Destroy All Humans!

Genre: Action

Players: 1

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

Destroy All Humans! is an Action game originally released on PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2005, with a port to PlayStation 4 in 2016. This remake of the game was released in 2020 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, with a Nintendo Switch version released in 2021 and a Nintendo Switch 2 version released in 2026. This game is an alien invasion story told from the perspective of the invaders, with players taking the role of one of the little green grey men, Cryptosporidium 137 (AKA Crypto) as he takes on missions in a parody of mid-20th century America, with those missions often ultimately taking on the form of, well, “destroy all humans”.

The presentation in this release is a really mixed bag, because even though the textures and environmental detail have clearly been improved over the original 2005 release, this game really seems to be struggling to play on the Nintendo Switch hardware, with low resolutions, tons of aliasing, and low framerates that really start to chug when the action gets intense.

This game does reuse the voice acting and story from the original release, which is largely good, with excellent humor throughout, though I do think it was an odd choice to have Crypto’s voice actor J. Grant Albrecht spending the duration of the game doing a Jack Nicholson impression, and Richard Steven Horvitz’s Pox character, Crypto’s boss, occasionally jumps into Horvitz’s Invader Zim voice. It’s fine, if a bit distracting.

When it comes to the gameplay, what you have here is decent, if a bit repetitive, with missions that jump between shooting humans on foot, shooting humans from a flying saucer, and infiltrating groups of humans in disguise, with this latter style of gameplay feeling like the weak link here.

The shooty stuff is generally good though, even if it can seem repetitive and mindless at times. That said, the cooldowns for standard attacks are irritating, even if they’re there to encourage players to engage with alternative attacks. Plus, it’s frustrating that the UFO gameplay forces you into a specific angle, often making it difficult to aim telekinesis attacks as you fling objects at enemies. Also, this game’s story and tutorial cut into the action pretty frequently, especially in the early game, which drags on the pacing.

Despite these issues, Destroy All Humans! is still a good remake of a good game, but I can’t ignore that it’s marred by some gameplay frustrations from the original game, and some nasty performance issues caused by the limited hardware of the Nintendo Switch. If you’re looking for some fun shooty action, this is still an enjoyable game, but it’s far from an ideal way to play this game.

tl;dr – Destroy All Humans! is a remake of a 2005 Action game that puts you in the role of a little green grey man wreaking havoc on a parody on mid-20th Century America. The original game was a solid Action game, if a bit repetitive, and this is mostly a good remake, though its release on Nintendo Switch suffers pretty badly from performance issues. Overall, this is still an enjoyable game, but this is far from an ideal way to play it.

Grade: C+

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Destroy All Humans! (Switch 2)

Genre: Action

Players: 1

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Review:

Coming a half a decade after the Nintendo Switch version, and a full decade since the original release of the remake, Destroy All Humans! has received its own Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game. This isn’t a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition release, but Nintendo Switch owners who bought the digital version of the game on that platform can get this newer release discounted down to $10. So then the question becomes, what are you getting for that $10? Let’s take a look.

Well, I can say that the resolution is greatly improved, though some textures still seem fairly low-resolution. On the positive side of things, foliage like hayfields looks much better now. Overall, this game reputedly uses a dynamic resolution that varies between 1080p and 1440p, and the difference is noticeable.

The framerate also benefits here, but not as much. The Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game only runs at 30FPS, but it’s a stable 30FPS, not suffering from the slowdown that plagues the Nintendo Switch version of the game.

Don’t expect any Nintendo Switch 2-specific features here, because you won’t get any – no Mouse Mode or anything like that. This is probably to be expected though – after all, the Nintendo Switch version didn’t make use of gyroscopic motion controls (and neither does this version, for the record).

Finally, loading times have been greatly reduced here. The Nintendo Switch version of the game took 41 seconds to load to the main menu, 10 seconds to load a game save, and 33 seconds to load up a level. On Nintendo Switch 2, those times are all reduced, to 14 seconds, 4 seconds, and 14 seconds, respectively.

Overall, Destroy All Humans! plays much better on Nintendo Switch 2, though the difference isn’t as drastic as I would have liked – a jump to 60FPS framerates would have been really nice here. Still, the improvements this version did get make this game much more playable, and if you already have the Nintendo Switch version, I do think this is worth the upgrade.

tl;dr – Destroy All Humans! is a remake of a 2005 Action game that puts you in the role of a little green grey man wreaking havoc on a parody on mid-20th Century America. The original game was a solid Action game, if a bit repetitive, and this is a good remake, and the Nintendo Switch 2 version addresses the performance issues that the Nintendo Switch release had. Overall, this is a decent game to pick up for anyone looking for somewhat shallow destructive fun.

Grade: B-

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