7.5/10 - Good
Chaotic, over-the-top gameplay with lots of crude humor
Occasional crashes, visual glitches, and audio drops hamper the experience slightly
Release Date
August 30th, 2022
Developed By
Black Forest Games
Available On
PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Reviewed On
Crypto is back. No, I’m not talking about BotCoin, Methereum, or Kitty Cash, I’m talking about the vulgar, horny little bugger who just can’t stop firing probes into bums.Taking place 10 years after the original game, Crypto is dead, but not really. His original body was killed but he was fortunate enough to be cloned (again) and his latest reincarnation, Crypto 138, is out on a mission to destroy some humans. Not all of them. Mostly Russians, actually, but collateral damage is more than tolerated. It’s encouraged, actually, but unlike the first game, world domination isn’t the end goal. Blasting the Russians to kingdom come is the mission. Unexpectedly relevant, wouldn’t you say?
Set in the swinging 60s, the Russian secret service, the KGB, has managed to piss off the meanest little alien around by blowing up his mothership and his boss in the process. I’d call that a free favor but Crypto is angry and he wants revenge. Fortunately for him (or unfortunately?), his boss managed to dump his consciousness into a hologram that can carry on barking orders and berating Crypto at every opportunity. It makes for some fun interactions and seeing Crypto being pushed and prodded by someone he can’t probe got a few laughs out of me.What’s more is that you’re able to choose what Crypto says next with a few dialogue options, though some can result in you needing to do the cut-scene conversation again. I found this out by “making a lewd suggestion” to the Russian traitor that Crypto teams up with toward the beginning of the game. The game gave me the option. I have no regrets.
It’s not all chit-chat, there’s much more to it. Crytpo’s revenge takes him across the globe and even off the planet. The disgusting and wonderful weapons return with a few new additions, and his trusty saucer is always on-hand if you ever need to get airborne and rain down death and destruction.There’s a nice loop to the gameplay, too, with the weapon, ship, and Crypto upgrades. Throughout the game, you’ll collect Cells which can be found scattered across the game’s maps or dished out as rewards for completing missions. Cells are used to upgrade everything from Crypto’s energy shields, his anal probe gun, to his deadly saucer. I’m normally a bit “meh” when it comes to RPG-lite upgrades in games as they tend to be hit or miss, but I found myself actively collecting Cells so I could get a bit more juice out of Crypto’s zapper gun or to give my saucer a little more health for those city-wide skirmishes.The general gameplay is much like the original game with missions being fairly simple in their structure. Mostly, you’ll go to the mission marker on the map, have a quick chat with the quest giver (lewd commentary being optional) and then you’ll go about your mission.
I’ve had a great time taking Crypto from America to Britain, to Japan, and even to the Moon, but it was a rough journey, all told.
Missions typically follow a straightforward routine of go here, kill these people, go there, kill more people. There is some variety with mini-horde sections where you’ll have to defend another character while they’re busy. You’ve also got escort missions which aren’t as bad as Assassin’s Creed has made them sound. You’ll guide a character from point A to point B while defending them from attackers. These can take place on the ground or in the air, which works nicely to keep things fresh. There are also a decent amount of side missions scattered through the game’s maps, though they do vary in quality. I still found the rewards were worth the effort and I was able to upgrade Crypto’s gear quicker than I otherwise would.Of course, this wouldn’t be a mid-naughties game if there weren’t boss fights. Unfortunately, outside of maybe one or two, they’re quite the dry lunch, more often than not relying on spamming the boss with whatever ammo you’ve got left. One boss fight did stand out, though not for the right reasons.
Crypto’s journey takes him to Japan and, yes, you guessed it, the boss here is a Godzilla-like monster rampaging around town. This was a really fun scene to watch play out, but once I was handed the controls and tasked with taking it down, I kept on hitting the ‘Mission Failed’ screen as I died over and over again. It’s an example of one of the odd moments where the difficulty spikes and my patience wore thin. I managed to cheese my way through it with some determination and a fair bit of luck, but it wasn’t the epic encounter it could have been.Crypto’s original powers are still intact, though they’re not quite at the forefront when it comes to general gameplay. He’s also got some new moves, literally, as one of his new abilities gets everybody around him dancing. This is stupid, mostly useless, but one of my favorite abilities. I like stupid.One complaint I had from the original game was the need to body snatch and remain undetected. These missions were the bane of my life, but this time around they’ve mostly been eliminated. You’ll still need to take over ordinary citizens, KGB agents, cops, and even Ninjas, but the strict fail-states are gone and you may get through most missions with ease, even when you need to don a disguise.
While I like the body-snatching mechanic, I didn’t use it unless it was absolutely necessary. Taking over a human’s body doesn’t let you do anything special, aside from accessing restricted areas, which seems like a missed opportunity. I’d have liked to have been able to do some martial arts as a Ninja, shoot a bazooka as a soldier, and so on. I know, I know - it’s a really polished remake that uses the original game as its foundation, so I shouldn’t expect such game-changing features. Maybe in a potential Destroy All Humans! 3?While Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed has been given the modern-day do-over, it still carries a lot of mid-naughties baggage in its game design and writing, with some aspects being easier to overlook than others. This will most likely depend on your particular brand of humor, but I can say that I enjoyed Crypto’s crude and lewd outbursts, all helped by the excellent delivery by the voice actor who sounds like the love child of Danny De Vito and Jack Nicholson. It really helps sell Crypto’s cringe-inducing pick-up lines. However, even the developers acknowledge that the game is from a different time with a small disclaimer at the beginning.I’ve had a great time taking Crypto from America to Britain, to Japan, and even to the Moon, but it was a rough journey, all told. I came across a handful of crashes that sent my PS5 back to the home screen. Thankfully, I didn’t lose much progress - the game has very generous checkpointing anyway - but these instances were still annoying. I also noticed some decidedly un-next-gen performance issues with the game stuttering, screen-tearing, and even dropping audio from time to time. There’s some rough pop-in, too, especially in cut scenes when the camera switches from one speaker to another. With Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed being a next-gen/PC-only release, I’d have expected common last-gen issues to stay where they belong.
That said, none of these issues really bothered me to the point where I didn’t want to play anymore. I was too busy having fun with my anal probe, yeeting hippies into the stratosphere, and having a few guilty laughs at the cancel-worthy humor.Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed is a really good game that doesn’t take itself seriously. In some ways, it’s a relic from another era, a reminder of how simple and fun games used to be; a time before the endless grind. Heck, there’s even couch multiplayer, once a standard feature in games that has slowly faded out over the years. Despite its heritage, Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed feels and plays modern enough with refined controls, decent visuals, and enough over-the-top fun to easily overlook the few shortcomings.
