Destroy All Humans is one of those games that overloads its opening moments. The first half hour is a march of new ideas and possibilities, and then the game settles into something surprisingly compact.
This doesn’t matter, if you ask me. It doesn’t matter because certain games offer a comfort in their confines, in missions that encourage you to do the same things over and over again with slight variations and tools that work perfectly well for the one or two acts they’re required to perform. And it doesn’t matter because the setting of a game, the fictional mount, as it were, can be super important when it comes to your enjoyment. Destroy All Humans pretty much proves this.
Open-world games were made for this: you’re an alien bombing around Earth in your UFO. Down on the ground you can probe people – as bad as it sounds – blend in for a bit of stealth, and generally cause localised havoc. Up in the air you can set buildings on fire, reduce skyscrapers to rubble and take out entire army detachments as you whizz back and forth. A proper flying saucer! This is what I want a game to deliver sometimes, and it doesn’t really matter if the game doesn’t deliver much afterwards.
Rote missions, limited interactions, bland environments: it should get dull pretty quick. But it doesn’t for me. Firstly, I never get over that hop from the ground and up into the sky, always wowed by the change in perspective and scope and by the wonderful radioactive whirr of my craft. Secondly, I love the giddy thrill of being a bad guy who’s ultimately just a jerk. You’re evil, sure, but you’re mainly just a pain in this game. You’re evil the way a house cat is evil. Why not take a swipe at whoever passes by?