THQ Destroy all Humans! 2

That sarcastic alien troublemaker, Cryptos, is back for another round of brain-scanning, monkey-zapping fun. Instead of the staid '50s, you've landed right in the middle of the '60s cultural revolution, where free love, communists and mind-bending hallucinogens abound.

The Red Menace

The mother ship's been destroyed by KGB goons, raining retrievable DNA, data cores, and more all over the planet, while others plot to expose your existence. The brain-farm must be defended, so Crypto must trek around the globe to outwit communist hippies and cold war spies. Between the citizens and the mind-bending hallucinogens they're on, this caricatured era is a fertile mocking ground. The environments bustle with strange, unexplained events, whether it's impromptu dance parties or unexpected levitations. And the snappy dialogue never runs out of double entendres or loses its hilarious self-referential tone.

The Spice of Life

These playground cities are crammed with optional missions and hidden goodies, all rendered with saturated B-movie flair. Pursue just the main storyline and you'll miss out on all the other goodies hiding underneath the surface. Where most open-ended games task you with stealing cars and helping out gangs, this demented reality asks you to snatch bodies, start cults, destroy nasty boss critters, and ruin human lives. Not all the missions are wildly inventive, but the majority are satisfying and entertaining, and each is more fun than the original title's simplistic collection quests.

Crypto wasn't exactly shooting blanks in the first game, but he's got an impressive new bag of tricks this time around, such as his Meteor Strike and the unpredictable Dislocator that takes objects around for "nobody knows where she'll stop" ride. Pick up scenery with your mind, transmogrify wreckage into ammo, and scan human minds for intelligence, all with easy-to-remember and responsive controls, or take to the skies in your saucer to lay entire city blocks to permanent waste or to abduct bipeds for genetic research.

Two's Company

This multiplayer missions practically demand that a partner join in, since they effectively double the amusement factor, not just because comedy is funnier with a friend, but because basic game mechanics change to highlight the extra pair of hands. Pilot your saucer while your buddy man's the turret, drop a meteor on someone while your partner holds him in place, and take part in mini-game diversions like Psychokinetic Tennis and duelling. The only real drag is not being able to play together online.