izigame.me

Destroy All Humans! 2: Re-castrated

TL;DR

Bugs, balancing, and bullshit. A certain "problematic" mission was cut as well as certain brain-scans.
The ending was apparently altered but it's probably so they have an opening for a third game to be made.
I don't generally mention the good things in my reviews, as I find the negatives to be more relevant to me and other people who might be interested in buying a game.
That being said, I don't want it to sound like I absolutely hate the game, or that the game is even bad.
So on that note, I'll start with the good.

The GOOD

- The art style is a very nice change and remains consistent with the first remake's art style.
- The level layout and design, while massively different from the original Destroy All Humans 2, is very good and looks much better than the original in my opinion.
- Collectibles such as records, posters, and artwork are a welcome addition to the levels.
- New optional objectives on each story mission and side mission which reward you with extra furotech cells.
- If you have the skin pack from the first remake, you can use the skins in this one.
- There are skins to unlock in-game through side objectives (and they don't all look lame like the first one).
- The audio, particularly the dialogue, sounds a lot cleaner than the first remake's.
- The movement, shooting, weapons for the most part are all massively improved over the original.
- You can refund your furotech cells and upgrade cores with brain-stems, though the game fails to mention it has an exponentially increasing cost for each refund.
- You start right out the gate with infinite S.K.A.T.E. and a maxed out jet pack.
- Massive improvements in the b00ba department.
- Most of the dialogue made it in, even the racier bits were left unaltered with few exceptions.
- I really like this game. Fuck you, at least my opinion counts to my dog.

The BAD

- Cut content. Yes, in spite of the trigger warning and all the bluster, they cut a mission and some dialogue.
- Bugs, and lots of em.
- The virgin dislocator isn't even primordial slag compared to the chad DISCLOCATOR.
Look how they massacred my boy. It just sort of bounces things off the ground to middling effect. Gone is the ridiculous sound of whizzing objects, cars, and people flying around at mach 12. Now you have to charge a shot for over 5 seconds just to bounce a car around on the ground for 2 seconds. The thing just sucks and nobody was actually asking for it to be neutered like this. I know I've dedicated an entire paragraph to the dislocator but come on. It also looks like they got the colors for the zap-o-matic and the dislocator switched around. The zap-o-matic's energy is purple and the dislocator's is blue.
- The graphics settings are all tied together in the options menu. So you can't change anisotropic filtering, you can only change the "visual effect" setting from "low" to "ultra".
- The game's color looks washed out and overly bloomed in certain weathers.
- The physics are very unreliable and tend to just freeze objects midair sometimes, or shoot a vehicle half-way into the ground.
- Free love was changed to a weapon, which is actually rather nice, but there is no reason to use it at low alert levels due to the shortness of the dance. It takes a considerable amount of time to get it into effect at higher alert levels which kind of ruins it's utility as a panic button. You also can't call an all clear during free love, probably due to a bug.
- PK Follow is practically useless. Armed humans no longer act as a bodygaurd (which might be a bug) and npc's tend to just run into traffic or get stuck on the open air when under the influence of Follow. Every enemy will just target your follower as soon as you make one, so it's useless for missions too.
- PK Mindflash messes with clean body-snatches and calling all clear. If you mindflash and then try to snatch while everyone is down, your new body will have aggro on it until you get out of it, even if you break line of sight or get an all clear.
- Transmogrification takes too long and returns too little.
- A lot of the weapons are useless against vehicles compared to just using an un-upgraded pk throw. You can one shot tanks most of the time with just humans, but it takes a fully upgraded Ion charge to destroy one.
- The proximity detector really sucks at finding furotech cells. Seriously, over half of them didn't ping on the damn thing while I was standing directly on them.
- Furotech cells in the world are tucked away in annoying spots that are covered up. I'm probably going to end up having to use a guide to find the last one in Bay City and I'm not even going to bother trying without a guide in Albion. Seriously, in the original game, you could see the damn things from across the map, now I can barely see them when they're 10ft away, because there's usually something obscuring it.

The SAUCER

- I hate the saucer.
- The saucer sucks.
- Fix the damn saucer.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that just about every aspect of the saucer is out of balance.
- The Death Ray sucks.
It takes a continuous 5 second blast from a fully upgraded Death Ray to destroy just about any building. A simple matchstick watch tower? 5 seconds. A fish stand? 5 seconds. A small house? 5 seconds. A brick lighthouse? 5 seconds. You get the point.
- The Sonic Boom sucks.
It takes 10 to 12 sonic blasts (fully upgraded) to destroy anything. That's even with the "added" damage from enemy projectiles being sucked into your blasts. Keep in mind, you can only hold 30 shots max.
- The Quantum Deconstructor sucks.
The Quantum Deconstructor has a smaller blast radius than the sonic boom. It gets like 5% charge per pickup and you need 100% to fire it. It's max capacity is only 2 shots.
- Saucer transmogrification sucks double.
It takes just as long as it does on foot and you get even less ammo from it. Half of the time you end up extracting brains (because you can do that in the saucer for some ungodly reason). Over half of my time in the saucer would be spent mashing E just to get ammo if it weren't for my next point.
- Saucer PK Slam mogs every single other saucer weapon.
It one shots almost every building, it instantly destroys any vehicle, and it costs 0 ammo to use. It's the quickest way to destroy the entire map, which is a shame because it was actually fun to tear up the map in the original game using all of the weapons at your disposal.
The saucer pretty much boils down to PK SLAM, PK SLAM, PK SLAM, PK SLAM.
Unless you try to use any of your weapons, in which case the saucer boils down to: TRANSMOG, TRANSMOG, TRANSMOG, destroy 2 buildings, TRANSMOG, TRANSMOG TRANSMOG. God help you if you actually try to use the Death Ray, it takes an absolute age to destroy just a few buildings.
As I said. The game isn't bad. It's just buggy and unbalanced. I don't think it's worth boycotting over THQ Nordic censoring a few lines and one mission, but it would be nice if they grew some balls, instead of kowtowing to people who aren't even going to play their games.