Destroy All Humans: Big Willy Unleashed Review

You can guess what to expect from the humour in Destroy All Humans: Big Willy Unleashed. They said willy! You know! As in a man's penis! As in my friend Billy had a ten foot willy and he showed it to the girl next door, she thought it was a snake so she hit it with a rake and now he's doing time because she's four. Except Big Willy Unleashed isn't as mature or witty as that.

Here's what else you can expect from the game: an abominable control system, tedious missions, hideous visuals and laughable multiplayer options. Even fans of the original Destroy All Humans games won't find anything to enjoy in this, the series' first Wii instalment in the series. And, if there's any justice, the last.

Let's start with the stupid plot. Comedy alien Crypto is back, doing his comedy Jack Nicholson impression just in case anyone has forgotten the reason this franchise isn't called Mars Attacks is because THQ couldn't afford the comedy licence. The game is set in the '70s, as you can tell by the clunky pop culture references and the way everyone wears flares. There's a character called Patty Wurst, as in Patty Hearst, the famous heiress who was kidnapped at gunpoint, kept blindfolded in a closet for two months, repeatedly sexually and physically abused and brainwashed into helping her captors commit crimes. Ha ha ha!

Then there's some rubbish about Mekon-rip-off Pox turning humans into hot dogs which he sells through the Big Willy fast food chain. Its mascot is Big Willy himself, a 25-foot statue of a toddler. This is a parody of Big Boy, the mascot of real-life US food chain. Which the first Austin Powers film parodied in a similar fashion. Over a decade ago. Ha ha ha!

Visually impaired

They actually picked this as an image highlighting the game's positive qualities.

You play as Crypto, and you get to explore one of the ugliest openworld environments ever. Everything is blocky and jaggy. The textures are the funniest thing in the entire game. The frame-rate stutters along and the pop-up is so bad you almost find yourself tripping over in-game objects. The colour pallette is vile, all grubby greys and murky oranges, and everything is fuzzy.

So you'll be feeling nauseous even before you attempt to control the game's camera. This is done by pointing the Wii remote. And trying to cope with the fact the pointer keeps sticking to the edge of the screen. Sometimes the game just won't let you move the camera, for no discernible reason; you must to use the nunchuk to move Crypto into a different position first. Your arm must be kept in a rigid right angle at all times. Dare to relax even slightly and the camera will spin madly and get stuck to the side of the screen.

The Wii remote is also used to point and shoot at enemies. If you want to bodysnatch a character, you must first shoot two moving icons. The pointer and camera issues mean none of this is any fun at all.

Still, at least the weapons are hilarious! Look at the silly man, he is running around clutching his bottom, ha ha ha! Yes, the anal probe is back, and just as funny as when it first appeared three years ago. New weapons include something called a Zombie Gun and a Shrink Ray. It is impossible to care.

Robot wars

In no way anything like the marshmallow man in Ghostbusters, either.

The big attraction is supposed to be the giant Big Willy robot. You can make him pick up cars and use them to smash stuff up, eat people to restore health and burn things with lasers. Also he can do giant farts ha ha ha! Bumbums boobies peepee poopoo milk milk lemonade round the corner chocolate's made I self-harm because it's the only way to feel alive.

Big Willy is tiresome to control. You use the nunchuk to move him around and control the camera by twisting the remote, and it all feels very slow. The flying saucer you get to pilot is controlled in the same way. You would have thought that an alien civilisation capable of inventing flying saucers might have been able to come up with a way of making them travel more than half a mile per hour but apparently not.

The single-player game is mercifully short, the multiplayer game hilariously so. There are two whole missions. But wait! You can play them co-operatively or competitively! No, you can't play through the story mode with a friend. Yes, even though you could do that in Destroy All Humans 2. Be grateful.