Release Date: February 25th, 2008

The Game

Taking over the human race can be a tough gig, especially for an alien. It’s not always as easy as stealing brain stems and calling it a night, after all, what do you do with all the bodies? In the vein of Mars Attacks! and countless other B movies, Destroy All Humans: Big Willy Unleashed is the latest adventure in the alien-rampage series. While it does have a certain charm, witty writing and human-demolishing gameplay just isn’t enough to save Big Willy Unleashed from its larger problems.

Your favorite alien duo, Crypto and Pox, are back! Set a decade after the events of Destroy All Humans 2, we now find the pair in the 1970s, complete with all the stereotypes and cultural references that you can imagine. They have devised an ingenious plan for world domination: feed the human race to itself. Pox owns the Big Willy restaurant chain and serves human meat to the populace, slowly killing everyone with junk food. The Big Willy chain has become so popular that it is reaching its 500th opening!

However, we all know the restaurant business is cutthroat. Big Willy’s rival Colonel Kluckin wants nothing more than to shut them down. He has discovered their secret ingredient and sent a human activist named Patty Wurst to raise public awareness about their insidious plan. Crypto’s not having it, and is willing to stop the threat by any means necessary.

The Gameplay

Big Willy Unleashed employs an open world design where you are free to roam around and wreak havoc, or enter missions. These missions usually revolve around destroying the competition and preventing the ugly truth from spreading. But let’s not get sidetracked, there is only one main purpose to the game: destroying all humans. In that respect, you have plenty of fun options.

Crypto has a wealth of abilities and weapons at his disposal. His abilities include: mentally throwing people with his mind; stealing the bodies of others; and turning objects into ammo. His weapons are more brutal and include: a disintegrator ray, an anal probe, and a shrink ray. One of my favorites is the zombie gun that turns hapless humans into zombies that either kill or turn others into blood-thirsty ghouls.

But what if you don’t want to hoof it around the city? You can always hop in your trusty Saucer and blow things up with the death ray, go stealth with your cloak mode, or use the quantum deconstructor to nuke a wide area.

The biggest addition, and the best part of the game, is the inclusion of Pox’s Big Willy. Big Willy is the gigantic mascot for the restaurants that also doubles as a killer robot. A killer robot named Big Willy? Sweet. It’s easy enough to grab and smash humans with your enormous fists, but you can also fire heat beams from Big Willy’s eyes, explode an area with a devastating fart, and vomit acid. Big Willy offers the most wild and destructive ways to take out those pesky humans than any other Destroy Humans Humans game to date.

As fun as killing everything in your path may be, Big Willy Unleashed is not without its problems. The large open world often causes frame rate problems that affect the response of the IR Wii controls, most noticeably when controlling Big Willy. Worse still are the camera controls that use the archaic concept of turning the camera by moving the targeting cursor to the edge of the screen. When presented with a hectic amount of tasks in the missions, the simple act of rotating the camera becomes a major hindrance.

The Graphics

Unfortunately Big Willy Unleashed doesn’t make much use of the Wii’s graphical prowess. Scenery and background designs are flat and boring. Pop-up is a constant problem as well as hit-detection which will find you passing through walls. Crypto’s model has a good amount of detail, but overall the graphical experience is very much last generation.

The Sound

Much of the audio is forgettable, including the peppy disco music, but the one aspect that shines is the voice acting. The various sound samples and vocal quips in the writing are quite entertaining.

Lasting Appeal

There isn’t much reason to go through Big Willy Unleashed after you have beaten it, which could take between 6 and 10 hours. In fact, by the end of the game you may become bored with the simple, repetitive nature of the missions.

A number of side missions and energy-cell collecting offer some more value, but you will likely play these throughout as a way to break up the monotonous missions. The multiplayer isn’t even worth mentioning, as it simply isn’t that fun.

Final Thoughts

Destroy All Humas! Big Willy Unleashed is a mixed bag that finds the funny writing and enjoyable, but simple, gameplay hampered by poor graphics and shaky controls.