Destroy All Humans!

2013-07-10 06:26:45 pm

Hi everybody,

Would anyone have any interest in helping me out with a Destroy All Humans! speedrun? I noticed there is no thread started anywhere regarding this game.

For those who don't know, Destroy All Humans! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroy_All_Humans!) is a game first released in 2005 for PS2/Xbox, and I believe it is now available on XBLA. The game is divided into 22 chapters, involving your usual action-adventure gameplay (escort missions, stealth missions, mass destruction missions, etc.) and can be completed in a very reasonable amount of time (all cutscenes are skippable, etc.).

After some routing and a few single segment attempts, my best time so far for an any% run is a 2:23:13.7, which I believe has a good amount of room for improvement, and I wouldn't be surprised if we can get it down to below 2 hours for an any%. I have not looked into doing a 100% run yet, but I believe this would involve collecting all 30 probes from each area in the game, as well as getting all weapons upgrades.

If anybody has any interest, I would be happy to post my route notes and/or my best splits.

Thread title:

Hi everybody,

Would anyone have any interest in helping me out with a Destroy All Humans! speedrun? I noticed there is no thread started anywhere regarding this game.

For those who don't know, Destroy All Humans! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroy_All_Humans!) is a game first released in 2005 for PS2/Xbox, and I believe it is now available on XBLA. The game is divided into 22 chapters, involving your usual action-adventure gameplay (escort missions, stealth missions, mass destruction missions, etc.) and can be completed in a very reasonable amount of time (all cutscenes are skippable, etc.).

After some routing and a few single segment attempts, my best time so far for an any% run is a 2:23:13.7, which I believe has a good amount of room for improvement, and I wouldn't be surprised if we can get it down to below 2 hours for an any%. I have not looked into doing a 100% run yet, but I believe this would involve collecting all 30 probes from each area in the game, as well as getting all weapons upgrades.

If anybody has any interest, I would be happy to post my route notes and/or my best splits.

superfly360

2013-07-10 07:11:10 pm

In Flames We Trust

This was a pretty cool game. It seems like it would make a pretty interesting speedrun, but I am unsure of any tricks that would speed the run up. It seems to me that a 100% run would be rather monotonous, with all the probes needing to be collected. I look forward to your progress! I'll be sure to offer any help I can think of.

KillaSwissBeats

2013-07-10 07:22:50 pm

Yeah there isn't too much in the way of speed tricks/glitches in this game, so at this point I'm just shooting for route optimization. Namely this involves particular levels that require a certain amount of DNA to progress after completion. With the route I have now, I am able to collect enough DNA before the prompts so I avoid them completely, but I have not optimized this process yet (I can probably collect less DNA than with my current route).

As far as tricks go, the only thing I have found so far is when Crypto is hit by an enemy's bullet while hovering in mid-air, often you can get a decent speed boost from the damage and if you are engaging the hoverpack thrust in the same direction as the bullet while getting hit, you get a decently strong boost in that direction. However, this seems to be way too variable to actually be useful.

ZenicReverie

2013-07-10 08:00:59 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

I was thinking this would make an easy run. I might pick it up next year. What version are you playing it on?

I noticed that it's possible to get much further hovering by getting a rhythm going rather than just holding the button down. I'd have to play this again to describe it better.

I think it's trivial to get all upgrades once you get all probes. I could be wrong though.

KillaSwissBeats

2013-07-10 08:20:00 pm

Quote from ZenicReverie:

I was thinking this would make an easy run. I might pick it up next year. What version are you playing it on?

I noticed that it's possible to get much further hovering by getting a rhythm going rather than just holding the button down. I'd have to play this again to describe it better.

I think it's trivial to get all upgrades once you get all probes. I could be wrong though.

Yeah I would say compared to a lot of other games that require learning complex glitches/sequence breaks, this game is pretty straightforward. I am playing on NTSC U/C (North America) version for the PS2.

And you are right about the rhythm hovering; it's basically that when you hit X to thrust, you get both forward and upward momentum. So if you get a rhythm going where you thrust while falling you get a lot more forward thrust than upwards, as opposed to just thrusting until you run out, and you go in sort of an arc and lose a lot of that momentum going upwards.

And yeah I guess for a 100% definition if you collect probes after beating the main storyline then getting the upgrades would be pointless, but maybe if you get upgrades before finishing the storyline you can finish the final boss missions (e.g. chapter 18-Armquist fight and the final chapter 22-both the robo-prez and the Sihouette final fight) a bit quicker? I'm not sure. Though in my any% route I only get two upgrades, Ion Detonator capacity and Disintegrator Ray multi-shot.

[quote="ZenicReverie"]I was thinking this would make an easy run. I might pick it up next year. What version are you playing it on?

I noticed that it's possible to get much further hovering by getting a rhythm going rather than just holding the button down. I'd have to play this again to describe it better.

I think it's trivial to get all upgrades once you get all probes. I could be wrong though.[/quote]

Yeah I would say compared to a lot of other games that require learning complex glitches/sequence breaks, this game is pretty straightforward. I am playing on NTSC U/C (North America) version for the PS2.

And you are right about the rhythm hovering; it's basically that when you hit X to thrust, you get both forward and upward momentum. So if you get a rhythm going where you thrust while falling you get a lot more forward thrust than upwards, as opposed to just thrusting until you run out, and you go in sort of an arc and lose a lot of that momentum going upwards.

And yeah I guess for a 100% definition if you collect probes after beating the main storyline then getting the upgrades would be pointless, but maybe if you get upgrades before finishing the storyline you can finish the final boss missions (e.g. chapter 18-Armquist fight and the final chapter 22-both the robo-prez and the Sihouette final fight) a bit quicker? I'm not sure. Though in my any% route I only get two upgrades, Ion Detonator capacity and Disintegrator Ray multi-shot.

m3g4t0n

2014-04-22 12:30:17 pm

I have been speedrunning this some too, time is 02:08:54.27 any% with MAJOR failures, can easily get sub 2h and even 1h45min.
There are no helpful glitches as you said (that I can think of right now) but there are many little tricks throughout the game which will play the biggest part of the run I think..

Also the jetpack seems to increase the upwards momentum even more if you already are ascending. Therefore jumping is almost useless in this game, it only slows you down. The best way to use the jetpack would be to keep falling off ledges to lose some of the upwards momentum.

Oh, there is one skip in "Rockwell - Citizen Crypto" where you can just kill the scientists before scanning the cows but it only saves like 10 seconds or something..

Also in "Santa Modesta - Televisions of Doom" where you have to destroy the Majestic car, the car sometimes glitches at the start of the level and will be stuck in the road it spawns on for 3-5 seconds making it possible to spam the car to death alot faster than chasing it.

I have been speedrunning this some too, time is 02:08:54.27 any% with MAJOR failures, can easily get sub 2h and even 1h45min.
There are no helpful glitches as you said (that I can think of right now) but there are many little tricks throughout the game which will play the biggest part of the run I think..

Also the jetpack seems to increase the upwards momentum even more if you already are ascending. Therefore jumping is almost useless in this game, it only slows you down. The best way to use the jetpack would be to keep falling off ledges to lose some of the upwards momentum.

Oh, there is one skip in "Rockwell - Citizen Crypto" where you can just kill the scientists before scanning the cows but it only saves like 10 seconds or something..

Also in "Santa Modesta - Televisions of Doom" where you have to destroy the Majestic car, the car sometimes glitches at the start of the level and will be stuck in the road it spawns on for 3-5 seconds making it possible to spam the car to death alot faster than chasing it.

HoboWithaShotgun

2014-04-22 04:59:54 pm

Wake up and be awesome

Awesome M3g4t0n, I'd love to see the run and help, D.A.H. is one of my favorite PS2 games of all time

m3g4t0n

2014-04-23 09:39:32 am

I still haven't figured out a solid route for the roboprez or silhouette fight yet, they are so hectic and I'm not training on an emulator so it gets tideous really fast. Also I have to optimize the DNA route and figure out which upgrades to buy. The IOS Bomb increased ammo (10 bombs) upgrade is a must for the Armquist robot fight (10 hits). It also makes the silhouette fight a bit faster. But as KillaSwissBeat mentioned the double shot Disintegrator upgrade would be benefitial aswell.

I am actually amazed that no one has done a speedrun of this yet (not that I know of anyways), it's an awesome game!

m3g4t0n

Edit history:

m3g4t0n: 2014-04-23 09:55:15 am

m3g4t0n: 2014-04-23 09:54:59 am

2014-04-23 09:54:31 am

Also how should the run be timed, I timed it from 'new game' click to the last IOS bomb on silhouette (like in zelda OoT)

HoboWithaShotgun

2014-04-23 04:47:38 pm

Wake up and be awesome

If doing RTA timing, then your timing is correct. SDA timing will be from the first possible control of character to the final moment of control, excluding loading times. I don't think there is an in game timer, but if there is, go by that.

Also I'm also amazed no one has done a run of this game yet! I always thought of doing it, but never got around to it

m3g4t0n

2014-04-30 02:00:15 pm

Has anyone found any glitches yet?

I found some myself, but they are useless in speedruns for now.
One that could be useful is a trick to jump on water surfaces. If you use the jetpack over water and while descending tapping the X button with a rythm rather than mash you will approach the surface with a low speed making it possible (90% of the times maybe..) to jump off the surface. However, you are not touching the ground long enough to recharge your jetpack so you will have to jump over the entire length of the gap.

One place this could be useful is in the "Capitol City - mr. crypto goes to captiol city" mission near the end when you have to return to the saucer from the armquist helicopter place. There might be a faster shortcut over the water but I have not succeeded yet.. but we're talking seconds here so, no big skips yet.

BadAtGames

2014-07-20 12:26:10 am

If anyone has splits or notes they would be much appreciated if not I guess ill have to make my own Kappa

Austinthegamer

2014-07-29 03:04:25 am

Destroy All Humans Speedrunner

I have routed this game on my channel and will do a run tomorrow onstream. One skip that i have noticed is on the mission This Island Suburbia in Santa Modesta. Instead of actually going to the ground and hypnotizing the majestic agent it is considerably faster to use the abducto beam in the saucer and just move him to the landing site. Then land while he is there and the cutscene triggers

m3g4t0n

2014-09-10 11:04:14 am

BadAtGames: I will try to record some "good run" times and post it here as soon as I can.

Austinthegamer: A good strat but missile turrets are dangerous.. optimize the number of turrets that need to be destroyed and manouver well. saves lots of time.

Dendris

2016-04-26 01:43:22 pm

Hoping some of you guys are still about on this old thing.

I've got some stuff on the game after testing on the Xbox 360, and I think its Any% time can be dropped to under 1h30m RTA if played aggressively enough (mind you the Xbox 360 probably has quicker loading times compared to PS2 DAH!). I don't have a capture card to show the low time, so I'm just sharing the info in the hopes that someone can drop the game's time.

I also believe that 100% would count as all 22 missions (end cutscene and credits), and all 18 upgrades and 184 probes as they are mentioned in the Invasion Report (stats screen) with upper values (x/18 and y/184 respectively), along with World Overlord reaching 100%, which I think is the overall game completion stat.

For those mentioning a lack of glitches to abuse, I would tend to agree. I'd go even further to say the game's glitches cause more problems than help:
-Earth Women Are Delicious: Going too fast here causes Pox's 'codex' message to take a variable - and often long - time to activate (with no dialogue cue), where carrying Miss Rockwell off to the saucer early (because I don't know how to execute the trick Austinthegamer showed in his 1:56:03 VOD that activates the codex immediately) can force you to drop her to her death.
-Alien Pool Party: Running right into the pool party and killing everyone without scanning the Mayor occasionally (~30% of the time) causes a softlock where the counter starts at 8/8 when you have already killed some of the relevant people, and so will never drop to 0/8 to continue, so you have to restart the mission.

Quote from m3g4t0n:

One place this could be useful is in the "Capitol City - mr. crypto goes to captiol city" mission near the end when you have to return to the saucer from the armquist helicopter place. There might be a faster shortcut over the water but I have not succeeded yet.. but we're talking seconds here so, no big skips yet.

There is a way to succeed in crossing the pond. On the Silhouette arena side there is a big red/orange tree that can be stood on (the trees are just cylinders with leaf textures) near the water's edge and the jetpack can just barely make it, this also works on the other side with some of the waterline trees there too. The problem is, when I say "barely," I mean the jetpack runs out of juice 2/3 to 3/4 across, and so you must spam the hell out of the boost button to just make it (which is also slow). So not only is it dangerous, it might not even be fast enough to save time over using the bridge.
It seems the only notable skip is still the G-man skip, otherwise it's 95% optimal vanilla play.

Also, if anyone wants to test the missions, all you need is a save and remember to return to the mothership before the mission finishes for an autosave (but if you collect probes that you want to recollect, you'll have to turn off the console/return to the Xbox 360 dashboard). Granted you have to go through all of the preceding missions to get to the one you want to test, but you can test it ad infinitum with few constraints once you're at it.

Hoping some of you guys are still about on this old thing.

I've got some stuff on the game after testing on the Xbox 360, and I think its Any% time can be dropped to under 1h30m RTA if played aggressively enough (mind you the Xbox 360 probably has quicker loading times compared to PS2 DAH!). I don't have a capture card to show the low time, so I'm just sharing the info in the hopes that someone can drop the game's time.

I also believe that 100% would count as all 22 missions (end cutscene and credits), and all 18 upgrades and 184 probes as they are mentioned in the Invasion Report (stats screen) with upper values (x/18 and y/184 respectively), along with World Overlord reaching 100%, which I think is the overall game completion stat.

For those mentioning a lack of glitches to abuse, I would tend to agree. I'd go even further to say the game's glitches cause more problems than help:
-Earth Women Are Delicious: Going too fast here causes Pox's 'codex' message to take a variable - and often long - time to activate (with no dialogue cue), where carrying Miss Rockwell off to the saucer early (because I don't know how to execute the trick Austinthegamer showed in his 1:56:03 VOD that activates the codex immediately) can force you to drop her to her death.
-Alien Pool Party: Running right into the pool party and killing everyone without scanning the Mayor occasionally (~30% of the time) causes a softlock where the counter starts at 8/8 when you have already killed some of the relevant people, and so will never drop to 0/8 to continue, so you have to restart the mission.

[quote="m3g4t0n"]One place this could be useful is in the "Capitol City - mr. crypto goes to captiol city" mission near the end when you have to return to the saucer from the armquist helicopter place. There might be a faster shortcut over the water but I have not succeeded yet.. but we're talking seconds here so, no big skips yet.[/quote]
There is a way to succeed in crossing the pond. On the Silhouette arena side there is a big red/orange tree that can be stood on (the trees are just cylinders with leaf textures) near the water's edge and the jetpack can just barely make it, this also works on the other side with some of the waterline trees there too. The problem is, when I say "barely," I mean the jetpack runs out of juice 2/3 to 3/4 across, and so you must spam the hell out of the boost button to just make it (which is also slow). So not only is it dangerous, it might not even be fast enough to save time over using the bridge.
It seems the only notable skip is still the G-man skip, otherwise it's 95% optimal vanilla play.

Also, if anyone wants to test the missions, all you need is a save and remember to return to the mothership before the mission finishes for an autosave (but if you collect probes that you want to recollect, you'll have to turn off the console/return to the Xbox 360 dashboard). Granted you have to go through all of the preceding missions to get to the one you want to test, but you can test it ad infinitum with few constraints once you're at it.