuels your mind with the same joy and unadulterated fun that you had as a child.

Story And Setting

The story takes place roughly 10 years after the events of the original game and our beloved protagonist Crypto 137 has mysteriously died and has since been replaced by his clone, Crypto 138. During the opening moments, you are once again greeted by the familiar faces of the Soviet KGB, a top-secret agency that is working in unison with the Russian military to neutralize Crypto and experiment on him.

This new and improved clone becomes the new target of the KGB, who decide that the new version of Crypto being able to breed is a menace to mankind. They retaliate by blowing up the mothership, which then prompts our new hero to go on a collision course to end every one of their strongholds in the world. It is here where that the game takes players across several unique locations such as San Francisco, Europe, China, and even all the way to the Moon’s space stations. What surprised me the most in my Destroy All Humans 2 Review was how all of these cities and worlds are beautifully remade in the new and improved engine.

Most importantly, the game retains all of its witty and comical writing. NPCs such as hipsters, farmers, and cops will enter into verbal disputes with Crypto, most of which end with our psychotic blue protagonist delivering cheesy one-liners that were seeming ripped straight from 90s movies. This is such an integral part of the game that could’ve been changed to better suit the modern era, but it wasn’t. It’s still here and it’s still funny, even if some of the references might fly over the heads of younger players.

Without spoiling anything, the twists and turns that happen in the story as you gradually progress past each mission and level will keep you hooked unit the end. Most players would actually be surprised at the idea of a purely gameplay-focused title like this having such an intriguing storytelling aspect to it. There is even the cool little detail that you will be fighting other creatures and aliens across your adventure, which keeps the enemy variety feeling fresh once you get to the mid to late-game stages.

There are also quite a few NPCs that will accompany 138 across the world in his lust for vengeance, such as the charming and illusive KGB rebel Natalia Ivanova, who is mostly manipulating him as her ‘friends for benefits’ in dire circumstances. Fortunately, these new side characters don’t overstay their welcome as the main spotlight is still given to our narcissistic blue hero, who will constantly humor players with his sleazy and cynical remarks during the back-and-forth dialogue scenarios.

I especially enjoyed seeing the return of Orthopox, Crypto’s Commanding Officer, who is brilliantly voiced by the same voice actor behind the devilish and chaotic Invader Zim. Pox provided you with most of the mission debriefing and assignments, especially during the events of the first game. However, with the second game, he mostly takes a backseat approach this time around as the game largely tips the scales with the narrative to make players interact with lots of other distinctive and hilarious personalities throughout each zone or level.

Gameplay

The combat and gameplay in Destroy All Humans 2: Reprobed remain largely identical to the original, but enhanced by a few Quality-of-life improvements which make it as fun and arcadey as hardcore fans could remember back in the day.

You will mostly be tackling various types of levels, which are basically designed in the form of these massive zones that you can explore by foot or using Crypto’s UFO. The zones themselves offer players different activities that they need to complete in order to continue the main campaign. The missions that are found in each of the distinctive five locations mainly involve causing as much mayhem as possible.

They are further made exciting with the addition of the Side Objectives that add another layer of challenge with their unorthodox requirements, such as causing additional chaos to kill enemies with a specific weapon.

Speaking of which, the numerous tools of destruction that come with Crypto’s arsenal are many of the same that players of the first game will be quite familiar with, as well as newer ones that will equally keep you hooked as you zap and demolish everything in your path. Whether it’s the returning fan-favorite Disintegrator ray or the hysterical Anal Probe, switching between each of these multi-faceted guns will keep the high-octane shooting an absolute delight. 

Within each world, you must disguise yourself as any of the numerous NPCs in order to avoid being detected by the roaming local police or the heavily armed military soldiers and agents. It is a little bit similar in scope to the Hitman Games, where you can disguise yourself to approach the target in different ways.

The only key difference here is that you will need to be careful while using the humans as disguises, because the next thing you know there is a witness, and now dozens of policemen are now gunning you down.

Thankfully. it isn’t much of a hassle at all as you can easily manipulate the minds of these witnesses or prevent them from reaching the nearby phone booth to call the local authorities. You will mostly be using these disguises to talk to NPCs for missions and side quests or to infiltrate and complete specific objectives in different locations.

Furthermore, it is worth keeping in mind that the game will also sometimes ask you to take over a particular NPC type. Like only using a Hippy to talk to other Hippies in San Francisco or using a Soldier to collect items for an Optional objective in one of the main story missions.

The sandbox maps are larger in scale compared to the first game, plus being able to hoverboard and jetpack across the skies is a great way to quickly traverse and reach points or locations as quickly as possible. There is also an extensive upgrade system that allows players to upgrade weapons and traversal items.

You can even enhance the properties of the UFO and increase its invisibility duration and much more. It is simple and mechanically improved from the original, and all you require are the furon tech tokens which are rewarded to you in large quantities by completing the missions and other activities found on the maps.

Furthermore, what’s such a handy feature is that you can essentially refund upgrades on a weapon if you feel like you’re not going to use it too much. Managing their upgrades alongside other artillery like the Jetpack will also require you to switch up your play style a few times depending on the situation. So that kind of creative choice of freedom in a pure sandbox-like shooting game is always welcome from my perspective.

However, the only slight inconvenience might be the enemy AI who sometimes loses track of you, especially the humanoid ones in the earlier stages of the game. I found myself easily overpowering them by switching between different weapons sometimes, while at other times they became either frozen or unresponsive as I got up close to them.

This wasn’t too bothersome as I mentioned, the game encourages more enemy variety during the late-game stages especially when you constantly have to use varied weapons to take down their different shields. Aside from that, Destroy All Humans 2 easily retains the bum rush sandbox shooter style.

Visuals And Performance

It becomes instantly clear that Black Forest Games spared no effort when it came to revitalizing the graphical aspect of the game, as it looks breathtaking from every angle. The monotonous colors of the original are replaced with a much brighter and more vibrant color scheme befitting the cartoonish nature of the game. It felt amazing to skate around the lush blooming sakura trees of Japan, and even better, dishing out absolute mayhem and destruction in the city of London, and seeing those vivid explosions unfold felt satisfying.

The revamped textures and models of the NPCs are handled perfectly as well, since they maintain their original looks but are redefined to have much more clarity and fluidity, especially during cutscenes. The particle effects on the weapons and their unique traits also make them special in many different ways.

Using the Dislocator Weapon to toss enemy agents around or blow up their vehicles had a very distinctive look to it. The only minor nitpick here would be that the lip sync is kind of off-putting in the static dialogue scenes with some characters.

Performance-wise, I was able to easily run the game on High to Ultra graphics settings at a steady 60FPS on my AMD RX 580 and Ryzen 5 3600 CPU, with some minor frame dips during the much heavier and chaotic moments of the game.

Additionally, the game features the support of AMD’s FSR and Nvidia’s DLSS graphic upscaling technology, which if you’re not aware, greatly helps to improve the performance of games running on lower-end cards or in general boost performance metrics across the board.

So higher-budget builds should face no problems about running Destroy All Humans 2 on the highest settings alongside Ray-tracing properties to make it look as jaw-dropping as possible and with high framerates. The Nvidia DLSS upscale technology is more applicable if you’re running their latest RTX graphic cards, while FSR is more or less focused on software, so it should work for almost every single modern GPU out there.

However, going over some of the bugs that I encountered, a couple of them included a side quest objective being glitched or unable to complete due to the NPC getting stuck. Similarly, if I used the dislocator weapon in a Boss fight, it would clip them through the map, thus making me unable to complete the fight and having me restart from the last checkpoint. Here’s to hoping these get fixed in a day 1 Patch by the developers, but other than that, there was nothing else that proved to be a major buzzkill.

Destroy All Humans 2: Reprobed Verdict

Destroy All Humans 2: Reprobed is yet again another example of a fantastic and stellar remake that continues to add solid credibility to THQ Nordic’s list of games in 2022. The game is larger in scope than the first one, and the remake gives it a fresh makeover that will easily entice fans or newcomers to try it out.

The absurd vulgarity in Crypto’s demeanor during dialogue scenarios as well as the writing not taking itself too seriously goes to show how the developers didn’t want to ruin anything that made the original one special. The game lets you explore different parts of the world as Crypto and Pox’s quest for world dominance never ends.

The story missions are short and sweet, taking upwards of roughly 10 hours to complete. The vast majority of players however will pad that time out by doing other useful activities to get more powerful via the equipment upgrades.

This is a sandbox shooter that manages to check all the right boxes to make it an ecstatic game in today’s era, with only a few minor flaws that make it underwhelming, but which can still be outweighed by the charm of the game.

The Good

• Amusing Writing.
• Addictive Gameplay.
• Great Weapon Variety.
• Large Sandbox Levels.
• Simplistic Progression Design.

The Bad

• Repetitive Missions.
• Passive Enemy AI.
• Minor Bugs And Stuttering.

Destroy All Humans 2: Reprobed Rating – 4/5

We truly hope you enjoyed reading our Destroy All Humans 2 review. Hopefully, it helps you in deciding if the game is worth checking out and for fans who loved the original. It might help you hold on a little longer until a potential sequel is announced in the future.

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