Full video review: https://youtu.be/ga4HOJGE-cY
Two years later and another remake is out. I had a good time playing through the first one in spite of its flaws, so I was lookng forward to giving the second a look.
Visuals & Map Design
The first thing I noticed this time around is how much better this game looks compared to its predecessor. I’m not talking the art style - that still maintains the same goofy, retro look - but more so the map density, the level of detail, the models - all of that. The studio has done a great job not only in faithfully recreating the look of the original 2006 game, but improving upon what they did just two years ago in the first remake. The environments were already pretty good in the first game, but in 2 they feel much less barren and WAY more varied.
Gameplay
Right at the start you already have access to a bunch of abilities, but that only grows as you progress and while not all of them land, the ones that do are very fun to use and the pacing is managed well enough that there’s always something new to look forward to.
The gameplay in general maintains that distinct mid-2000s vibe where the focus is on just having fun and not really worrying about little things like what equipment is the best to upgrade or “is this the best way to tackle this mission”? It’s very freeform and I honestly miss this kind of game design - it’s one of the reasons why I got into gaming in the first place.
Mission Design
Just like the first remake, the mission quality varies wildly here. You get the occasional really good mission that introduces a new ability and weaves it into the gameplay in a fun way followed by another three or so boring missions that alternate between simply “go here, destroy this, repeat” missions and the dreaded escort missions. There are so many escort missions that it kinda ends up feeling like the default, even if some alternate between walking and riding the saucer.
It really brings down the experience at times, makes it feel monotonous in spite of all the fun equipment and such you have access to. For an experience that is roughly seven or so hours long, it is very disappointing that they had to resort to such repetition to fill that time.
Story
In the first game, I found the story to be enjoyable enough. Here though? It’s kinda average. The same cheeky humor is here, but some of the jokes kept getting repeated over and over and it just wasn’t funny anymore. I don’t know, it just felt the first had a better handle on things and was more witty, less reliant on crude humor, making this one feel like an overall downgrade.
PC Performance
As a side effect of the visual upgrade, the game is definitely more taxing than the first. That’s fine, I far exceed those requirements anyways. However, that did not stop these absolutely wild fps fluctuations from the steady 90-100 or so down to 40. It was still playable and I definitely could have remedied the issue by lowering settings even further, but an fps fluctuation of 60 is quite a lot and more optimization would be very welcome here.
I also ran into a few bugs, including NPCs not moving at all, textures flickering during cutscenes, and micro freezes when opening certain game menus. I didn’t have anything else outside of those issues, but they felt worth mentioning regardless.
Overall
Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed is a decent remaster of a decent game. Although not quite as refined as the first remake, it does have better environments, more weapons to play around with, and a larger scope. However, it also suffers from the same monotonous mission design as that first game along with having a subpar story and some technical issues too. Really, if you liked the first remake, then you’ll probably like this one and won’t need a review to tell you otherwise.
Two years later and another remake is out. I had a good time playing through the first one in spite of its flaws, so I was lookng forward to giving the second a look.
Visuals & Map Design
The first thing I noticed this time around is how much better this game looks compared to its predecessor. I’m not talking the art style - that still maintains the same goofy, retro look - but more so the map density, the level of detail, the models - all of that. The studio has done a great job not only in faithfully recreating the look of the original 2006 game, but improving upon what they did just two years ago in the first remake. The environments were already pretty good in the first game, but in 2 they feel much less barren and WAY more varied.
Gameplay
Right at the start you already have access to a bunch of abilities, but that only grows as you progress and while not all of them land, the ones that do are very fun to use and the pacing is managed well enough that there’s always something new to look forward to.
The gameplay in general maintains that distinct mid-2000s vibe where the focus is on just having fun and not really worrying about little things like what equipment is the best to upgrade or “is this the best way to tackle this mission”? It’s very freeform and I honestly miss this kind of game design - it’s one of the reasons why I got into gaming in the first place.
Mission Design
Just like the first remake, the mission quality varies wildly here. You get the occasional really good mission that introduces a new ability and weaves it into the gameplay in a fun way followed by another three or so boring missions that alternate between simply “go here, destroy this, repeat” missions and the dreaded escort missions. There are so many escort missions that it kinda ends up feeling like the default, even if some alternate between walking and riding the saucer.
It really brings down the experience at times, makes it feel monotonous in spite of all the fun equipment and such you have access to. For an experience that is roughly seven or so hours long, it is very disappointing that they had to resort to such repetition to fill that time.
Story
In the first game, I found the story to be enjoyable enough. Here though? It’s kinda average. The same cheeky humor is here, but some of the jokes kept getting repeated over and over and it just wasn’t funny anymore. I don’t know, it just felt the first had a better handle on things and was more witty, less reliant on crude humor, making this one feel like an overall downgrade.
PC Performance
As a side effect of the visual upgrade, the game is definitely more taxing than the first. That’s fine, I far exceed those requirements anyways. However, that did not stop these absolutely wild fps fluctuations from the steady 90-100 or so down to 40. It was still playable and I definitely could have remedied the issue by lowering settings even further, but an fps fluctuation of 60 is quite a lot and more optimization would be very welcome here.
I also ran into a few bugs, including NPCs not moving at all, textures flickering during cutscenes, and micro freezes when opening certain game menus. I didn’t have anything else outside of those issues, but they felt worth mentioning regardless.
Overall
Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed is a decent remaster of a decent game. Although not quite as refined as the first remake, it does have better environments, more weapons to play around with, and a larger scope. However, it also suffers from the same monotonous mission design as that first game along with having a subpar story and some technical issues too. Really, if you liked the first remake, then you’ll probably like this one and won’t need a review to tell you otherwise.