Developer: Black Forest Games
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Genre: Open-World Shooter
Reviewed On: PlayStation 5
Also Available For: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed opens with a disclaimer:
Humans of planet Earth, be advised: While the visual experience has been upgraded, the content and historical record of the original invasion of the Furons remains a near-identical clone. The Furon linguistic and cultural experience remains unaltered. The story, words, and images contained within may be shocking to the modern human brain!
2020’s remake of the first Destroy All Humans! had a similar block of text upon starting the game, and while it’s true that some of the jokes were a touch off-color, I didn’t find anything in it to be truly upsetting.
Not so with the follow-up.
Things start promisingly: In contrast to the first game which sees players saucer-hopping across the united states as a classic Gray-type alien on a tour of mayhem, Destroy All Humans 2! sends the player across the globe. The first two regions invaded are San Francisco and London – or clear analogs thereof, at least – which seem to me to be perfectly fair game for mockery. There’s plenty you can make fun of about the United States and Britain and still be punching up, so no harm, no foul.
The problem arose when I reached the third area, which is not-Japan.
Perhaps, dear reader, you have already guessed the issue. Perhaps, like me, your hackles immediately raised upon hearing about a depiction of Japan in a remaster of a satirically-toned game from 2006. Unfortunately, that gut instinct is completely correct: it’s rough. In fact, it made me cringe so hard that I physically could not bring myself to start the application back up and keep playing. I would think about going back and powering through that part of the game, just to finish the game, I would hover over the application icon on my ps5, but I just could not hit the start button.
Wind thus taken out of my sails, you can imagine how hard it becomes to recommend the game even if I were to discuss the game’s merits (or lack thereof), racism notwithstanding. I could talk about the slightly dull open-world gameplay which feels empty and a bit lifeless compared to its genre descendants, or the way its missions feel a bit repetitive even if the gunplay itself is entertaining, or how it crashed more and more often the further in I got – but, to be blunt, the racism isn’t something that’s should be looked past, regardless of it being a product of its time (and nevermind that said time is not even 20 years ago!).
In the interest of not belaboring the point, I’ll just say this: disclaimer regarding the unsavory content of 2006-era writing or no, Destroy All Humans! 2 is a game that probably should have been left in 2006.