Destroy All Humans Review – An Obsolete Invasion

Publisher: THQ Nordic

Developer: Black Forest Games

Release: 2020

Reviewed on: Xbox One

Also on: PlayStation 4, Stadia, PC

All great works are products of their particular era. However, some pieces of art reach beyond those bounds; it’s why literature students still read Shakespeare, and why Citizen Kane is still considered one of the best films ever made. Removed from their historical context, they transcend time and tap into something universal. Destroy All Humans lacks this special quality – a fact that was constantly apparent as I winced my way through this remake.

To be clear, I have fond memories of my time with the original. Destroy All Humans first came out in 2005, developed by the now-closed Pandemic Studios. Back then, I thought its sardonic vision of an alien invasion in the 1950s was amusing and clever, and the ridiculous weapons (like an anal-probe gun) were fun to use. I loved zapping humans, exploring the open environments, and flying around in my saucer. I’m not apologizing for enjoying these things 15 years ago, but the experience holds up poorly in every way. Destroy All Humans feels like it belongs in a time capsule that should have stayed buried.

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Not everything is exactly as I remember; improved visuals are a big part of the overhaul for developer Black Forest Games’ new version. The characters and mayhem definitely look better, but if you’re familiar with the original, you’ll also notice other improvements. For instance, the controls and interface have been tweaked to feel more modern and intuitive. However, the basic design, story, and dialogue are faithful to the 2005 version – and that’s the problem. Minor quality-of-life changes are nice, but fixing them seems pointless when more important aspects remain so painfully untouched. It’s like treating the symptoms of an illness rather than the underlying cause. 

Mission design is the most pervasive issue, and it’s where the action feels the most outdated. Your goals may have irreverent wrappings, like using psychokinesis to throw radioactive cows, but the gameplay mechanics in each level are disappointingly common. They feature a parade of tired mid-2000s conventions, like “survive the waves of enemies” and “protect the tower” objectives with uneven difficulty spikes and bad checkpoints. Even at their best, these activities are repetitive and predictable. 

You also have to infiltrate areas using a holographic disguise, which can only be refreshed by constantly reading thoughts of the humans around you, forcing you to experience the same bits of dialogue over and over.  Some of these lines might earn a smile the first time you hear them, but there’s always a second, third, and fourth to run the joke into the ground. 

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The humor is another defining feature that has not aged well. What might have seemed subversive and hilarious in 2005 just feels lame and juvenile now, from Crypto’s love of probing to his Jack Nicholson-like voice. This writing was never exactly subtle, but the caricatures of government agents, housewives, and rural farmers only appear more obvious and blunt today. And though the game begins by warning players it was first created in another time, jokes about things like police brutality make it hard to get on the same wavelength and laugh along with Destroy All Humans.

Black Forest Games created a better-looking version of a 15-year-old game, and this remake is a success in that regard. But whether or not Destroy All Humans is worth revisiting is a different question altogether. The brightest moments are when the action gives way to pure chaos. I watched electricity arc between humans, made brains pop out of heads, and turned a secret base into smoldering ruins with my spaceship’s death ray. But like a person floating above the ground in the glow of an abducto beam, those moments aren’t connected to anything substantial; they just make some noise and get flung aside. 

Score: 6

Summary: If the goal was to create a better-looking version of a 15-year-old game, this remake is a success. But whether or not Destroy All Humans is worth revisiting today is a different question altogether.

Concept: Recreate a fondly remembered game from 2005, improving the visuals but leaving nearly everything else intact

Graphics: Compared to the original, the visual effects and character models are a big step up. Compared to modern games, it still looks pretty rough

Sound: The music nails the cinematic sci-fi vibe, but the voice acting is obnoxious

Playability: An updated interface makes it easier to locate important information, and the controls suit the action fine

Entertainment: This remake successfully preserves the Destroy All Humans experience, regardless of whether it’s fun or funny today

Replay: Moderately low

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Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 Review – Second Curse, Same As The First

Publisher: Inti Creates

Developer: Inti Creates

Rating: Teen

Reviewed on: Switch

Also on: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC

Last year’s Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was a loving tribute to the PSone classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and its beloved successors, which were developed by Koji Igarashi. However, a year before the release of Ritual of the Night, Inti Creates released another game under the Bloodstained banner that looked deeper into Castlevania’s past for inspiration. Now, Inti Creates is back with Curse of the Moon 2, an incredibly straightforward sequel that feels largely similar to the first, and sadly suffers from many of the same flaws.

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As with the 2018 entry, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 lets you control four distinct monster slayers. You switch between these heroes as you battle a throng of gothic beasts. Naturally, every hero has their own strengths and weaknesses. Zangetsuto feels like the traditional Castlevania hero; he has a short attack range but makes up for it with quick movements and a sizeable health pool. On the other hand, Robert is physically weak, but he's also a skilled sniper who eradicates enemies from across the screen. Each hero brings something new to the battlefield, and matching their talents to the challenges ahead puts a unique spin on the traditional side-scrolling action. For example, Dominique was rarely my go-to in combat thanks to her slow-moving spear-attacks, but her extra-high jumps made her instrumental during challenging platforming sequences.

Curse of the Moon 2’s levels feature several branching paths and a good variety of locations. Some routes offer a lighter challenge, while others provide a more direct path to the boss. I like the variety this offers when replaying a level, but aside from a handful of health and attack upgrades, there aren’t many reasons to explore every path through a level. In classic 8-bit style, some areas have you dodging poisonous clouds of smoke, while others have you skating over frozen ground. And it wouldn’t be a side-scroller if you didn’t jump from rock to rock on a river of lava. These sequences perfectly fit the tone of the game, but I couldn’t escape the sense that I’d been here and done this all before. Curse of the Moon 2 doesn’t put an interesting twist on these classic tropes – it just recycles them. 

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After you reach credits for the first time, you unlock Episode 2, which asks you to replay each level to unlock the true ending. This repetition is annoying, but I appreciate the opportunity to unlock new characters, and I was happy to see that the bosses get remixed, making them harder to bring down. At the same time, even during my first playthrough, Curse of the Moon 2 provided a sizeable challenge, largely thanks to a knockback effect whenever you get hit. You can turn this effect off, but only by playing on the easier difficulty. Naturally, this knockback is an homage to old Castlevania games, but it results in more than a few cheap deaths. 

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 may as well have come out in 1989. It looks and feels like a game from three decades ago. If that was the only goal, it succeeds with flying colors. Unfortunately, that’s not a very ambitious goal, since the market full of side-scrolling 8-bit inspired gems that cleverly blend genres and make use of modern gaming conventions. Curse of the Moon offers a few hours of mindless action, but there are better nostalgia trips out there. 

Score: 7

Summary: Swap between four heroes as you journey through several monster-filled levels inspired by Castlevania’s 8-bit era.

Concept: Swap between four heroes as you journey through several monster-filled levels inspired by Castlevania’s 8-bit era

Graphics: The art style is faithfully reminiscent of the classics it imitates, but it lacks the razzle-dazzle of modern retro-inspired pixel games

Sound: A repetitive chiptune soundtrack still has a few good beats

Playability: Inti Creates’ simple, side-scrolling action should play well with anyone who has a soft spot for their NES

Entertainment: Swapping between your heroes as you tackle different tasks is fun, but the slow action and rigid platforming belong in the past

Replay: Moderate

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Carrion Review – All Tentacles And Repetition

Publisher: Devolver Digital

Developer: Phobia Game Studio

Release: 2020

Rating: Mature

Reviewed on: PC

Also on: Xbox One, Switch

Deep within an underground laboratory, tests are being conducted on an amorphous alien that, depending on how it is positioned, appears to be either all tentacles or teeth. This creature doesn’t want to be contained, and would like nothing more than to kill every scientist that poked and prodded it.

In Carrion, you release this alien and guide it as it runs amok through the facility. Within seconds of starting, the alien’s tentacles tear humans apart, its teeth bite into their flesh, and the facility – once sterile and pristine – is dripping with blood. This opening salvo of chaos is dark and exhilarating, but nothing that comes after tops the first impression. The thrills of being a monstrous threat wear off quickly, since your progress is mostly tied to figuring out how to remove seals from locked doors. Despite starring an impossible-to-identify creature, Carrion is surprisingly mundane until its final act, where the culmination of ideas truly shine.

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The alien’s mobility is the highlight, with its many tentacles that can latch onto any surface. Its shape can also morph, so the oozing monstrosity moves through any space quickly, be it a sizable cavern or a tight air vent. The player doesn’t have to hit a jump button to make the alien navigate the multi-tiered spaces; it just flows where you want it to go using the left analog stick, a fantastic solution to controlling something so odd. Watching the alien’s form shift and contort as it changes directions is mesmerizing and beautifully illustrated by Phobia Game Studio’s artists.

The lab has numerous security systems in place to contain the beast, along with a variety of armed guards. A quick tentacle strike can grab one of these soldiers, and rotating the right analog stick moves the appendage, allowing you to create throwing or smashing motions that deliver results. In one instance, you may want to chuck a metal container at a heavily armored guard to stagger him. In another, you may want to simply smash a foe repeatedly against the floor to end their life. Even though it can be somewhat challenging to figure out the angle of the tentacle being unleashed, these actions are excellently crafted and empower the fantasy of being this peculiar threat. The alien grows in size over time, and can eventually become powerful enough to smash through wood beams, slither through underwater grates, and mind-jack humans to do its bidding – you even use the humans’ weapons against their own kind, which is deviously fun.

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These abilities are put to good use for light environmental puzzle solving. No puzzle is overly complex, and most can be completed in a matter of seconds, usually rewarding the player with a new path to travel. Some puzzles require different alien sizes, which may lead to you feeding more or having to discharge mass in a pool of water. While I like how the alien’s form is used for these puzzles, they all lead to seals being removed from doors, which is a monotonous process for the bulk of the experience.

The facility is broken up into small areas that you need to complete to move on. You can’t really get lost given each area’s diminutive size – which is obviously a good thing – but your goal in almost every zone is always the same: Focus on those seals. To remove a seal, the alien needs to reach a nesting spot within a specific section of the map. When the required number of spots are secured, the seals disappear and the next area becomes available. Your mind is always glued to the doors, and all of the carnage you create is in service to this mundane goal.

Most combat encounters are optional, so if a deadly flamethrower unit lights up the screen, you are better off slithering away. When you are forced to fight, the enemy can pack plenty of firepower, and you may need rip off a mech’s armor to reveal the pilot, or hide the alien’s mass behind something to take cover. Combat can be enthralling, and often points to how great Carrion’s ideas could be. However, it plays too small a role in the experience, and doesn’t feel fully realized until that final act where chaos reigns.

With no real story to follow or info given on what the alien is or even what building it is trapped in, Carrion lives and dies by what happens in the moment. The focus on opening up new areas using the same ideas grows stale quick, and robs a fascinating premise of its true potential. I enjoyed playing as an enraged blob, but didn’t find much fun in the process of escaping the facility.

Score: 7.25

Summary: Playing as a monster has moments of devious fun, but the quest is repetitive.

Concept: Control an alien lifeform, feed on humans, grow in size, and do everything you can to escape a facility

Graphics: The alien’s shifting form looks incredible. Tentacles lash out every which way, teeth are in the oddest of places, and humans scream at the sight of it

Sound: Ominous notes and the crunching of bones ring out in an otherwise quiet game

Playability: Your beastly hero controls well and its abilities are fun to use, but its fury is held in check by repetitive door-opening missions

Entertainment: With the gameplay flow struggling to find a pulse, the novelty of controlling a monster doesn’t fully take shape

Replay: Moderate

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Rocket Arena Review - Ballistic Banality

Publisher: EA Originals

Developer: First Strike Games

Rating: 12+

Reviewed on: PC

Also on: PlayStation 4, Xbox One

Rocket Arena is yet another offering in the world of third-person hero shooters, a 3v3 experience with several modes that all involve the same core concept: You blast the other team with salvos of rockets! Rockets have been popular weapons in shooters for decades, and here you can wall-climb, rocket-jump, and jet-propel yourself all over the arena. With humdrum heroes, cool maps, and gameplay that gets old fast, Rocket Arena is a mixed experience in a world inundated with offerings all vying for players’ attention.

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Heroes are an essential part of any hero shooter, but none of their designs resonated with me. There’s mermaid girl, guy with dinosaur hatchling, pirate man, and other rejects from a theoretical Nickelodeon cartoon lineup. Their loadouts are more interesting; they each have cool variants on rockets, whether you like rapid-fire mini-rockets, bouncing rockets, or sniper-scoped rockets. In addition to your primary rocket style, you have some special skills and an active dodge, the latter being a timing skill test that you can master after you’ve handled the rest of your kit.

All matches are 3v3, and they include modes where you score goals like a sporting event, try to hold a specific area as it moves around the map, attempt to collect the most coins, or just plain knock your opponents out of the arena. The treasure-hunting game and the soccer-inspired mode feel slightly different from the rest of the offerings, but not in good ways. Rocketball can leave you completely unaware of what’s happening before a goal is scored, and treasure hunt feels like a party game one-off event that’s jarring compared to the rest of the artillery play, running around to scoop up coins like a speed platformer. 

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The arenas themselves are quite small, appearing like mini-theme parks complete with unique mechanics to play around, like a train running through a mountain canyon. They’re well-designed, foster lots of action, and have more personality than the heroes themselves.

I settled on Topnotch as my favorite hero, a salt-of-the-earth old rocketeer who features bouncing rockets, a line artillery strike, and a huge lock-on blast that’s great for area denial and blowing up multiple enemies in a single strike. While I enjoyed Topnotch more than other characters, playing Rocket Arena becomes rote quickly. The moment-to-moment zipping around each arena, blasting away with rockets ad nauseam and splashing in your abilities on cooldown loses its luster and becomes monotonous. 

Mystery boxes attempt to add a bit of flash and flavor to each round but fail. Each match has an assortment of bombs, speed ups, and other powerups that you can pick up from random boxes. The powerups feel like they should be significant, but most of the time you just throw/trigger them and go about your business as usual. The ephemeral fun factor doesn’t stick around from match to match. It’s cool for a few rounds, but there’s a serious lack of desire to come back for more.

Rocket Arena is a competent game with a clear sense of what a 3v3 rocket match should be from a technical perspective, but it furtively struggles to find an entertaining hook to keep players coming back. In today’s world of countless shooters, it’s destined to be forgotten.
 

Score: 7

Summary: While there are plenty of rockets, there's a distinct lack of explosive zeal.

Concept: Play a variety of rocket-oriented modes involving competitive 3v3 action

Graphics: While the character designs do little to astound and amaze, the maps are cool little theme parks.

Sound: The sound of rockets is in the air and other important auditory cues are handled appropriately

Playability: With just a handful of abilities on each character, the gameplay is remarkably approachable, even for those who have never played an arena shooter

Entertainment: Rocket Arena is a clean, polished arena shooter. However, the novelty evaporates quickly despite its ostentatious candy coating

Replay: Moderate

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Paper Mario: The Origami King Review – Just Above The Fold

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Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo

Rating: Everyone

Reviewed on: Switch

When Paper Mario debuted on the N64, it took the turn-based RPG battles from Square’s Super Mario RPG and wrapped them around a clever papercraft aesthetic to create a wildly humorous adventure. Over the years, the Paper Mario series has moved away from traditional stat-based RPG leveling and tried various new mechanics with mixed success, but its lighthearted antics rarely disappoint. In Paper Mario: The Origami King, Nintendo’s humor remains on point, but much like an actual origami figure, the rest of the experience is a bit hollow.

After receiving an invitation from Princess Peach to attend an origami festival, Mario sets off toward Toad Town, only to discover that an invader named King Olly has assumed power and folded the inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom into origami minions. Fortunately, this is the kind of trouble that is easily undone with a good head stomp, so Mario gets to work. Mario’s journey to defeat King Olly is full of wild shenanigans. You search for a can opener so you can feed tuna to a monkey, explore a derelict cruise ship full of terrorized Toads, and send Mario through fax machines to teleport across the world. Nintendo’s pun-filled writing is full of giggles, and I loved meeting Origami King’s wild cast of characters. I even got strangely emotional after helping my bob-omb companion find his missing fuse.   

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While I enjoyed Origami King’s dialogue, the story’s pacing is uneven. I often needed to backtrack through a level to find a missing person or locate a key to a lock preventing me from progressing. These speed bumps are frequent, and while the writing remains clever throughout, they kill the momentum. I grew tired of running back and forth across environments I'd already thoroughly explored. 

Like previous Paper Mario games, Origami King’s action takes place in a series of turn-based encounters. However, the structure is different this time, with Mario’s enemies positioned atop several concentric rings. During the first phase of each battle, Mario can rotate or slide around the blocks that make up these rings to line up his enemies. Like a Rubik’s Cube, you manipulate your foes to group them together, which makes them easier to clear out. I appreciate the challenge of lining up these baddies before wiping an entire row off the board with one strong attack, but the combat system doesn’t evolve beyond its initial promise. Since you don’t gain experience, you have few incentives to participate in repeat battles, and it starts to feel pointless. By the time I was halfway through the game, I was trying to avoid combat whenever possible because it had grown so boring.

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Origami King’s ring-based battles are flipped around for boss encounters, as Mario starts on the outer ring and works his way toward the center. These drawn-out fights require more puzzle-solving, with you sliding the rings around to avoid obstacles and then position Mario for an optimal attack. Again, I enjoyed the basic sliding mechanics, and the boss battles add an extra layer of complexity that I missed during basic battles, but these confrontations overstay their welcome. Most bosses require a great deal of trial-and-error before you discern where you need to position Mario and what kind of attack he needs to employ to deal damage. Defeating these monstrous foes is ultimately satisfying, but I was also often equally frazzled by the end of the ordeal.

As a series, Paper Mario constantly explores new concepts and mechanics, which is exciting, but that comes with plenty of risks. Origami King’s biggest chances don't pay off in a satisfying way. I enjoyed Mario’s hijinks and all the misfits he encounters, but the new ring-based action needs refinement. I hope Paper Mario’s next twist on combat can rise to the same level as its humor. 

Score: 7.75

Summary: King Olly has invaded the Mushroom Kingdom and has folded its denizens into origami monstrosities. Now it’s up to Mario to save the day. 

Concept: King Olly has invaded the Mushroom Kingdom and has folded its denizens into origami monstrosities. Now it’s up to Mario to save the day

Graphics: Nintendo’s papercraft aesthetic is full of charm. Some of the digital effects – especially water – are so realistic they’re a little jarring

Sound: The music is upbeat, but the wealth of dialogue has me wishing Nintendo would finally add voicework to the series because scrolling through text gets tiring

Playability: Origami King’s ring-based battles add a puzzle-like element to Paper Mario’s traditional turn-based combat

Entertainment: As usual, Nintendo’s quirky writing is full of laugh-out-loud moments, but your quest is full of tiresome backtracking

Replay: Moderate

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