Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed

[h1]TLDR (Full review further down)[/h1] An unfortunate disappointment that could've been a masterpiece. Cheesy humor that never lands and gameplay that does not innovate from the previous entry. Just play Destroy All Humans 1 and stay away from this mess. [table] [tr] [th]✅ Pros[/th] [th]❌ Cons[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td] [list] [*] You play as an alien [*] You fly a UFO [*] Freeroam sandbox where you can wreck havoc [*] Cool abilities you can mess around with [/list] [/td] [td] [list] [*] Doesn't innovate on DAH 1's gameplay [*] Story is uninteresting with very cheesy humor sprinkled throughout [*] UFO gameplay feels janky [*] Poor optimization apparent in highly chaotic scenarios [*] Broken boss fights that forces you to restart constantly [*] Awful balancing [*] The progression system is an outright downgrade and a chore to deal with [/list] [/td] [/tr] [/table] [h1]Full Review[/h1] For a game that's a sequel to a great classic, this just feels like an outright downgrade in many areas. I find myself absolutely struggling to care about the story and struggling to enjoy the gameplay. After doing a 100% on the previous entry in the series and experiencing everything it had to offer, I expected so much out of this game. Upon starting the campaign you're immediately hit with the cheesiest 'comedy' that just doesn't land at all. Even for a game that seems to be stuck in the past, these same jokes wouldn't have resonated with their fans either. I also don't like how hard they try to lean towards fan service / gooner type of stuff, it feels so forced and done in what seems like a desperate attempt to keep the gamer's attention. Now when you combine all these things, you get a level of mediocrity that is beyond comprehension. How was half of these things greenlit? On top of all of that, there's just so much jank. There's a [spoiler]giant Kaiju[/spoiler] boss fight that is just an absolute buggy mess. It's the only time I felt the need to lower the difficulty and I was still getting insta killed. My real issue with this fight is how my FPS would dip so low because of all of the chaos going on due to having a oversized being in an overpopulated Japan inspired city. At one point in this boss fight, the boss just randomly phased through the ground, completely disappearing and forcing me to restart the fight. This is just one of many immersion breaking scenarios that just completely killed my enjoyment of this game. It's to a point where I cannot bring myself to continue playing this game, let alone go for a 100% achievement run. It's not fun, the sorry is uninteresting, and the gameplay is not innovative. Destroy All Humans 2 is a fundamental disappointment that could've been a masterpiece if they stuck to what worked in the previous game. [h2]Gameplay[/h2] When I find the story of a game uninteresting I tend to lean more onto the gameplay. Unfortunately, I couldn't do that here due to how unengaging the gameplay is for me. For starters, I completed Destroy All Humans 1 with 100% achievement completion so I got to spend ALOT of time with the weapons, characters, abilities, etc. These things have relatively stayed the same with some minor changes and a very small handful of new abilities / weapons. None of it feels new and it all feels exactly the same from the previous game. There's a new weapon that lets you have a temporary minion but it's absolutely useless so I just stick to the same ol fire shot and electric arc gun. They could've done so much more with the weapons, like new upgrades or different weapons in general. There's still a few more unlocks I can get but they drip feed these upgrades so slowly and I doubt I'll play any longer to experience those things. The UFO gameplay still feels janky, more so on keyboard and mouse which is the more comfortable way for me to game. In order to aim up and down, you move your mouse up and down, but instead of changing the pitch (horizontal rotation) it instead changes the height you're levitating. To look directly below you in the UFO, you have to press a whole separate key to do so. It just feels awful and felt the exact same way in the previous game. This is also the case with gamepad and feels just as janky. You can take control of humans in the game which of course have different body types, height, weight, etc but they all run the same exact way. There wasn't any effort to make each human feel unique or differentiated other than from their appearance. There are samurais and ninjas in this game, controlling them doesn't give you any special abilities that they have access to in combat. I also don't understand why we can't drive any human vehicle. It feels like such a missed opportunity as there's some nice cars and military vehicles that would be pretty cool to control. This makes the whole sandbox feel limted. More so when you can't even land the UFO anywhere you want, just like the previous game you can only land in designated landing spots chosen by the devs. These are only a handful of things I chose to discuss that feel so obvious to change / upgrade. [h2]Story[/h2] I have absolutely no interest in this game's story and I found myself either zoning out during cutscenes or just outright skipping them. All I know is that Crypto crash landed on earth after the US military decided to destroy the mothership. A situation that somehow aliens with super advanced tech couldn't detect nor avoid. Upon landing on earth Crypto is immediately met with some cheesy humor with hippies that are hyper sexual and females that all take up the 'dumb blonde' persona. Again, no differentiating traits between humans other than appearance (except the characters associated with the main story of course). Every new area you visit, you find some female that you have to help to push the story forward, and of course every single one of these females are sexualized. It seems as if it's some sort of desperate attempt to keep people engaged with the story. [h2]Sandbox[/h2] The sandbox is the only noticeable improvement from the previous entry in which the game is open world. You get 5 small zones that you can explore between missions where you can cause chaos, do side missions, find collectibles, etc. Unfortunately none of the side content is interesting but you have to engage with it if you're going for all of the achievements. The worst one is going for the 'gene blends' which are upgrades gated behind abducting humans, upgrades that were easily accessible in the previous game. The gene blend system just feels like a down grade and a restriction that doesn't let you enjoy the sandbox without spending hours mindlessly grinding this out. It's geninely awful and pointless to work towards until you beat the game since you need to abduct humans from all zones to level the associated upgrades. [h2]DLC[/h2] Cosmetic cash grab [h1]Verdict: D[/h1] A painfully mediocre game that doesn't try to innovate from its previous entry. If you've played the previous Destroy All Humans game, don't expect to find anything new here, just one less menu you have to deal with between missions. Whether you're new to this series or a returning fan, you're better off playing the original and staying away from this. I cannot recommend this game. [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfilesfiledetails/?id=3789614624]Click here for detailed info on my rating system[/url] [h1]PC Specs[/h1] [table] [tr] [th]PC SPECS[/th] [th]DETAILS[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]OS[/td] [td]Windows 11[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]CPU[/td] [td]12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700K[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]GPU[/td] [td]NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 - 10 GB VRAM[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Storage[/td] [td]Samsung 870 EVO 2TB + 1TB[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]RAM[/td] [td]32 GB DDR4 3200MHz RGB[/td] [/tr] [/table]