Reviews// Destroy All Humans! 2 (PS2)

Cryptosporidium 137: All right! Listen up, mouth-breathers. This my second outing on your flea-infested, little planet, and that's two visits too many in my opinion. After I single-handedly took over the United States of America and installed myself as its President, I'd been living a glorious life of wine, women and song. Especially the women! Well that all came crashing to a sudden halt when some Russki jokers decided to play Fourth of July with a missile and my mother ship! Now I'm stranded in Bay City with only one gun, a broken flying saucer and a dead leader, who still manages to boss me around because he's gone and uploaded himself into a holo-pox unit. Looks like it's up to me to restore the glorious Furon Empire to its rightful place at the top of the food chain. Again!

Orthopox: Crypto! Get your pet human to talk to the other monkeys, you have more important things to worry about than educating a bunch of dribbling bottom-feeders about your recent problems. Just because some humans with slight technical gifts have decided to make your adventures into an interactive entertainment distraction, there's no need to acknowledge that you're pleased by the prospect.

Crypto: Alright, alright! Tell them about the game, meatsack!

Ahem. Erm, yes...well, Destroy All Humans! 2 is, not surprisingly, the follow-up to Destroy All Humans!, developed by Pandemic Studios and released by THQ. As you would expect, most of the gameplay mechanics of the first game remain firmly in place in the second, but the game has undergone a few alterations and enhancements. One major change is in the setting, whereas the original game was set in the paranoid fifties, DAH2 is a child of the sixties, full of free love, tie-dyed shirts and dodgy orange afros.

The other major change is that Crypto's adventures are not confined to the USA. There are various locations around the world to visit, including Japan and the UK. Each location has a distinct feel, with Albion - a city in the UK very similar to London - having banks of fog that waft up from the river and Japan offering hordes of Ninjas for you to fight. However, the best mood-setting devices are the voices of the people who inhabit the various places you visit. The phrases they come out with, and the thoughts in their heads, are specific to their country, both in accent and content.

This game is slightly easier to get around in than the first one. There are fewer consequences for being spotted and the alert level ramps up at a gentler pace. Even when the Army gets involved, it's not a serious impediment to your progress. This is just as well, since the holo-bob disguise from the first game has been replaced with body-snatching in this one. While this is a fun mechanic and requires a careful approach to avoid being spotted and having your disguise rendered useless, you can't maintain your appearance for an indefinite length of time like you could with the holo-bob. This is a shame, because it removes the neccessity to scan humans and hear those humorous thoughts going around their heads.

Once you have repaired Crypto's saucer, you can take to the skies and really get some destruction going. You can also abduct humans to use as part of your evil genetic experiments, which will enable you to improve your psychic abilities. Each enhancement requires a specific mix of the differing types of human that exist in each level, e.g. male hippies, female urbanites, army men and ninjas. Most of the time you will be enhancing the speed at which you can body-snatch humans, but you can also increase your psychokinetic powers, allowing you to lift and throw larger and larger objects.