Retrospective No. 20 Destroy All Humans!

Aliens are evil and should be destroyed. Games have always taught me this. From Space Invaders onwards the message communicated to young minds is that alien species seek to conquer earth and our role is to lead the defence of our planet. Sometimes, like the classic educational game Table Aliens, the villain’s only crime appears to be spreading good maths skills. On other occasions you’d swear they looked just like humans but with alien, green blood that will keep censorship boards happy. Regardless they had to be eliminated. Isn’t this all just a little unfair? The Tables Aliens just want to help kids learn their times tables. I know lots of people don’t like maths but isn’t killing them a little over the top? What about the kind, friendly aliens like ALF or E.T.? Ignore the fact that ironically their games are easily the best reasons to want to eradicate aliens; if these two crashed to earth they’d be massacred. Someone has to protect good aliens and try to redress the balance. To try to combat anti-alien sentiments I want to review a game with an alien hero. To champion my cause I have chosen…Destroy All Humans. Hmm on second thoughts maybe I should have chosen another game.

Destroy All Humans has you taking the role of Crypto, leading the incursion force for a full on alien invasion. I really did pick this title poorly. Navigating a collection of sandbox levels you must complete tasks using your alien powers to undermine humanity and bring about alien domination. While doing so you head from small-town America all the way to the White House in your quest to conquer all. As you progress the difficulty ramps up as enemies go from confused farmers and cows to having to deal with a resistance force which gradually becomes aware of your presence. This does come with a downside however, which is that later enemies fail to feel significantly more difficult that shotgun toting hicks. The only threat seems to be becoming overwhelmed by sheer numbers and as a result the game has little in the way of tension or replay value. I’d also recommend shorter play sessions as the absence of a challenge can lead to the destructive path across small-town America to feel dull and hollow.

This variety of sandbox game is now a well trodden path. The concept of dropping you in a scenario, largely overpowered and with hordes of enemies to defeat is hilariously appealing and is witnessed in everything from GTA to Crackdown. It’s a crowded market so what can Destroy All Humans do to stand out? Well to start with Crypto’s abilities rank among the more interesting offerings. The power to adopt human disguises is particularly fun when bursting from cover and his alien weaponry borrows from traditional plots including an appearance of everyone’s favourite (or not as the case may be) probing device. This combines well with an inspired 50s America small town setting. The writers play well with alien or conspiracy theory tropes and much of the humour comes from the increasingly bizarre explanations of events mainly being attributed to communism. At other times the humour heads a little low-brow (I don’t want to think about how Furon DNA ended up embedded in humanity) but mainly it’s light and fun without the plot destabilising effects of shock humour.

This game is awful anti-alien propaganda. Once again alien races are dressed up as psychotic villains getting their kicks from torturing humans and hell bent on humanity’s destruction. The worst part is the game revels in the chaos caused playing these horrific scenarios for well-crafted laughs. The game is engaging for a little while but doesn’t quite hit the heights the brilliant premise promises. It is well written and an entertaining concept but unfortunately is hindered by the range of options available to Crypto. As a result of the wide variety of attacks and the power you’re presented the difficulty level is non-existent, providing no challenge to the player. With no tension and little incentive to progress the game sadly becomes pretty boring but in short, anarchic, bursts of random destruction it’s certainly charming enough and funny enough and at a cheap price this might be a game that’s worth trying.

Retrospective No. 19 Cyberia

Anyone who is reading this who has either children or pets will empathise with my latest review. Doesn’t that sound tantalising? Well read to the bottom to find out why. In the summer of 1995 my parents bought their first personal home computer. Entering the modern age this Packard Bell machine came bundled with a wide variety of software both educational and entertaining. The Encarta package has already featured in one of my previous reviews but my parent’s hopes for the enlightening affect the PC could have on me were surely dashed with how I used it. Get your minds out of the gutter please I was 7. Instead of educating myself or broadening my range of experiences I focused on one game in particular. The game was a sci-fi adventure game called Cyberia, which sounds pretty highbrow but my parents would be sorely disappointed.

So what was wrong with Cyberia to spark such disappointment? Well to be fair the game starts pretty promisingly. The opening cinematic is stunning for the era and was one of the titles that demonstrated pre-rendered visuals to the greatest effect. You play as a hacker named Zak attempting to infiltrate a compound in Siberia and gather enemy intelligence, all of which is fantastically presented in the opening sequence. Sadly things go downhill from here. Upon arrival at the complex it feels strangely lifeless and is really poorly inhabited by things to do or see for an adventure title. My initial excitement at the story also didn’t really hold up as poorly integrated game play, dull puzzles and frustrating combat actually lead to a surprisingly dreary experience. Sometimes you just have to accept a game has a poor concept and this is one of those occasions. There is very little to here to keep you interested and the not much in the way of replayability even if you were ever that way inclined.

At this point I feel I should issue a clarification. If it seems a little bit like I’m basing much of my dislike on the opening passages it is because on my parents old PC these were the only scenes that would load. Only when I was older did I get to experience the full game by which point it was unable to live up to the hype I had for it generated in my youth. When I first played it attempting to progress much beyond an early action sequence would result in the game crashing. This wasn’t enough to put me off as fortunately, the power of a child’s imagination saved the day. Remember I gave a shout out to parents and pet-owners at the start? I’m sure you’ve all experienced this scenario where you have purchased an expensive item only to be met with enthusiasm for the packaging and little else. Well this game was my cardboard box. In this case I had so many adventures running along a few pre-scripted corridor scenes that my parents must have worried that I was going a little strange. I shunned actual software and games to reload and run around the same empty corridors over and over. There was so much potential for an exciting action game in an environment which for the time, looked astonishing but as Father Time has withered it’s once stunning good looks there is really very little that it has to offer to a modern gaming audience.

So Cyberia to me is forever the game that failed to match up to the expectations and dreams of my child age imagination. It looked fantastic and acted as a great starting point for my ideas but there is no substance here. Even utilising a cool initial concept the game just lacks the spark and excitement that a sci-fi espionage game should have. Attempts to artificially spice things up with ineffectively implemented action sequences only serve to confuse the issue and actually ruin the mood the game is trying to create. Sometimes the cardboard box is the fun part of a gift and in this case I had a terrible time with a story that was best left untold. My version of Cyberia will always be a positive memory but the real thing just couldn’t live up to it.

Retrospective No. 18 Kula World

As a child I had a very special and quite possibly unique ambition. Unlike other children who wanted to be actors or footballers or firemen or an extremely multitalented combination of all three, I had a much simpler goal. I wanted to be a beach ball. Ok that might not actually have been true (the logistics of that are baffling) but how else was I to introduce Kula World one of the most indescribably odd, yet fantastically additive games released on the Playstation?

So the concept is that you are a beach ball. You can roll and bounce and do all the other things beach balls do, which means you can roll and bounce. For reasons unknown you are on a platform in the sky or space or something hunting down keys for portals to bring you to the next platform. To aid you in your quest are collectable fruit to eat and diamonds and gems because why not. I’m guessing at all this because to be honest I’m not entirely sure why I was doing any of this or indeed what was happening. There may be some dark backstory that motivates the beach ball’s actions. Perhaps it was captured by an evil psychopath and is now being put through a series of sadistic mazes until it is slowly driven insane by trippy electronic music. All of that is assuming that the beach understands what is happening to it.

Normally I hate puzzle games. I get stuck, look up the walkthrough online and cheat. I don’t have the patience for them and that’s all there is to it. Kula World was different. The game has a very shallow learning curve and plenty of levels so by the time I actually realised I wasn’t very good at it I was already hooked. I had made it a decent portion of the way through the game before I realised I might start struggling I was determined to go on. Even as the difficulty ramped up and the weird gravity defying element was introduced I was determined to persevere. There is something indescribably awesome in this game and I cannot really place my finger on why I connected to this game so strongly where others had failed.  Perhaps it was the soothing ambient music; possibly the beautiful dreamlike landscapes or maybe it was the hypnotic bouncing of the beach ball but Kula World had me hooked like no puzzle game before.

The presence of Kula World on the old Playstation demo disc certainly helped lure me in but this is one of the games I played the most in my childhood. I rented it enough times from Blockbuster to have actually bought the game which shows how bad my addiction was and how terrible I am at financial management. This is a game I would and should normally hate. Frustrating puzzles with wacky physics would normally be a recipe for a controller smashing rage meltdown but there was something in this package that kept me coming back for more. The worst part about this game (the price) is not even a concern anymore as it has now been released as a PSone classic or on mobile devices. As an adult I really think would not be able to justify recommended buying games like this for a full game price (or renting it millions of times) but for £3.49 it’s easily worth it. Compared to newer games on the market it stands up comfortably even 15 years after release. If you’ve never dreamt of being a beach ball it might be good time to start now.