Score
Gameplay:	9
Graphics:	6
Sound:	9
FunFactor:	6
PlasmaFactor:	4
Overall:	6.8

Destroy All Humans! Big Willy Unleashed Review
April 21, 2008 by Jeffery Collins

Krypto is back for another Destroy All Humans adventure, this time for the Wii. Destroy All Humans! Big Willy Unleashed follows Krypto as he defends the Big Willy fast food chain in the 1970's. Let’s take a look at the great points about the game, and the many flaws that go with them.

Gameplay

The gameplay in Destroy All Humans: Big Willy’s Revenge is quite different from the previous versions. The main reason is the new controls. At first, I was disgusted with how, for lack of a better term, dirty the controls were. On foot, the Wii mote aims the weapons and the nunchuk moves Krypto. The aim does not work very well because the motion sensitivity is horribly high. The rate at which the player turns is slow as well. However, after messing with the options and getting the hang of things, it turned out to not be so bad.

When in the UFO, the controls take on a new direction. Tilt control is key here as tilting to the left and right turns the UFO and tilting forwards and backwards raises and lowers it respectively. This actually turned out to be a nifty way of doing things, but it wasn’t quite perfected by the developers as aiming weapons seemed to lack much flow in the controls. Driving the mech, Big Willy, was pretty decent as far as the controls are concerned. The weapons, however, seemed to not be planned out too well just.

Don’t get me wrong, Big Willy’s weapons will awe anyone watching you play because they are juvenile and hilarious at first. The problem is, with the exception of a few missions, you can do plenty more carnage and destruction on foot because doing anything in Big Willy is far too difficult.

The weapons on foot are great. Like the previous games, Krypto starts with the zap-o-ray lightning gun. This gun is basic and can only really be used to kill a few people. Throughout the game, you unlock more weapons like the disintegrator gun and the ion detonator, but my two favorite guns have to be the zombie gun and the lightning balls. The zombie gun is just that, a gun that turns your victims into zombies. The zombies then proceed to kill anyone near them. It leads to great times indeed. The Lightning ball gun is similar to the sap-o-ray except it shoots out balls into the air that shock anyone near them, rendering them useless until they die or the gun runs out. This makes for great ways to immobilize enemies when Krypto needs to get somewhere fast.

The actual storyline is definitely original. It takes place 20 years after the first game, in the 70s. Pox has started a fast food chain called Big Willy’s (which looks remarkably like Big Boy’s). The restaurant’s key ingredient is human bodies ground up like beef. Colonel Cluckin’, basically KFC, found out about this and is trying to shut down the competition while at the same time stealing the idea. The game’s story is ridiculous, but fun at the same time. Doing mission after mission of crazy tasks, even if something might seem slightly repetitive, is different and still fun.

Graphics

The graphics are lacking to say the least. Although it is designed to look cartoony, it looks bad compared to the previous games in the series. In the last zone, Vietmahl, when flying around in a UFO, the entire game lags for about 5 seconds at a time. It creates flaws in the gameplay. Of course this is very rare, but at the same time, it can hurt in dire situations.

Sound

The vocals are what makes Destroy All Humans what it is. Conversations between Pox and Krypto, whose voice sounds strangely like Jack Nicholson’s, consists of puns about Pox’s Big Willy and other juvenile humor. The great thing about Big Willy Unleashed is that the characters know they are in a video game. At one point Pox talks about “our last video game adventure” and “another hole in the plot,” I found that to be funny and reassuring that the writers understand the leaps in the plot that they make. All of this added on top of a well done soundtrack makes for great ear candy.

PlasmaFactor

The PlasmaFactor in Destroy All Humans is definitely the multiplayer aspects. As soon as I heard that Destroy All Humans would be multiplayer this time, I got excited as I am a fan of the old games. There are 4 multiplayer modes to choose from and they’re all quite lame. You would think that competitive multiplayer would include a who gets the most kills mode, but all it has is a who controls the most beacons, which trust me, is not such a good time.

Conclusion

Although Destroy All Humans has a solid single player mode, it only lasts about 6 hours and 10 to unlock everything. With no replay value and garbage multiplayer, this game is a rental in my books. It is definitely enjoyable for the 6 hours or so it takes to beat the game, but after that it just collects dust on the shelf.