Destroy All Humans!

This was on sale on PS4 (so is the sequel) for like $4 so I grabbed it. I remember my little bro playing this when he was a kid but I didn't think much of it back then. It's actually really unique and funny.

So you play as this alien and basically go around pretty big maps killing people and harvesting their DNA, which also acts as upgrade currency. There are various mission goals as well of course.

This video does a great job explaining it.


It doesn't go too much into actual gameplay mechanics, but you can pick up people and objects with your mind and toss them, get in your saucer and destroy buildings, use a hologram to disguise yourself as whoever you're looking at, kill and harvest DNA, or harvest it out of live targets, hypnotize people, read minds, and just cause chaos for fun.

There's a GTA-like alert system, though pretty basic. Drawing attention summons police cars and eventually, military. You can lower this by disguising yourself or just getting away. The weapons are hilarious. There's an anal probe gun, and the results are RIDICULOUS.

After you've done everything in a stage, you can free roam and torment the populace, or do sidequests that appear, which are usually various tasks like a race around the map, kill a certain number of people, etc.

There are collectibles around the map too, some of them are a bit hard to find due to the map size. One thing that annoys me is that you can't land the saucer anywhere you want. It has a fixed location out of sight from populated areas, usually on the edge of the map. I use it to quickly observe the map and spot the drone collectibles, but then have to go all the way back to the landing point.

That's all for now. Will post some more thoughts when I'm done.

No matter the game, I waste more of my play time messing with mechanics than actually progressing.

Prepare for some serious rambling on Transformers and this. I'll be making some comparisons, though not for saying one game or mechanic is better than the other, rather just out of interest.

This game feels very similar to Transformers Armada (the 2004 PS2 one with the mini-cons), in that both have open maps, and the drones/mini-con collectibles are somewhat similar in the way they're hidden around the map. It really reminded me of searching TF's huge maps for Mini-Cons and Data-Cons.

Your default weapon, the Zapper, shoots a beam of electricity. You hold the button to maintain the beam until the meter runs out. It recharges near instantly and you can use it even if it isn't full.

This type of meter is how all the mini-cons work in TF, though there's more to it in that. The usage of the meter depends on the weapon and mini-con combo you have equipped. Some colors mean you get bonuses like more usages and faster recharge. Some weapons work like the Zapper, that is, a beam that constantly drains the longer you hold the button down, while some are single shots that consume a portion of the meter (or all/most of it depending on the power level).

Back to the Zapper, with an upgrade, it functions exactly like a mini-con called Sparkjump. Sparkjump fires a beam of electricity that can connect to nearby enemies. The big difference is the Zapper is slightly more multi-purpose, in that it actually stuns the enemies and puts them in this unique electrified animation (which is pretty funny because of how they squeal), holds them in place, and with the upgrade I mentioned, arcs to nearby enemies. You can fire it in short bursts and it cancels whatever the enemy was doing.

Sparkjump doesn't cause any stun, allowing the enemies to continue moving and attacking as normal. It has far more range and doesn't require an upgrade (though there is a separate Mini-Con that is a more powerful version).

Interestingly, DAH!'s other weapons don't run on the same usage mechanics. The Anal Probe is a charge up weapon. TF has these too, only you drain energy the longer you charge. In both games, you can release partial charges for different results.

AP is a really interesting weapon. First I'll talk about how it triggers its effects. It seems each enemy has a different threshold. When activated, they run away holding their asses and shitting themselves. There are two possibilities. If you hit them with a max charge, they run a few steps then their heads explode.

If you just hit with partial charges, they'll run like mentioned above, but will stop after a while and go back to normal. You can fire uncharged or partially charged shots which cause a small hitstun.

About the threshold, take this example. I hit a police officer with 1 uncharged shot, he takes a hit stun and that's it. But if I hit them with 9 uncharged shots, the probe kicks in and they run off. 2 roughly half charged shots got the same result. Full charge is instant for most enemies I've come across, though the Men In Black type take 3 full charges. It seems each enemy has a hidden defense stat with this weapon, that must be broken down.

When you trigger the probe with uncharged shots (so they won't die) after they stop running, a single uncharged shot triggers it again. At first, I thought it must mean once you break down whatever hidden stat they have regarding this weapon, they have no resistance and any level of charge will trigger AP, but then I found it doesn't work with every person.

I'm playing as I type this and just after writing the above, I realized that it doesn't do this on civilians. Oh yeah, I've been referring to them as enemies throughout this post, but most are just normal people walking around, and serve the purpose of noticing you and drawing police/military/agent attention, harvesting DNA from, or copying for disguises.

So, the instant version after a successful, non fatal AP only works on actual enemies who can fight back. So far I've documented farmers with shotguns, police officers, soldiers, and agents.

This instant version isn't very useful as it still doesn't kill them. I can't think of any reason not to go with a full charge. You don't lose any mobility while charging, so you might as well do it. I'm open to finding some new use though.

One other interesting attribute is once you've probed someone, and they go running off, nearby enemies will be distracting and stare at the probed person. So overall, it stuns, incapacitates (in that they can't act other than running away), and causes a distraction that essentially freezes other enemies.

The third weapon I have is the Disintegrator. This is quite powerful, though a more basic weapon than the other two. It fires basic energy shots, and kills even the tougher guys in a few shots. There are some downsides though.

It runs on ammo. You can replenish this with pickups littered around the map.
The second downside isn't that bad, but what happens is when you kill with it, the enemy, as the name of the gun implies, disintegrates, meaning you don't get any DNA.
Thirdly, enemies don't take any hit stun, so the tougher guys can be firing back while you're trying to land shots.

Basically functions like your standard TF blaster. The enemies in that game don't take hit stun from blasters either.

I know there's one more weapon, some kind of bomb. Should be interesting. My weapons still have upgrades to get I think, but the game gives them to you as you progress, so you can't just upgrade what you want when you want.

I'll talk about the Psychokinesis later and it's similarities to TF's Tractor Beam.

Still not finished but I've done quite a few more levels. They've really upped the enemy capability.

At first, the toughest things that could show up on max alert were agents and tanks. Agents have alien weapons and can dodge roll now and then.

Now there are giant robots and agents with PK powers. The agents have some kind of device that disables your hologram disguise if you're in range for too long. There are also these EMP devices that go off when you're near them which disable your jetpack, weapons and hologram.

The EMP thing is quite similar to TF. In TF there are enemies with EMP missiles that disable your weapons and it felt exactly the same. This horrible feeling of uselessness as you try to get clear of them while a group is bombing you.

Oh yeah, I got that bomb weapon. It's called Ion Detonator. This fires a bomb that you can detonate by pressing the shoot button again. The longer you hold the button, the further it goes. It can rebound off of stuff too.

It causes a nice AoE that disintegrates humans and blows away most vehicles easily. The fire rate is slow because you can't fire another bomb until you've detonated the previous one. Feels very heavy in the way it flies kind of slowly through the air. You won't be able to harvest DNA due to this weapon not leaving bodies behind.

Feels very similar to TF's grenade launcher (though that fires continuously) but in effect would be closer to the proximity mine. Both can be rapid fired though the proximity mine feels quite weighty. It doesn't have a high arc and doesn't travel far even when you aim higher.

What else?
I've got some more upgrades. My Zapper is stronger and links to 4 targets now.

Anal Probe doesn't get upgrades. I wonder why? Maybe because it's a charge weapon? But it's useless on tougher enemies who require multiple shots. On the other hand it's the only weapon that can harvest DNA.

I'll talk about that for a minute. By harvesting, I mean their heads explode and their brains pop out.
You have two options for doing this, Extract and full charge AP.

When you lock on to someone, you get a few options. PK, Hypnosis, extract, and scan. All of these except for scan, use the Concentration meter.

You can extract on living or dead humans. Mashing the button makes it happen faster. This is a mid range move where Crypto raises his hand and this red energy travels to the target.

With AP, as I've mentioned earlier, they run a few steps then their heads explode.

There are varying degrees of DNA quality though and I think it is an AP only ability. A brain can be green, purple or red. Red is rare and is worth 100 DNA. Green is 25 and purple is 10. I've gotten a 50 before but forgot the color. I think it was orange or yellow.

I never get these better ones from Extract. The description of AP says a full charge yields high quality DNA but it doesn't always work. It must just be an RNG thing.

The Disintegrator got a nice upgrade. Now it's a double shot. I have access to the third upgrade, triple shot too but don't have enough DNA. I really need to revisit some levels and gather drones (75 DNA each and each stage has 20+) and do some sidequests. I also want to test the AP DNA yield rate.

Most of my other upgrades are ammo capacity.
I just remembered I haven't talked about the saucer in detail yet. This has its own set of weapons

I might make some videos on how AP actually works. Really odd how much it has to it regarding triggering its effect. Still need to talk about PK. Really fun ability.

Damn that's some serious rambling.

I haven't touched this for a while because not long after I posted this stuff I broke my phone which had tons of notes on it.

Good thing I recorded a lot of it here, but there is still a lot I'm missing.

I want to get hold of the Japanese version to see if it's censored in any way. I seriously doubt heads will explode so will be interesting to see what happens instead.

This is still on hold because of MHW. I am looking for a Japanese version though.

Remake.


Interesting. They've removed having concentration in favor of a disguise time limit which I don't like. What if I don't want to change? My guess is people whined about having to often replenish their meter.

The dash is a good addition but the enemies will have to be tougher because the mobility you get is too good.

I wonder if the Anal Probe will be censored?

Got the remake. Looking forward to seeing how everything works compared to the original.

By all means, show off your tech at leisure (I'll give it a gander in time).

Not sure why, but just couldn't get into this remake. Will trade it in.

DAH 1 and 2 were some of my favorite ps2 games when I was a kid. I also found myself put off by the remake for some reason. Anyway, if you enjoyed these games I'd recommend the first Mercenaries (it's backwards compatible on Xbone I believe). It's made by the same team, and has similar small but dense open-world gameplay with lots of toys to play with. It's pretty drab in comparison to DAH, so if you enjoyed that game's more bonkers and tongue-in-cheek nature you might find Mercenaries a bit dull. Still, might be worth giving a go.