We love a good alien invasion game. From Duke Nukem to Half-Life, we’ve pushed back against extraterrestrial attackers in many ways and different settings for decades now. Typically, such interstellar conflicts involve lots of shooting and playing as the humans, of course. Then, in 2005, Destroy All Humans! turned the subgenre upside down and let us become one of the alien invaders.
Some of the best alien invasion movies of all time belong to the 1950s, a period full of fascination with UFOs and anxieties related to the Cold War. For Pandemic Studios (of Star Wars Battlefront fame), the no-brainer would’ve been to make yet another action-adventure game where you played as an American hero trying to fight back against evil Greys and other alien enemies. Instead, the studio committed to an open-world action game in which you “killed everyone.” Believe it or not, the project was conceived by Internet celebrity Matt Harding before his YouTube videos popped off.
Destroy All Humans! was no masterpiece, but despite that, it spawned three sequels and two remakes — none of which captured the magic of the original. So was it just an imperfect game landing at the perfect time? What made it so unique? And, more importantly, could we be seeing Crypto again at some point?
The Furon menace
In Destroy All Humans!, the Furons — the game’s zany take on Grey-like alien invaders — are all clones of their past selves. This is why they have their sights set on Earth. Using too many atomic weapons caused the race to develop a mutation that rendered them unable to reproduce, so they began cloning themselves, even transferring their memories and personalities. The problem? The DNA used is slowly getting worse and worse, so they need to harvest human brain stems to save themselves. Some ancient Furons once had a “shore leave” on Earth that got, uh, steamy, and now modern humans are carrying fresh Furon DNA around.
From the get-go, Destroy All Humans! establishes itself as a profoundly parodic game that not only dunks on the ‘puny humans’ and the United States of the late 1950s, but also on the Furons themselves. No one’s especially smart in this universe, and the only thing that separates the alien invaders from humanity is millennia of evolution and tech advancements. The joke, I guess, is that every species that becomes intelligent ends up committing extremely dumb mistakes due to hubris.
This doesn’t mean the Furons are idiots who got lucky, though. The more you progress into the game, the more you learn about their history and technological achievements, most of which are used for twisted science and brutal warfare. The brainy alien Pox is the one who gives players valuable nuggets of info, as Crypto is a bit of a dimwit who’s only good at one thing: causing mayhem. I mean, the first objective when Cryptosporidium-137 and Orthopox-13 (full names and clone numbers) arrive on Earth is to liberate Crypto-136, who got caught because he wasn’t great at his job. Fast-forward to a couple of missions later, and these two new visitors are getting sidetracked and causing unrelated mayhem with a flying saucer, naturally.
Clash of conspiracies
Crypto can be analyzed as an alien parody of the ‘brawn over brains’ action hero that Hollywood has historically liked. It’s what makes him sort of unique and the perfect destroyer of the United States during the Second Red Scare era. Ultimately, the Furons are just as imperialistic as the country they descend on, yet their acts are covered up by the government and media as the ‘work’ of communists hidden deep within the United States. Furthermore, hostile NPCs often refer to Crypto as a ‘commie’ only because he’s an unknown attacker.
Ironically, there’s a more direct menace to the American people that has a human form: the mysterious organization called Majestic (based on Majestic 12), which is revealed to be weakening the world’s governments through manipulation and undercover missions. The moment the Furons arrive, however, they’re this universe’s version of the Men in Black in order to cover their real intentions.
As you can see, Destroy All Humans! was anything but subtle, and that’s okay. It was a bit baffling to see reviewers criticize the 2020 remake for packing a lot of dated writing and humor. While we won’t argue against how its raunchier jokes land 20 years later, we’re also inclined to say real-life is currently nearly as stupid as the game’s satire of mid-20th-century North American society. Satire is dead, and the silliest works of science fiction you know are hitting differently now.
Imperfect future
If you haven’t experienced Destroy All Humans! yet, we won’t spoil what happens in the later stages of the game. What we can tell you is that the sequel (originally released in 2006) goes international and into the late 1960s, with the KGB as the main enemy group and as well as other alien threats, making Crypto’s domination plans much harder. It’s worth your time, and 2022’s remake is as recommendable as the first one.
Things got shaky once the IP exited Pandemic Studios and was passed around by THQ until it died a terrible (early) death with the dreadful Path of the Furon (2008). As short-lived as Crypto’s assault on Earth was, it left a mark on the gaming world thanks to its distinct take on the open-world action-adventure model, which was already starting to mimic Grand Theft Auto’s moves a bit too closely. With similar open-world fatigue settling in nowadays, those remakes came as no surprise in hindsight.
Alongside The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and other offbeat video games of the PS2/Xbox era, Destroy All Humans! marked a path forward for the sandbox action-adventure genre that was filled with devastation and could be best defined as “delirious power fantasies.” Two decades later, we don’t get many open-world games that blunt anymore, so we’re feeling quite ready for Crypto’s return under a new capable studio.
Destroy All Humans! (2020) and Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed (2022) are now available on PC (Windows), PS4/5, Xbox One/Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.
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