Crypto's latest outing requires patience or outright masochism.
Sandblast should be ashamed of themselves. They get the original key voices and a more powerful platform to work with and they release a game plagued by erorrs, pop-in and men skating away in fear standing on a single foot.
Cars appear in the central field of view rather than spawning either on the sides of the screen or out of sight. Car will often spawn on top of others or tilted at a jaunty angle until the player comes into close range. Animation for crowds glitch regularly and people stuck in static poses levitate away from you even at close range. A headless man stuck to the side of a building in his 'walk' animation. People regularly exit cars unharmed after said car has been blown up and tossed into the air. Crypto's wait animations use his head as a binding point rather than his feet. Instead of crouching his legs are drawn up above the ground rather than moving his body closer to it. This also assumes Crypto is even in direct contact with the ground... more often than not he hovers an inch or two above it.
While usually a blessing due to the ensuing chaos, Crypto is blissfully apart from his surroundings. People will die when casually clipped by a slow-moving vehicle yet one flung at high velocity into Crypto's face does absolutely nothing. He is never affected by inclines and sadly cannot use his body weight to affect objects. This means no playing seesaw with abducted cars or rolling around on top of boulders like a rejected scene from Indiana Jones. The only things which actually affect our plucky little alien are bodies of water (which only force a respawn onto land) and enemy munitions. Given his general dislike of water it's bizarre that both of his bases of operation early in the game possess swimming pools very close to saucer spots.
The touted ability to damage buildings is total garbage. Damage is purely a cosmetic applique and buildings will go down in a canned collapsing animation to leave a little debris pile. Signs on buildings are normally not tied to a building's damage and will remain up even after the structure is reduced to dust. Damage will persist while the current landing site is being played but those industrious workmen will have everything back to normal when you either leave the area or stop playing. This is particularly odd in regards to Paradiso as story events led to a number of important buildings being leveled. For some strange reason Crypto is unable to destroy gas stations. Leveling buildings is a-okay but filling stations are God's children and remain untouched by filthy alien incendiary devices.
Despite being an amatuer production and having all the charm of a demented leper there is still some enjoyment to be had. Most of it stems from the game's problems than actual quality gameplay which is disturbing. While Crypto's weapons are even less powerful than the original loadout in the original Destroy All Humans there is one ultimate on-foot superweapon- balls. The globe statue in Sunnywood is nigh-on indestructible, explodes vehicles upon contact or just be being in the vicinity and people's heads explode several seconds after it passes through them. It's very entertaining to watch people's heads sequentially explode one after another in a bizarre delayed-death sequence.
The game's appeal is analogous to the trainwreck scenario- it's terrible but you are still compelled to watch and see what chaos ensues. Anyone who has paid full-price has doubtless felt cheated but it has some appeal for the masochist who can pick it up cheaply. Just be aware of its problems ahead of time and be prepared to have missions bug out from time to time which will require reloading. This is a game very much in the same quality range as Bubsy 3D. Be aware or just beware.