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Destroy all Humans! Path of the Furon Review for Xbox 360

Destroy all Humans! Path of the Furon Review for Xbox 360

The Wrong Path

As a series transitions from one generation of consoles to the next, fans’ expectations inevitably increase, and rightfully so. With more powerful hardware comes the opportunity for better graphics, brighter A.I., more elaborate level design, and innovation. While not every franchise needs to reinvent the wheel every time they debut on a new generation of consoles, it should at least be possible to maintain the same level of quality as its predecessors on weaker hardware. Sadly, this is where Crypto’s latest outing falters, seeming to be more of a step backward than forward for the Destroy All Humans series.

Destroy all Humans! Path of the Furon screenshot

As with the previous titles in the series, Path of the Furon has Crypto tackling a new era in human history. This time around it’s the seventies, which unfortunately isn’t as interesting a backdrop as either the fifties or sixties were. Expect to hear plenty of era-specific jokes including constant Watergate references, high gas price mentions, and even some semi-comical encounters with popular celebrities of the time. However, to keep from having lawsuit issues and to make the humor a bit more tongue in cheek, these icons have seen name changes although their true identities are made blatantly apparent. A good example is a run in with Sammy and Faire, a clear portrayal of Sonny and Cher. Not only do the characters look uncannily similar to their real world counterparts, the dialogue also feels the need to drop extra hints to their true identity with phrases like gypsies, tramps, and thieves being awkwardly forced into your conversations.

Much like this game’s desperate attempts to infuse comedy into every line of dialogue and situation, the graphics are also very hit and miss. The visual effects provided by Crypto’s extensive handheld and UFO-based arsenals are fairly notable. Melting palm trees with your death ray, electrocuting pedestrians until their heads pop, creating a black hole that continually sucks nearby humans and automobiles into the void, and blowing up vehicles are all well done and fun to watch. Unfortunately, the rest of the game’s presentation is so bad that it’s hard to enjoy these small gems of visual competence.

When you boot up Path of the Furon for the first time you may think you’ve forgotten to put on your glasses for the day or perhaps need to get your eyes examined to get a new pair. Anything that is more than about ten to twenty feet away from you is blurry to the point of being virtually indistinguishable. As you attempt to walk towards this blurry haze; buildings, vehicles, pedestrians, and various other objects will constantly pop into existence from out of nowhere. Some objects will even completely fail to load, leaving only an invisible barrier where an object should be and a lot of head scratching.

Destroy all Humans! Path of the Furon screenshot

Making matters worse, this horrible visual glitch can also adversely affect your missions. In one particular UFO mission that I played, one of my objectives was to destroy twelve cargo crates on a barge. Sounds simple enough right, that is at least until I realized that only eleven of the crates actually loaded. There was no way to destroy the twelfth phantom crate, so I actually had to retry the mission from my last checkpoint. Again the twelfth crate didn’t appear, but I think the game just took pity on my situation and somehow registered that the phantom crate had been destroyed so that I could proceed.

These kinds of occurrences are inexcusable and unfortunate but, sadly, aren’t the only aspects of Path of the Furon that exude the feeling of being completely unfinished. Besides the underwhelming graphics and these frequent loading glitches, players are also treated to dramatic dips in framerate, teleporting enemies, getting stuck in the environment (usually the ground), missing sound effects, cut off dialogue sequences, and even misspellings in the in-game text. Seriously, did no one read through the text in this game before it shipped? Because of these abundant issues, Path of the Furon feels very shoddily put together and rushed to the market, which is a real shame for all the Destroy All Human fans who have been waiting patiently for Crypto’s current generation debut.

Destroy all Humans! Path of the Furon screenshot

However, buried beneath Path of the Furon’s plethora of problems lays the same Destroy All Humans experience that one would expect. Players will once again take to the air in a suped-up UFO, blasting enemies and abducting locals. New UFO landing sites will once again require you to perform a small task for Arkvoodle in exchange for the right to use them. Crypto can still complete an abundant supply of humor-infused missions while gaining new weapons and powers to help him along the way. Collecting human brain stems still provides Crypto with Furon DNA that can be used to further upgrade his tools of destruction.

Destroy all Humans! Path of the Furon screenshot

While the heavy usage of the words “still” and “again” in my descriptions of the gameplay may seem repetitive, it is actually quite appropriate because this game doesn’t really try anything new. Sure, there may be a few new weapons and abilities, but they do little to distract players from the fact that all of the missions in the game severely lack variety and some even feel like they were extracted directly from previous games in the series: destroy X number of buildings/objects using your UFO; keep character X safe until a timer runs out; read this person’s thoughts and assume that character’s body to proceed, etc. and repeat endlessly.

Even the game’s multiplayer has taken a big step backward. Gone is the ability to have a second player help you through the game’s story. In its stead are three fairly lame mini-games that you’ll likely not want to play more than once or twice each. One has you and a friend in separate UFOs trying to hang onto an abductee to fill an onscreen meter. Another consists of using Crypto’s psychokinetic power to grab and hurl pedestrians into a rotating brain harvesting machine. The only one that might provide the slightest amount of fun and replayability is called Ion Soccer. Here you and your opponent use the Ion Detonator to direct a sphere into goals to score points. This mode can be entertaining but since there is no real variety to it, it also fails to keep you interested past the first few matches.

In the end, Path of the Furon fails to raise the bar for the Destroy All Humans franchise, even taking some dramatic steps backward. While new weapons like the Venus Human Trap and new powers such as the ability to freeze time can be useful and amusing, even they can’t disguise the repetitive and uninspired nature of the game’s missions. Players can no longer play through the story side by side, instead getting three halfhearted mini-games to ignore after only a few matches. Add in some fairly lackluster graphics, numerous glitches, and recurring framerate issues and Path of the Furon becomes even less fun to play than the series’ previous iterations. If you absolutely need a new Crypto game to play, then rent Path of the Furon. Otherwise, you may just want to revisit one of his previous exploits.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 1.9 Graphics
This game doesn’t look too dissimilar to its predecessors on the last generation of consoles. That is, except for all of the glitches and framerate issues that continually plague the entire experience. 3.7 Control
The game controls fairly well except for some problems that arise when trying to aim at specific enemies. 4.0 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The original voice actors are back and continue to do a great job. 2.2 Play Value
Repetitive and uninspired missions abound as do glitches that can make completing missions more difficult or even impossible without reloading. The lack of a co-op mode for the campaign is also a huge letdown. 2.2 Overall Rating – Poor
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • Devastating mental abilities: Embark on the Path of Enlightenment to learn devastating new mental powers from an ancient alien Kung-Fu master. Freeze time and manipulate the world around you with your psychokinetic abilities, hypnotize humans to do your bidding, or snatch their bodies to mingle with the locals.
  • Unworldly arsenal: Battle enemies with a devastating arsenal of alien weaponry. Old favorites like the Zap-O-Matic and Anal Probe are back with next-gen upgrades, while new weapons like the Black Hole Gun and the Venus Human Trap let you wreak havoc in new and exciting ways.
  • Next-gen UFO: Tight handling, smooth ride, fine Corinthian leather, and lots of guns is how Crypto rolls. Take to the skies and wreak havoc from above with new weapons like the Plasma Cannon and the Tornadotron, or engage in air-to-air combat with the new “fire-and-fugetaboutit” Seeker Drones.
  • High-fidelity destruction: Manipulate or destroy anything in the world. Create disaster movie-level destruction with advanced multi-stage destruction capabilities, collateral damage, chain reactions, and advanced physics. Lay waste to entire cities, creating panic in the streets.
  • Open-world play: Go anywhere at any time in an open world mission structure. Explore five huge open environments without ever leaving the game world, or take on a variety of side missions and mini-games.
  • Multiplayer modes: Destroy All Humans together through a variety of co-op and adversarial multiplayer modes.
  • Screen Resolution: Up to 1080i (Standard HDTV).

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