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IGN Review of Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon
When the first Destroy All Humans! Game was released for Xbox and PlayStation 2 in 2005, it was welcomed as a different take on the standard aliens-invade-Earth storyline. What if, instead of playing as a buff space marine repelling the slavering alien horde, you played as the alien himself?
Enter Crypto, a cheeky bug-eyed alien with a penchant for abducting Earthlings, terrorizing livestock and anally probing whatever came into view. Under your control, Crypto, Aided by his trusty flying saucer, could level entire towns with his arsenal of weapons. I had some good fun with the original Destroy All Humans, but two games later, the series seems to have met a sad end.
Pandemic Studios, the developer of the first Destroy All Humans game, is no longer involved with the series, and publisher THQ turned to internal studio Sandblast Games for the newest entry in the franchise, Destroy All Humans: Path of the Furon. But a month before the game was released, THQ shuttered Sandblast, making the future of the series uncertain. And judging by how Path of the Furon turned out, that could be a good thing.
Yes, Crypto is back, and he's sporting the same faux-Nicholson accent he's had since the beginning. This time he's stuck in the 1970s, so expect endless "jokes" about tight jeans, gas prices and disco music. Path of the Furon is billed as an open-world game, which is technically true. But a large, go-anywhere game world doesn't translate to fun when there's nothing new or interesting to do. All the characters look the same, none of them have anything interesting to say and every quest and mission I played was boring and cliché.
Crypto is the central character of Destroy All Humans, but the series is really all about destruction. The developers of the original game smartly realized that gamers like to blow things up and that the idea of hopping in a spaceship, terrorizing townspeople and razing high-rise buildings was instantly attractive. Destruction is also a huge part of Path of the Furon, but it's completely unsatisfying. The destruction effects are pitiful for a current-generation console game, making the act of blowing up buildings feel like a chore rather than a blast. Firing your laser at skyscrapers results in a series of burn marks followed by an anticlimactic crumble.
With the exception of Crypto's saucer, the visuals in Path of the Furon are horrible. The character models look like they were recycled from an Xbox game, the buildings are featureless, textures are hard to come by, there's screen tearing galore and the framerate is so awful at times that it gave me a headache. I could go on, but you get the idea.
And graphics aren't the only place where Path of the Furon fails. There was little thought given to how regions in the game such as Las Paradiso (Vegas) and Sunnywood (Hollywood) feel and function. You'll see cars sinking into the street, mobsters walking into walls and girls roller-skating on the sand. In almost every way, Path of the Furon feels unpolished and unfocused. Throughout, it feels less like a game and more like a cumbersome chore.
Like past DaH games, the point of Path of the Furon is to complete missions, gather weapons, upgrade your powers and cause general mayhem. In Furon, you'll gain access to a cortex scan that you can use to read human minds, a disintegrator ray that fires energy beams, an ion detonator that fires bombs and other zany gadgets. None are particularly inventive. The most interesting weapon in the game is the Venus human trap, which creates a giant plant-like monster into which you can toss humans. But it's the exception rather than the rule.
Even the dialogue, which is abundant, is tiresome and pointless. When you're talking to a character, you'll be presented with a list of dialogue "choices." Choose one and the character you're speaking to will respond. But afterward, the same list of choices appears again, minus the one you just picked. So you're forced to plow through all of them before you're allowed to escape the conversation. It's a pointless system, but it's made even worse by the fact that the story and dialogue in Path of the Furon is built on every cliché you've ever heard.
There are offensive and lazy racial stereotypes galore (the head mobster's name is Don Goombah), and there's even a kung fu master who talks with a ridiculous Chinese accent. Maybe I wouldn't have noticed it as much if there weren't uncomfortable long pauses at the beginning and end of each conversation that gave me time to reflect on the awfulness of what I was experiencing.
There's no online multiplayer in Path of the Furon, so you won't be able to share the pain over Xbox Live. But there are three local multiplayer modes that are just as pointless as the single-player game.
©2008-12-11, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Enter Crypto, a cheeky bug-eyed alien with a penchant for abducting Earthlings, terrorizing livestock and anally probing whatever came into view. Under your control, Crypto, Aided by his trusty flying saucer, could level entire towns with his arsenal of weapons. I had some good fun with the original Destroy All Humans, but two games later, the series seems to have met a sad end.
Pandemic Studios, the developer of the first Destroy All Humans game, is no longer involved with the series, and publisher THQ turned to internal studio Sandblast Games for the newest entry in the franchise, Destroy All Humans: Path of the Furon. But a month before the game was released, THQ shuttered Sandblast, making the future of the series uncertain. And judging by how Path of the Furon turned out, that could be a good thing.
Yes, Crypto is back, and he's sporting the same faux-Nicholson accent he's had since the beginning. This time he's stuck in the 1970s, so expect endless "jokes" about tight jeans, gas prices and disco music. Path of the Furon is billed as an open-world game, which is technically true. But a large, go-anywhere game world doesn't translate to fun when there's nothing new or interesting to do. All the characters look the same, none of them have anything interesting to say and every quest and mission I played was boring and cliché.
Crypto is the central character of Destroy All Humans, but the series is really all about destruction. The developers of the original game smartly realized that gamers like to blow things up and that the idea of hopping in a spaceship, terrorizing townspeople and razing high-rise buildings was instantly attractive. Destruction is also a huge part of Path of the Furon, but it's completely unsatisfying. The destruction effects are pitiful for a current-generation console game, making the act of blowing up buildings feel like a chore rather than a blast. Firing your laser at skyscrapers results in a series of burn marks followed by an anticlimactic crumble.
With the exception of Crypto's saucer, the visuals in Path of the Furon are horrible. The character models look like they were recycled from an Xbox game, the buildings are featureless, textures are hard to come by, there's screen tearing galore and the framerate is so awful at times that it gave me a headache. I could go on, but you get the idea.
And graphics aren't the only place where Path of the Furon fails. There was little thought given to how regions in the game such as Las Paradiso (Vegas) and Sunnywood (Hollywood) feel and function. You'll see cars sinking into the street, mobsters walking into walls and girls roller-skating on the sand. In almost every way, Path of the Furon feels unpolished and unfocused. Throughout, it feels less like a game and more like a cumbersome chore.
Like past DaH games, the point of Path of the Furon is to complete missions, gather weapons, upgrade your powers and cause general mayhem. In Furon, you'll gain access to a cortex scan that you can use to read human minds, a disintegrator ray that fires energy beams, an ion detonator that fires bombs and other zany gadgets. None are particularly inventive. The most interesting weapon in the game is the Venus human trap, which creates a giant plant-like monster into which you can toss humans. But it's the exception rather than the rule.
Even the dialogue, which is abundant, is tiresome and pointless. When you're talking to a character, you'll be presented with a list of dialogue "choices." Choose one and the character you're speaking to will respond. But afterward, the same list of choices appears again, minus the one you just picked. So you're forced to plow through all of them before you're allowed to escape the conversation. It's a pointless system, but it's made even worse by the fact that the story and dialogue in Path of the Furon is built on every cliché you've ever heard.
There are offensive and lazy racial stereotypes galore (the head mobster's name is Don Goombah), and there's even a kung fu master who talks with a ridiculous Chinese accent. Maybe I wouldn't have noticed it as much if there weren't uncomfortable long pauses at the beginning and end of each conversation that gave me time to reflect on the awfulness of what I was experiencing.
There's no online multiplayer in Path of the Furon, so you won't be able to share the pain over Xbox Live. But there are three local multiplayer modes that are just as pointless as the single-player game.
©2008-12-11, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved