G4TV

When well-known game franchises make the leap to next-gen consoles, you expect them to arrive with a certain level of polish, reflective of the advancements in technologies that have occurred since the franchise’s previous installments on last generation consoles. Sadly, THQ didn’t get the memo, and Destroy All Humans: Path of the Furon is the result. A franchise that already felt dated by the time its sequel hit shelves back in 2006, DAH is back and the same as ever. Only now the joke isn’t funny. It’s just really, really sad.

Close Encounters of the Word Kind

Path of the Furon finds the series’ star alien Crypto bored and lazy in his Las Paradiso (i.e. the game’s Las Vegas setting) casino, the Spacedust. Crypto is drawn into a mob war with a local mafia family, which quickly escalates into a full-blown conspiracy after deadly alien forces called Nexos arrive unexpectedly. With his trusty friend Poxy by his side, Crypto sets off on a worldwide adventure to discover the truth behind the recent invasion and to uncover the mystery behind a disembodied voice that inhabits his mind. Along the way, Crypto travels from Hollywood (aka Sunnywood) to Paris (Belleville) to China (Shen Long) and finally to the fourth ring of Furon, his home planet, to confront the mastermind behind the interstellar conspiracy. The story is surprisingly lengthy and involves a healthy number of varied plot points that keep you guessing for the duration of the game’s 10-hour main story (There are a number of side missions that tie into the main story, but they don’t help push the story forward.).

The game also features a number of RPG-inspired dialogue-tree sequences where you must choose certain responses to elicit a story-specific reaction from an NPC. Most of the time, these interactions come at the beginning of missions and end with you deciding to accept or decline the particular mission. Other times, you will have to choose a series of responses that will either insult, charm or upset a particular person that stands between you and your next objective. In massive RPGs, this dialogue system works great and feels natural in the context of those games. Here, it just feel awkward, unnecessary and pointless, especially since many of the interactions end the same way, regardless of what responses you pick.

Packing Heat-Rays

When you aren’t sitting through lengthy cut-scenes or navigating pointless dialogue-trees, you’ll actually be putting that controller to good use, thanks to the variety of weapons with which to destroy all humans, buildings, vehicles and whatever else happens to get in your way. Each of the game’s eight weapons has a unique function, and thanks to numerous upgrades that you can purchase throughout the game, each one is capable of dishing out loads of bizarre destruction. Series staples like the Zap-O-Matic, Anal Probe, Dislocator and Ion Detonator are back, and thanks to some minor improvements (ability to probe multiple people.) They are all more powerful and easier to use than in previous games in the series, which means you will rarely find yourself in a situation that will pose much of a challenge.

The best new weapon has to be the Black Hole Gun, which, as its name suggests, creates a massive spinning void of destruction that devours everything and everyone in its path. The other cool new weapon is the Venus Human Trap, which creates a giant man/car-eating plant that snatches up anything within reach. Both work great against large groups of people and enemies and offer plenty of chances to observe some wacky physics action.

In addition to handheld weapons, Crypto also has help from a series of psychic powers. Reading people’s minds, body snatching and using Crypto’s psychokinetic ability to throw objects helps you rank up your various abilities. Each power can be leveled up three times (through a pointless meditation mechanic that forces you to initiate each level-up rather than just doing it automatically), while the final ability Temporal Fist, which lets you manipulate objects while time is frozen, is unlocked later in the game.

These various paths add a RPG-ish element to the gameplay that keeps things engaging. Of course, once you level up all your powers, which can be done in about a 30 minutes, you’ll end up having little need for weapons, since most fights can be won simply by either freezing time and tossing enemies, or picking up an object, magnetizing it so it attracts nearby enemies and then throwing it into the distance. The combat is fun for a little while, but it gets repetitive and is never that challenging.

In the air, Crypto has access to a number of devastating weapons that can also be upgraded. The trusty heat ray is great for carving up buildings and streets, while the missile launcher and plasma cannon deal tons of high-powered destruction. The new Tornadotron creates a sky-high cyclone that tears through large stretches of the level, leaving a path of devastation that is quite impressive. Having the option of selecting multiple targets (helicopters, enemy saucers, etc.) makes it easy to escape even the biggest battles without much damage.

E.T. Phone a Friend

In addition to the single player story campaign, the game also features two-player local multiplayer. There are three modes, each one more disappointing than the next. One event has you fighting to see who can hold an object with their abductor beam the longest. Another requires you to toss humans into a large brain harvester for varying amounts of points. And the last challenge is a soccer game with grenade launchers, in which each player tries to move the giant ball across the room with the help of ion cannons.

All in all, the multiplayer is lame, and once again, represents one of the many ways the game kicks its potential to the curb. I mean, what’s wrong with having one mode where a bunch of players wreak havoc on a large city and try to rack up the most amount of damage. Simple, fits with the theme of the game and would be super fun. There’s no reason why the game couldn’t have just been Saint’s Row 2 with aliens, especially on the multiplayer side. But I’m guessing that the developers weren’t given time before they could really make the game they wanted to make.

Take Me to Your Lead Game-Tester

The most depressing part of the non-stop texture pop-ins (even on objects and buildings just a few feet in front of you), countless clipping issues, and all manner of other graphical hiccups and glitches is that, at times, the game actually looks decent and plays smoothly. Watching a street full of people, cars and various objects get sucked into a massive black hole and then explode is ridiculous, and it proves how capable the game’s engine  is at creating incredibly cool moments on quite a large scale (It is Unreal Engine 3 after all, although you wouldn’t really know that by looking at it). Of course, then you have random sound samplings starting and stopping during load screens, buildings melting down to puny piles of rubble instead of realistically collapsing, game crashes, umbrellas that fuse to people heads when the people run away, people and vehicles stuck to the sides of buildings, dialogue being cut off before it’s done being read, and the list just goes on and on.

The Day the Disc Tray Stood Still

When it comes to the game’s primary focus of letting players level cities and kill untold numbers of people, Destroy All Humans: Path of the Furon sort of does its job. The explosions and large-scale destruction are passable, but not nearly as impressive as they should be, given the combined technical power of the Unreal engine and the Xbox 360. The story is surprisingly lengthy and more compelling than most video game stories, but it overdoes things with far too many low-brow jokes, childish innuendoes and absurd parodies. Chances are you’ll find yourself laughing harder at the deplorable number of technical issues that plague the game than the actual jokes. Unfortunately, there’s nothing funny about that.

Article by: Jake Gaskill