Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed review

One of the defining genres of the early 2000s was the open-world action game. From Radical Entertainment’s Prototype duology and Sucker Punch’s Infamous series to Edge of Reality’s The Incredible Hulk, the era armed players with awesome abilities and plenty of wanton destruction. Likely, Pandemic Studios was one of the best architects of the open-world action game. Titles like 2005’s Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction and 2009’s The Saboteur demonstrated just how much fun physics-based disobedience could be. For the first two Destroy All Humans! games, Pandemic added a layer of comical irreverence to all that mayhem.

Two years after Black Forest Games delivered a respectable remake of the original Destroy All Humans!, the studio has followed with Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed. Like its predecessor, Reprobed largely preserves the source material while applying a substantial visual makeover and making a handful of mechanical improvements. The result is still a game whose best moments come from weaponizing the environment and watching humans panic.

Now, four years after the remake’s original release, Reprobed has landed on Nintendo Switch 2. The new version brings the title to a Nintendo platform for the first time making Crypto’s globe-trotting rampage portable. That sounds like an ideal fit for a game built around short missions and aimless bouts of extraterrestrial vandalism. And mostly, it is, except for at least notable compromise.

Zap, Bounce, or Toss Foes

The good news remains very good: Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed provides a satisfying set of tools for all of your destructive desires. Yes, your Zap-o-Matic is back. And it’s still enormously enjoyable to watch electricity arc between multiple enemies as they convulse and briefly reveal their cartoonish x-ray skeletons. The Dislocator sends helpless victims bouncing around like rubber balls, and it’s especially amusing when a single unfortunate soul ricochets into an unsuspecting group. Then there’s the Disintegrator Ray, which does exactly what its name promises.

But the real star is still Crypto’s psychokinetic abilities. Destroy All Humans! 2 understands that flinging people around is fun, and Reprobed gives you plenty of opportunities to indulge. Pick up a pesky adversary and launch it at groups of foes exiting a vehicle, blowing up any nearby cars and killing everyone involved. This kind of chain reaction is exactly the kind of mischievousness that makes the series work.

One of the remake’s strengths is how many of these systems overlap. Psychokinesis isn’t merely a combat tool; vehicles, environmental objects and unsuspecting pedestrians all become your ammunition. Meanwhile, collecting Furotech cells lets you upgrade Crypto’s weapons and abilities, giving exploration a purpose. The arsenal is also considerably more varied than in the original game. Alongside Crypto’s familiar weapons are newer toys such as Meteor Strike, while the saucer provides an entirely different means of expressing displeasure with humanity.

Unidentified Frying Object

When you’re on the ground, Crypto can zap, disintegrate, abduct, manipulate, and otherwise screw with the locals. When you’re in the saucer, you can incinerate buildings, abduct vehicles with the tractor beam or simply rain destruction from above. It remains the game’s greatest strength and year on, it’s still easy to get side-tracked.

The sequel was already considerably more ambitious than its predecessor. Rather than confining Crypto to a single American setting, Destroy All Humans! 2 sends him around a fictionalized version of the 1960s, with locations inspired by places like England, Japan, Russia and the United States. Each area has its own personality, and the larger maps provide more room for Crypto’s particular brand of mayhem. You can follow the story, hunt down collectibles, complete side missions, harvest humans for DNA or simply wander around looking for someone unfortunate to throw into the horizon.

The trouble is that the size of these environments can sometimes expose how little there is to actually do in them. Some stretches of the maps feel more like unutilized spaces than sandboxes filled with interactive toys. The underlying mission design also hasn’t aged as well as the graphics. You’ll protect somebody, destroy something, infiltrate somewhere or follow an NPC before moving on to the next objective. The remake looks substantially more modern than the 2006 original, but underneath the new coat of paint is still a game designed around the conventions of an older generation of open-world games. I love freeform screwing around but I wonder if a generation raised on more linear approaches will appreciate it.

Hippies Don’t Talk to Suits

Fortunately, Crypto’s arsenal can make even mediocre objectives entertaining. Like the original game, Destroy All Humans! 2 isn’t nearly as entertaining when you’re not wrecking shit. There are occasional stealth and infiltration sequences where Crypto assumes the identity of a human. The disguise system can be useful for slipping through restricted areas, but it’s still one of the weaker elements of the experience. You’re essentially borrowing a body while being reminded that Crypto would much rather be vaporizing everyone in sight.

The game’s humor is another problem. In 2006, the satire was already deliberately dated, with references to hippies, the KGB, counterculture, conspiracies and Cold War paranoia. After two more decades later, a lot of the humor might be understood by today;’s audiences. Sure, the game’s B-movie sensibility is charming, but its reliance on pop-cultural references can feel increasingly dated. But that’s not necessarily a deal breaker. The comedy is part of the package, and players who enjoy Crypto’s particular brand of extraterrestrial arrogance will find plenty to appreciate. But the humor isn’t as consistently sharp as the game’s destructive mechanics.

Conclusion

Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed is at its best when it stops worrying about its missions and simply lets Crypto be a menace. His weapons are fun, his psychokinetic abilities can be a blast, and the saucer is still a fun way to turn a functioning city into a collection of burning wreckage. The larger environments give Crypto more room to experiment than he had in the original game.

The problem is that Reprobed can’t completely conceal its 2006 foundations. Missions become repetitive, stealth remains underdeveloped, and the humor is increasingly dependent on whether you enjoy the series’ B-movie sensibilities. Those were recognizable weaknesses when the remake launched in 2022, and time hasn’t made any of them disappear.

Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed was played on Nintendo Switch 2, with review code provided by the publisher. Portions of this review were adapted from my original review of Reprobed.