DESTROY ALL HUMANS!

Open-world action titles have come a long way since the last console generation, with many offering massive "living" settings and sharp online integration. But you wouldn't know it from Destroy All Humans!: Path of the Furon, a game that feels both woefully dated and curiously incomplete, consistently displaying distracting presentational hitches.

Foul-mouthed extraterrestrial Crypto returns in the starring role -- faux Jack Nicholson delivery in tow -- and runs rampant through five distinct environments (including those inspired by Las Vegas and Paris) to toy with humans both on foot and in his heavily armed saucer. The dozen-hour string of story missions finds you performing a variety of tasks, from hijacking human bodies or probing Mafia thugs on the ground to blasting city blocks with your ship and abducting the folks that emerge from the rubble. Just don't expect much of a challenge -- the game exhibits an excessive degree of hand-holding, offering step-by-step instructions and often transporting you from location to location.

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Couple this with sparsely populated environments and tame optional missions, and the open-world setting ultimately feels like a lost opportunity. And if you're searching for online multiplayer or even a local co-op campaign, look elsewhere: Furon features nothing more than a trio of short-lived two-player modes like "Ion Soccer" (because what you really wanna do with super-powered alien invaders is play a bit of footy, right?). One might point to the series' less-than-serious nature for the inclusion of such modes, but even the humor's a liability in Furon, with each occasional winning joke bookended by an endless stream of tiring innuendo.

Click the image above to check out all the Destroy All Humans!: Path of the Furon screens.

The aesthetics fall equally flat: While Furon's certainly the shiniest-looking series entry to date, it's an absolute mess in motion. Textures load in close proximity, the speed's constantly in flux, and structures pop out of nowhere as you approach them via jetpack. Whether it's presentational bugs (clipping issues, brief pauses, poor transitions) or poorly constructed set pieces (especially the generic and muddy-looking final world), the end result is a terrible underutilization of the current generation's capabilities.

Some will likely fight the flaws for another chance to terrorize their '70s-era brethren, but if the name "Crypto" doesn't bring to mind a litany of past quips, Furon will simply seem like an out-of-touch, thoroughly unpolished romp through mediocrity.