Metacritic Games

Destroy All Humans! (Playstation 2)

Use destructive weapons and innate mental powers to take on the most feared enemy in the galaxy - Mankind! Play as Crypto, an alien warrior sent to Earth to clear the way for the Furon invasion force.Your mission is to infiltrate humanity, control them, harvest their brain stems and ultimately destroy them. You choose the method - infiltration or disintegration! Arm yourself with a variety of alien weaponry on land or in the air. Use the Ion Detonator, the Zap-O-Matic, the Sonic Boom, or even the Quantum Deconstructor to eradicate feeble humans. Explore and interact with 5 huge environments using an arsenal of alien abilities to manipulate humans into submission: hypnotize, body-snatch, read minds, levitate and more. Take to the skies in your UFO, abduct animals, cars, and humans for research, or cause large-scale destruction. [THQ]

THQ
Third-Person Action, Adventure
Players: 1
T (Teen)
Developer: Pandemic Studios
Released June 19, 2005

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

74 / 100

Critic Reviews

90 Stuff
The spicy, tangy combination of third-person action and real-time strategy is unlike anything we've played before.
90 GamePro
Every once in a while there comes a game that truly defines creativity. Destroy All Humans is indeed one such game; it has all the right elements to make it a smart, intuitive, and hilarious experience.
90 AceGamez
You really can't go wrong with this game - there's nothing else quite like it at the moment.
89 VGPub
It’s a real shame the camera problems weren’t resolved, but they don’t kill the game. They might put a hurting on some controllers though.
86 TotalGames.net
Aside from a few camera issues the game is visually stunning, combine this with the show stealing repartee between the major players and Destroy All Humans! becomes an almost essential addition to your gaming galaxy.
85 GameSpot AU
An amazing amount of fun but it doesn’t just rely on its novelty to carry it - it’s actually a good game and in the early missions at least has a good pick-up-and-play element.
85 GameBiz
A breath of fresh air amongst other games lacking in uniqueness and creativity.
85 Next Level Gaming
It's got originality, solid gameplay, and is outright fun. Come on, you're the alien! It's time to kick some Human butt!
85 PSM Magazine
The missions vary from the mundane to the extremely challenging, and are chock full of sci-fi references and in-jokes, not to mention a whole slew of political zingers. [Aug 2005, p.74]
85 eToychest
Blowing up buildings and abducting humans may eventually get old for the more cerebral gamers in the audience, but Crypto's adventures pack enough charm and polish to avoid much criticism from anyone else.
82 PGNx Media
The atmosphere whether it is the environments or the dialogue or the music is simply top-notch. The game mirrors its source material with amazing fidelity and keeps you laughing all the way through. That elevates it from a simply okay game to one that is certainly recommended.
80 Gamer's Hell
Made worse by its squandered potential. Pump the rating up to “Mature,” add some blood, a few guts, craft a story and gameplay more appealing to an older audience, and the game designers could have a hit on their hands.
80 Gaming Target
It's also annoying that you have to redo every portion of a mission if you fail at one of the later objectives.
80 G4 TV
Makes destroying humans fun with an original setting, enjoyable alien arsenal, and cleverly designed missions. Its sense of humor may falter once in a while, and content freaks will definitely find the game on the short side.
80 Game Informer
No aspect of life remains unscathed, from sexual repression and homophobia to government conspiracy and rampant paranoia. And it's funny. Very funny. [July 2005, p.114]
80 Play Magazine
Bottom line: being an alien is fun, even if it is a bit rough around the edges. [July 2005, p.76]
80 Yahoo! Games
Once the greater story starts, you'll face some great combat (the "Area 42" assault), moments of pure oddness (like making a brainwashed politician B.S. his way through a public speech), great little period touches, and some cool bits of humor from the alien who thinks he's Nicholson.
80 GameSpy
And while the title may never be mistaken for the deepest game on the PS2, Destroy All Humans! could very well be one of the funniest.
80 games(TM)
It could be argued that Pandemic’s extra-terrestrial effort is a little on the simple side, but in terms of sheer playability, scale and freedom - albeit within fairly limited areas - Destroy All Humans! is a class act indeed. [July 2005, p.96]
80 Maxim Online
Set up like Grand Theft Alien, there are tons of missions to complete, though you can also just roam around, killing filthy humans and destroying their stuff.
80 GameShark
If Pandemic had not so thoroughly nailed almost all the presentation aspects of this game, I would probably have given it only three sharks. But the out-of-this-world attention to detail and sci-fi insider humor raise the score by a full point.
80 VideoGamesLife
The enemy's endless determination to take you out (the A.I's strong point) balanced with the direct and simple nature of play results in a polished and genuinely enthralling experience. Always at the heart of the game is a determination to be fun.
80 DarkStation
Pandemic Studios takes what we love about campy alien B-Movies and turns it into this relentlessly funny and solid action title.
79 BonusStage
A repetitive, simplistic and accessible game with a wealthy plating of good ole’ fun-in-small-doses style that makes it the quintessential rental.
77 The New York Times
Worst of all, if you die at any point during the series of several tasks that make up a mission, you must start from the beginning, at times replaying the least interesting sections of the game over and over. It's a shame the gameplay lacks the almost flawless perfection of Destroy All Humans' story and presentation.
75 GameSpot
And while the gameplay doesn't really do anything especially remarkable, and the adventure is unfortunately quite short, Destroy All Humans! shows such enthusiasm for its thematic inspiration that you can't help but at least appreciate what it tries to do.
74 Inside Gamer Online
While the game is fun for nearly 8 hours, there's a certain amount of forced length in the game, when you wander around and collect DNA from brain stems or the rather simple sidequest missions in order to progress to the next mission.
74 GameZone
A fun experience that puts you in a refreshing role, but there is just not enough in here for me to recommend anything besides renting.
74 Game Over Online
The combination of frustrating mission mechanics and limited replay value leads me to strongly suggest renting Destroy All Humans before buying, if at all, regardless of your love for bad sci-fi.
72 Jolt Online Gaming UK
In the end, Destroy All Humans! just doesn’t provide good value for money, and that’s something the developers seem to have lost sight of.
72 WHAM! Gaming
A fun, zany, irreverent, violent (yeah!) and humorous game. It's just not very deep. It makes for a really good rental game as most of the coolest and engaging parts of the game are encountered in the first few missions and are then repeated throughout the rest of the experience.
70 Pelit (Finland)
A nice 50's space-alien-communist-paranoia theme and good audiovisuals, but the actual content fails to impress. The game has boring missions and repetitive gameplay with emphasis on the wrong things. [Sept. 05]
70 Loaded Inc
In Destroy All Humans, play from the Alien perspective and finally know what it feels like to have the upper hand.
70 Deeko
Spending time trudging through this so-so title, I feel a bit cheated. Rent this one, blaze through it in a few hours and get back up on the roof and wait for the real thing.
70 Cheat Code Central
Perhaps if the reward system offered better mini-games this game might have been an instant cult classic.
70 TotalPlayStation
Destroy All Humans isn't a bad game, it's a good game stretched a little too thin with not enough engaging story layered between the missions. Hopefully the sequel will give us a bit more to play around with, but this is a definite rental.
70 Gamezilla!
At the end of the day, the missions do feel a bit repetitive and the objects that were leveled on one mission are mysteriously fine on the next, causing a certain amount of unevenness in the whole experience.
70 IGN
It features all the underdeveloped and totally unessential components of other notable and forgettable open world action games, yet it also boasts terrific personality, a great premise and some generally solid action.
70 Electronic Gaming Monthly
The game has a great sense of humor, and I enjoyed the story missions, but the side quests hardly vary at all from one level to the next. Just screwing around and messing with citizens isn't as fun as it could be, either.
70 Eurogamer
Pandemic failed to make the core gameplay as compelling as it should have been and we're left reflecting on a game where no one play component really stands out as being good enough, and the missions just lack the spark that more solid core mechanics would have leant them.
70 Total Video Games
For the B-Movie enthusiast Destroy All Humans could be a worthy purchase, packed to the brim with an assortment of Sci-Fi references and replicating the style to good effect. As a game however the action just grows a little too thin, a little too quickly; there’s no real substance to the game, which will likely have you switching off far too quickly.
70 Pelaaja (Finland)
Destroy All Humans! is a successful mix of 3d-action, free roaming game play, conspiracy theories and sci-fi silliness. It has no apparent flaws but there’s still something missing from the mission design and the game as a whole. It promises a bit more than it manages to deliver. [June 2005, p.64]
70 PSX Extreme
The biggest problem with Destroy All Humans! is that it doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Sure, its story is different from the standard free-roaming game, but the gameplay is run of the mill, and there’s little innovation to speak of.
67 Gaming Age
At the very least, you have to rent this one just to experience the 50’s B-movie hilarity.
65 1UP
The main game isn't terribly long, and the missions, though sometimes creative, are often frustrating because there's usually only one way to complete them, making them feel needlessly restrictive--something that stings a little more in a sandbox game such as this.
60 Edge Magazine
It’s very easy to while away the time just terrorising the populace of each level in an increasingly destructive fashion, but to actually care enough to contribute anything to a completion percentage is another matter entirely. [July 2005, p.86]
60 Official U.S. Playstation Magazine
Instead of the feeling of freedom found in a really good sandbox game, Destroy All Humans! generates a feeling of, well, boredom. You're walked mercilessly through the main story in baby steps, and side missions are infrequent and uninspired. [Aug 2005, p.86]
58 Game Revolution
While there’s some good stuff here, its sense of humor and playful vision doesn’t extend to its repetitive gameplay.
50 PALGN
Great concept; shame about the execution. Here's hoping THQ is willing to fund a sequel to iron out the flaws. It's the least that Pandemic deserves.
40 Computer Games Magazine
Unfortunately, unless Crypto's race is looking to harvest tedium and repetition from our earthly minds, he's better off just harassing than destroying them. [Sept 2005, p.90]

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