REVIEW: Is The ‘Destroy All Humans!’ Switch Port Worth Playing?

With the first iteration of the remake releasing in July of 2020, the only surprise with the Nintendo Switch port of Destroy All Humans! is that it took so long for developers Black Forest Games and publishers THQ Nordic to make it happen. While the gameplay may not be any different on the Switch, the biggest question is whether or not it’s worth picking up for the Switch.

In order to get a feel for how well the port functions, I played through the game switching between docked and handheld mode fairly frequently. I wanted to make sure I got an accurate feel for how the game worked both at home and on the go. The biggest selling point for any Switch port is being able to play games on the go, after all. It also gave me a good idea of which type of controller is best.

I’ll start with handheld mode, which is how I began the game. The biggest positive I can give this port is that playing in handheld mode felt like, well, playing Destroy All Humans! on a handheld device. It did not look as crisp as I would have liked, but it played fine and there were no major discernible issues that were not present on the other consoles. I did find that using the attached Joy-Cons to play was a little bit finicky, however. I had trouble aiming as precisely as I wanted to, and movement felt hit or miss at times. Still, I never felt like playing the game in handheld mode was bad, it just did not necessarily feel great either. This is fairly typical for Switch ports, so it should not stop anyone from playing by any means.

When moving from handheld to docked mode I expected to see a significant difference, but the game looked almost identical. One of my major critiques with the Switch port is that there are times where the environments tend to look like they are coming straight out of the original 2005 version of the game on the PlayStation 2. I know Switch versions of games are always going to look a little bit worse than on other systems, but there are times in the Destroy All Humans! port that the downgrade in appearance was distracting. With that said, the highlight of the game is not the way it looks, so even the distracting graphical issues were not a turn-off for me.

I recently had Destroy All Humans! described to me as “Grand Theft Auto, but the version your mom would let you play as a kid”. It is honestly hard to find a better description for the type of game Destroy All Humans! sets out to be. The humor pushes boundaries without going quite as far as Grand Theft Auto, and the fact that it is all aliens makes it a much more “family-friendly” game. Since this is coming out on the Switch though, it’s likely that the game will see a much younger player base looking into it. It’s important to note that there are some very outdated jokes that scream “this game came out in 2005” to be wary of. There is plenty of homophobia displayed by the Americans of the 1950s, which is historically accurate but can often feel like punching down just to make fun of homosexuality. You can read more about that and other elements of the game itself from our review of the original remake release here since this review is primarily focused on the value of the Switch port.

The biggest selling point for Destroy All Humans! on the Nintendo Switch is the ability to play the game on the go, and it is perfectly playable that way. In fact, I actually enjoyed playing it handheld more than I did docked. There wasn’t a very noticeable difference between the two outside of screen resolution. If you have not purchased the game on another system or the idea of playing it on the go is the most important thing to you, then I would say the game is worth checking out. With that said, I would not recommend anyone just looking to play the game purchase it on the Switch if they have the ability to play on another platform. Switch ports are always going to suffer from being a slight step down from their other console counterparts, and Destroy All Humans! is no different.

Destroy All Humans! is available for the Nintendo Switch on June 29th.