Hot Play
If you’ve gotta be an alien, make it an evil one
By Scott Gardner
Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon
PS3, Xbox 360
If you’ve ever wanted to be a homicidal alien invader with far-out mental powers and sci-fi weaponry — and who hasn’t? — it’s time to head down the Path of the Furon.
That Furon is Crypto, the big-headed, bug-eyed, tiny-bodied, gleefully violent invader from a distant galaxy who’s been plaguing humanity since the original Destroy all Humans! game arrived in 2005. Or make that 1955. The first game was set in the outwardly wholesome suburbs and fairgrounds of the Eisenhower era, and established the series’ style: irreverent, often laugh-out-loud humour satirizing that sanitized decade, mixed with cartoonishly violent missions where Crypto disintegrated entire neighbourhoods with his Zap-o-Matic ray gun.
This fourth adventure opens in the 1970s, with a semi-retired Crypto exercising his contempt for humanity in a terrible new way — by running a Las Vegas casino. It’s all groovy until a mysterious foe shows up, determined to annihilate the Furon Empire. Crypto’s only hope: track down the alien kung fu master who can help him unlock even greater (and more destructive) psychokinetic powers.
With tongue firmly in cheek, the game lampoons the “me” decade’s many foibles, from disco to kung fu to disaster movies, right down to the crowds of panicked (and polyester-clad) humans fleeing collapsing buildings. There’s also heavy-duty air combat between attack choppers and flying saucers, and a fresh crop of outlandish extraterrestrial weaponry like the Superballer, Tornadotron and Venus Human Trap.
Ultimately, to attain enlightenment you must expand your mind, master time and space, and blow the living crap out of everything.
Release date: December 1
Prince of Persia
PS3, Xbox 360
History’s most agile warrior returns in a reboot of this classic action-platforming franchise, accompanied by the beautiful and deadly Elika — a dynamic AI companion capable of fully interacting with, and responding to, the player’s actions in combat, acrobatics and puzzle-solving. Together they will cleanse their mythical Middle Eastern kingdom of an ancient evil.
Release date: December 2
Deadly Creatures
Wii
In this odd third-person action-thriller, players control an armoured scorpion and a deadly tarantula, as the creepy-crawlies struggle to survive among even nastier creatures. And there’s a dark, film noir-esque mystery to unravel involving two human miscreants voiced by Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper.
Release date: December 15