Tag: Halloween 2023

Destroy All Humans (2020) Review

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Destroy all Humans! Is an action adventure game from developers Black Forest Games and it was published by THQ Nordic. This is a remake of the original game from 2005 a game I never played so this is purely a review of the remake.

It is 1950’s America and Crypto 137 has been sent to Earth to harvest Human DNA in order for the furons to reproduce as they have been rendered sterile. While on Earth 137 will also need to solve the mystery of his brothers disappearance Crypto 136.

In the game players control Crypto in a series of missions and challenges set in various open world levels.

Various weapons and abilities are available in your arsenal with simple to use upgrade system for enhancements and additional firing power, offensive weapons such as Zap o Matic and disintegrator are great for killing humans but you want to focus mostly on using the extract ability or the anal probe in order to collect Human DNA which acts as XP allowing you to gain more power and upgrades.

Psycho kenosis is encouraged throughout the game and once fully powered up you can lift and throw almost anything including tanks and vehicles, missions have bonus objectives to complete which often require the Psycho Kenosis ability in order to achieve all necessary goals.

Crypto has his own mode of transportation with his very own flying saucer, the flying saucer is a very powerful machine which is used to completely demolish areas, destroying buildings and killing everyone in your path, the saucer can also be fully upgraded making it a machine of slaughter and chaos.

The main campaign is fairly short coming in at under 10 hours but luckily there is a fair bit of side content you can do, each map has a set number of hidden collectibles to find, these are called probes and to my knowledge don’t really offer anything but bragging rights for finding them all.

there are four additional challenges race, Armageddon, rampage and adbuction

Race is a mode which has Crypto chasing down a drone which is dropping packets of data and it’s your goal to collect them all without letting the drone get too far away.

Armageddon sees your taking over the flying saucer and destroying the level it takes place in, definitely the most satisfying mode in the game especially when you have fully enhanced your weapons allowing you to wipe out buildings with ease.

Rampage is all about killing humans, fully power up your guns and slaughter everyone who gets in your way.

Finally abduction requires you to throw requested NPC models into the saucers abduction beam, for me this was the most challenging part of the game, most of the time if you did succeed it was with little time left, the path was very linear and how you succeeded had very little wiggle room leaving players to figure out the required strategy.

Visually the remake enhanced the graphics and there is no denying that, I’ve seen gameplay of the original and the models and graphics are smoother here but on the PS4 and in HD this don’t look great. This is an issue with many “remakes” where much gameplay may be changed and bugs ironed out but to save on finances valuable time, visuals and audio simply get enhancements and in modern times this really shows.

Now while graphics are the least important part of what makes a game great, you cannot deny how much appreciation can be given to gorgeous visuals and even though we didn’t get it here I do hope one day we get a destroy all humans 3 (as a reboot) which pushes the series to its full potential.

The music didn’t change in this remake and for good reason, the original soundtrack is perfectly crafted with a slower style and the use of the pheromone to give the music vibes similar to those of old Sci-Fi movies from the 50’s, I wouldn’t say the soundtrack is particularly memorable but it truly is made for a game like this and helps to bring much of the personality to the setting.

Destroy all Humans 2020 is a lot of fun but definitely has its issues, while the majority of my playthrough was positive I would definitely point out the games biggest flaw…age. Its pretty obvious from the get go that this is a remaster of a much older video game, the game can get fairly repetitive it follows a formula and repeats throughout which works well enough but I found it difficult to sink longer play sessions into this because of that.

Overall my experience here was pretty damn good and I highly recommend checking the game out, its an easy platinum on PlayStation and is included as part of the premium tier of PS Plus so check it out and let me know what you think and if you played the original game back in the day does this remake hold up? I would love to know your thoughts

6.7/10

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Night of the Living Dead (1968) Review

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Welcome to the first of our Halloween reviews, we are kick starting 2023 with George.A.Romero’s cult classic Night of the Living Dead.

Filmed on a tiny budget of $100,000 this film is often credited for creating the modern flesh eating zombie.

In the film 7 people hiding in an abandoned farm house have to work together in order to survive the night with very little hope of escaping the carnivorous corpses.

Due to the tight budget Romero and his crew needed to create their own film company Image Ten in order to have a studio to release the movie. Many of the cast members on the film were known for primarily performing in television commercials and hadn’t yet had a big break in the industry.

I think the best way to review this film is to discuss what it did to change cinema, the casting is pretty mediocre in my opinion no one really stood out but never did a bad a job I think a lot of the corny or over the top acting was down to the main experiences before this being TV and advertising.

A huge and at the time controversial casting choice was to have a man of dark skin to play the lead role, the United States while much more accepting of coloured persons had not began to understand its past misunderstandings. In fact it was only just over 10 years prior this films release that Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus. Night of the Living Dead stands out in history as the first horror film ever to give its lead role to a person of colour, when asked about this choice Romero simply states “Jones was the best actor we met to play Ben”. A big win not only for Duane Jones (Actor) but the African American community.

The biggest controversy at the time was how scary this film actually was, back in 1968 we still didn’t have a rating system so  you could watch any film now matter what your age was.

This meant that a lot of children went to see the movie and it had some backlash from critics due to the amount of gore, of course these days calling this film graphic is laughable but back in 1968 this was rather disturbing to say the least.

The film holds its legacy not only for its influence on the film industry but the horror genre in general.

Zombies had been in media long before this but they were more controlled by Voodoo and black magic.

Romero created the flesh eating walking dead zombies to that we see today, while this film definitely is unique as we don’t see rotting corpses and the undead show signs of intelligence by being able to pick up and use weapons, some major tropes were born from this including eating flesh, being killed by destroying the brain and bitten persons coming back as zombies.

Night of the Living Dead is one of the most influential films ever made and it is well worth watching just to appreciate everything it managed to achieve on such a tight budget but if is far from perfect, I find a lot of the acting is over done and almost comedic with how over the top it can be, Barbara is the best example of this she is so annoying and generally a bad directors decision making her a damsel in distress and completely useless when we could have had a much more respectfully represented female lead.

The ending is tragic and definitely leaves a depressing tone on who ever sees it but I think it works well enough and is pretty shocking I remember the first time I seen it and I honestly could not believe what I had just witnessed, I left with so many emotions and I didn’t know how to feel about it but I’ll tell you one thing to this day it has always stuck with me and is such a important part of this film and something that really makes it stand out.

Night of the Living Dead may not be the perfect movie and perhaps it hasn’t aged all too well compared to other higher budget movies of the time but it has definitely made such a massive impact on the horror genre that it holds a legendary status and is well worth watching at least once to get a true appreciation for what it has given us.

If you would like to help support the website please use the donation button at the top of the page, your donations will help to improve the website by allowing me to afford products to review and to be able to execute any costly updates and changes, any amount in donations are welcome.

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Want me to review a specific game/movie/product or do you have a general question you would like me to answer? if so please email me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com