E3 '07: Destroy All Humans: Path of a Furon First Look

One of the surprises at THQ's booth here at E3 2007 is the revelation that the next Destroy All Humans game is actually two games. One of them, Destroy All Humans: Big Willy Unleashed, is being developed for the Wii, the PlayStation 2, and PSP, while the other, Destroy All Humans: Path of a Furon, is coming to the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. To make things more interesting, the storyline of Big Willy Unleashed takes place during the first half of the 1970s and acts as kind of a prequel to Path of a Furon, which takes place in the latter half of the same decade. You won't need to play both games to get a satisfying story, however, as each of them are fully-formed games in their own right.

Path of a Furon picks up with Crypto after he's been on earth for over 20 years. After all that destruction of humans, he and Pox are a bit burnt out on their DNA-collecting mission, so they choose to relax in Las Vegas and construct a new casino that will let them rake in cash while also killing the patrons and taking their brain stems. His adventure comes to an end when a mysterious Furon antagonist attacks Crypto, forcing him to flee to a fictitious version of Los Angeles. After abortive attempts to get involved in the film business, Crypto attempts to flee from his mysterious attacker and winds up under the tutelage of an ancient Chinese Furon who promises to train him in a number of new abilities with which he'll be able to fight his nemesis.

After some training sessions, Crypto gets set loose in the Chinese city of Shen Long to create some chaos. Thanks to the magic of development cheats, we were able to see all of Crypto's upgraded powers in one fell swoop. Included in these is an upgraded anal probe that can track multiple targets and is fire-and-forget, as well as a new Venus Human Trap that can be launched into an area and will grow exponentially until it is capable of independently sucking in humans and spitting out DNA rewards.

The most important new power, however, is the Temporal Fist. With the Temporal Fist ability, Crypto can freeze time completely, allowing him to move objects around while everyone else is frozen in place. This allows the player to act out their sandbox fantasies in a fairly entertaining way, since you can use your telekinetic powers to give every object an "impulse," which basically lets you queue up a throw on an object that won't take place until you unfreeze time. So if you want to grab two cars and then queue them up so that they both fly into the air and collide above a crowd of civilians, you can. It's difficult to describe this effect in text, but you'll be duly impressed by it when you see it on video.

In addition to the new superpowers, Crypto has a new saucer in Path of a Furon with some new weapons to use, including a set of homing missiles. What's more, the upgraded graphics engine makes it a heck of lot more fun to actually destroy stuff than it used to be. When you shoot a building with your default laser beams, the glass will melt off, revealing the infrastructure underneath. What's more, shooting a building will cause all of its inhabitants to flee out into the streets, making them easy targets for your tractor beam. The destruction animation for buildings is still incomplete, but we're told that buildings will collapse toward the point of your last attack, which should cause them to fall in different directions depending on the direction of your strike.

There's a lot of new stuff to be found in Destroy All Humans: Path of a Furon, so fans of the series can look forward to unleashing a lot of HD destruction when both games come out in early 2008. Stay tuned to GameSpot for more details as the shipping date approaches.