Destroy All Humans: Path of the Furon (3/10)

[Chardok]

3/10 - this also includes 2 bonus points I'm giving because with a score this low, and a game this shitty, it doesn't matter.


Hey - here's a winning formula for all you would-be game designers out there who want to tighten up the graphics on level 3: Take a good game, fuck it up, and sell it as a sequel, people will then buy it, thinking that it's going to be good like the first game, and you will make money while it only costs 17.00 USD to make! WIN!

I loved Destroy All Humans. The FIRST ONE. Even the second one I rather enjoyed, then there was Big Willy Unleashed, which does not exist. No really. Enter Path of the furon, which, predictably takes place in the 70's. I won't spoil the plot for you all, mainly because you know what the plot is already. A Lot of the comedic references in the game are probably lost on me, probably because the 70's were uninteresting, boring, and stupid, and disco music sucks. Nevertheless, there's loads of old, campy, kung-fu movie action and....well, that's the end of the good things about this game.

It's like they actually did shit to actively fuck it up. I'm not even a little bit joking. THEY TRIED TO SCREW THIS GAME UP. And they succeeded brilliantly. First - for a next-gen-only game, the graphics are unforgiveably ba...no. No, no, no, if this game were released on PS2/XBox/GC, They would be unforgivably bad. Lets pretend there's a human, running away from you, an alien with a Zap-o-matic. Now, logic dictates that if that human, say, ran 30 feet from you and was still running away, his arms and legs would be moving. Well, in thie magical world of levitation and flying saucers and disco music, when people are 30 feet + away from you, they simply stop moving their arms and legs, frozen in whatever position they obtained the magical distance, and they continue to sliiiiiiiiiiide away. That's right, ALL ANIMATION OF THE CHARACTER MODELS STOP. this also applies with the saucer. As you look down on the people below, they're skittering about as if the world is a giant ice-rink. no movement whatsoever, yet they slide to and fro, futilely trying to avoid your flaming death-ray.

This magical phenomenon also applies to cars, whose wheels simply stop animating at the magical 30 foot distance and go from roundish, jaggy lines for wheels to....OCTAGONS. I'm not even a little bit joking. At 30 feet, the wheel *POP* turn into octagons and stop moving. This also applies to tanks, EVEN IN CUTSCENES. a battalion of tanks rolls in, intent on destroying Crypto - on MAGICAL, NON MOVING TANK TREADS.

I've spent a lot of time on this so lets just make the rest short and sweet. While playing through this game, I fell through the map no less than 7 times. FELL THROUGH THE MAP. and got stuck up to my waist in the map no less that (Wait for it) 24 TIMES, the majority of which was on the last level.

Add to that the fact that it's ludicrously easy to beat the game, the shit loading times, etc. etc. etc., and you've got one crappy, crappy game. The dialogue between Crypto and orthopox was the only ONLY good thing about DAH, and I got the feeling that a lot of it was ad-libbed because no company who produces such a 100% shitball game like this could possibly be bothered to come up with clever dialogue.

In the end, I watched as the credits rolled and discovered that THQ hired an outside vendor to do it's quality testing in addtion to it's in-house quality assurance people - and that company needs to be immediately fired, along with every single person who put their greasy paws on my beloved franchise. THQ should pay a REAL developer to take this game off their hands so they can no longer fuck it up, because no one in their right mind would dare pay THEM for it, and hopefully, HOPEFULLY someone awesome will come along to fix this disasterous mess.

(I'm looking at you, pandemic - GO GET YOUR GAME BACK, PLEASE)

[CaptHawkeye]

I remember looking at a preview of the game a month or so ago and it looked virtually unplayable. Their were graphical glitches, jaggies, physics errors, and generally just stupid shit smeared everywhere. I actually kind-of liked the first DaH.

It's interesting to watch Pandemic quickly go from being a mediocre studio to a shitty one. Conveniently around the time they partnered with EA. They were really excited about working with EA too. Pandemic was pretty sure EA was going to give them lots of money and resources to develop games with, despite their reputation for doing just the opposite!

[Starglider]

On the subject of awful games, I recently bought 'Emergency Heroes' for the Wii (I actually have a 360, but my wife bought a Wii). Obviously it was second hand and very cheap.

It's unusual because it's an awful game that is still somehow compelling. Visually, the designers set out to achieve a specific thing, and they achieved it very well. Their goal was to exactly replicate the look and feel of those horrible cheaply-made faux-Anime childrens cartoons that profilerated in the US at the turn of the millenium - and they did. The game world is pretty much exactly what 'Grand Theft Auto' would be like if you set it in San Angeles (from Demolition Man) - but before Stallone and co showed up. Everything is bright and shiny glass and steel and no one ever curses or gets hurt and the criminals you have to apprehend act like naughty kids.

Of course you're supposed to buy this game if you're a parent with only a vague knowledge of video games who needs a wholesome substitute when your 12 year old sprog asks for a copy of GTA. I bought it because the multiplayer mode looked like it would be amusing when drunk. Yet somehow I am compelled to work through the single player game. The controls are absolutely attrotious, the physics laughable - yet this does raise the difficultly from 'beginner' to 'tricky' and for some bizarre reason I am actually treating this as a challenge rather than a horrible pile of flaws. Maybe it's the spikey haired anime girl who pops up and shouts some variation on 'you're awesome hero!!!" every time I do anything other than drive in a straight line. Am I that shallow? It would seem so.

Anyway I highly recommend this game as a Christmas present for your sister's irritating brat of a kid. On that note, hopefully my sister will have some kids in the near future so I can get rid of it.

[Chardok]

I remember looking at a preview of the game a month or so ago and it looked virtually unplayable. Their were graphical glitches, jaggies, physics errors, and generally just stupid shit smeared everywhere. I actually kind-of liked the first DaH.

It's interesting to watch Pandemic quickly go from being a mediocre studio to a shitty one. Conveniently around the time they partnered with EA. They were really excited about working with EA too. Pandemic was pretty sure EA was going to give them lots of money and resources to develop games with, despite their reputation for doing just the opposite!

That's the weird thing - Pandemic had nothing to do with this iteration of DAH - but they DID do DAH 1 - This was a solely THQ venture and it's pure crap.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

About what I expected...

I thought the first was ok, if only because, you know, unquenchable blood lust and cheese...

The second shed a few good features, replacing them with cheap knock offs... (Non-infinate jet pack, 'possession' instead of the holobob [IIRC] to name a few.) It added a little to the saucer... but there were some serious issues in and off it self.

Talked with one of the guys at my game store about BWU, and he confrimed that it was exactly as bad as it looked...

So, the DAH! IP crashed and burned, and now the corpse is twitching in a hideously amusing way...

[Bradbury]

To put it in perspective, THQ laid off almost the entire staff a few months before the game even finished and then effectively closed the studio a couple months later. The pre-layoff game wasn't that great, but the post-layoff 'optimization' pretty much destroyed any possibility of the game playing somewhat decent.

Though, for a 360 game that was marked down from $60 to $40 months before it even released, I wouldn't expect much anyway.