What does Tony Hawk, Shrek, and Destory All Humans have in common? They are all game franchises that should be put out to pasture.
When the original Destory All Humans was released on PS2 and Xbox several years ago, it gave gamers a new perspective on what would happen if aliens invaded. Instead of playing as the buff super hero, player took the role of an invader with the goal of anal probing as many humans as possible.
Several sequels latter, Crypto once again takes center stage with his bad Jack Nicholson accent, mind reading skills, and anal probe weaponry. Now within this 1970’s setting, Path of the Furon can be considered an open-world game. But this explorable environment doesn’t really provide anything new or entertaining. Gamers are performing the same tasks since the first game in the series back in 2005: blowing up buildings, hovering around in a vertically challenged jetpack, and terrorizing locals, often times with the end goal of making a few bucks in the process. Why an alien would want to get rich is beyond me, but apparently the writers thought it would be funny. In fact, the game seems to have a bigger emphasis on destroying buildings as opposed to humans.
Path of the Furon’s biggest flaw is the lacking visuals. On par with an original Xbox title, this game has a terrible case of tearing and pop-up problems. Buildings are basically big cubes, and the game lacks textures. The game engine also suffers from frame rate issues and every random citizen on the street are carbon copies that mindlessly walk into walls. These instances seem small, but really deteriorate the overall presentation values and display the mediocre level of quality that went into this product.
Dialog trees now play a larger role in the overall gameplay, but prove to be pointless. The player is basically forced to go through every option in the dialog tree until the correct one is chosen in the correct order. It really makes no sense and probably should have been removed from the game entirely as it doesn’t reward anything new during play. And like any other game trying to be more comical, just about all your basic stereotype clichés will pop up at some point during the story.
This game suffers from a lack of true progression. As time goes on, your ship will be slightly upgraded and Crypto will have access to a few new weapons, but there really isn’t any type of RPG-like power growth. Because players basically just get a new weapon, the sense of overall accomplishment and character growth are almost entirely absent and really bring no reward for playing for extending periods of time.
There are no online multiplayer features but there are some local options available. I will admit, I couldn’t find the motivation to even test them out because they probably will be just as unexciting and lackluster as the single player romp.
Destroy All Humans has switched developers a couple times over the last few years and perhaps the series has suffered as a result of this. The novelty of this game quickly wore off after the first title was released and has failed to reestablish itself on a next gen console. Unless something drastic happens to the series, perhaps THQ is better putting this old dog down.
