Having arrived on Earth in the early 1950s, Crypto’s quest to rid the planet of its “meat bag” inhabitants has taken a detour when the feisty Furon decided to stay and make a living in America. Oh, it was a wild ride to be sure and we have since followed Crypto into other decades. It’s 1970 and our little grey friend has once again realized that human hunting season has begun once again in Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon for the Xbox 360.

Path of the Furon finds Crypto living in the Las Paradiso … a city inspired by Las Vegas complete with casinos and mafia goons that own major businesses around town. Owning a UFO-themed casino-hotel himself, the mob has finally gone too far so Crypto takes it upon him to show them as well as every other human what an angry alien can do. Crypto once again goes back to doing what he does best … dish out his style of destructive firepower on foot or flying above aboard his flying saucer.

The Destroy All Humans! series has always mixed an open world environment with destructive action and Path of the Furon is no different. While his tech-savvy superior, Pox, has lost his body, he was still able to design new weapons and a better saucer that is now slightly better at evading tank and helicopter fire. The weapons - even the familiar ones - have been upgraded. The Anal Probe, for instance, can now track its intended target so you’re free to fire away without worrying about losing your target. The new Disclocator shoots a disc that can easily clear people and vehicles out of your way … despite the fact that the disc will continue to wildly bounce off other objects.

The new arsenal and saucer are a nice touch but the best upgrade comes from a Furon Master that seems to have been watching one too many episodes of Kung-Fu. Yes, your mental abilities such as Psychokinesis and Cortex Scan is back but now you can upgrade you mental abilities each time you use them via a meditation chamber in your saucer. There are four Paths of Enlightenment such as the Path of the Body, the Path of the Mind, the Path of Space and the Path of Time. Using your new mental ability that allows you to stop time, for instance, adds more points to the Path of Time and will allow you to use the stop time ability longer.

Like past games in the series, there are the story-based missions as well as an assortment of odd jobs and Challenges you can take on at any point in the game. You can also move on to different cities, offering new playgrounds to run around in and destroy. One of the great things about the Destroy All Humans! series is its good sense of humor and Path of the Furon continues the tradition with some funny moments such as the time where you attempt to break up a Sonny and Cher-like duo or infiltrate a mafia gathering by body snatching a mafia don and pretending to be him during the meeting. There are also various saucer missions that have you destroying building, make abductions and transport certain objects to a designated area.

The problem with Path of the Furon is that while the missions are funny they’re not very inventive or unique to this game. In fact, these missions feel like old rehashes of past missions from the first game as well as Destroy All Humans! 2. Even when you move to a new city, the missions start feeling the same. The odd jobs add some variety but even those missions are lacking in the fun department. Oh, and the Challenges are just that but to an even higher degree than in past games. At least the multiplayer modes add some fun diversity offline and there are collectibles worthy of earning numerous achievements.  

Visually, the game is a mixed bag. For one thing, Crypto looks fantastic and even his saucer lights up beautifully. Unfortunately, there’s a blandness to the landscape in the different cities you get to visit that give the backgrounds a dated original Xbox look. The minute you come near a car, you can see how blocky the vehicle looks. What the game does right, however, are the visual effects. Stopping time causes a ripple to appear and sucking civilians into a vortex is just plain cool.

Once again, the music tips its hat to those old B-movies and so does most of the sound effects in the game. It’s also great to hear Crypto, although this time around he is starting to sound more like Beavis from the Beavis and Butthead cartoons. There are also a number of truly funny lines in the game and the voice actors handle them well.

It’s sad to see a series like Destroy All Humans! run out of steam as well as good ideas and thus making Path of the Furon for the Xbox 360 one seriously disappointing game. While much of the humor is still intact and rather witty at times, a good sense of humor alone is able to save the game from its uninspiring level design, weak gameplay mechanics and daunting side missions. Sorry, THQ, but this series’ Xbox 360 debut just isn’t as entertaining or as enjoyable as the first game or its decent sequel.

Gameplay: 5.0
Crypto’s Furon abilities feel a bit more balanced in Path of the Furon and the four paths of Enlightenment are clever ways of upgrading each power. Even the new tricked-out saucer is fun to use but all of this doesn’t matter when the missions feel stale and repetitive. Even the odd jobs and challenges aren’t that fun this time around.

Graphics: 7.0
Certain open-world environments look better than others do but there is still some rather plain-looking buildings scattered throughout. Las Paradiso looks stale in this game and just about the only thing that does look next-generation are Crypto and the visual effects.

Sound: 7.5
The score is still has that sci-fi B-movie feel with a heavy dose of ‘70s-styled funk and disco tossed in for good measure. There are some minimal sound effects but the game makes up for it by bringing back the decent voice acting works well.

Difficulty: Medium
Some of the missions offer something of a challenge and - seeing as some of them will start feeling very familiar - you won’t have much trouble going through them. Some of the challenges are a bit too difficult, such as many of the races.

Concept: 5.0
Crypto is back and he is looking to continue his mission to destroy all humans while trying to turn a profit while he’s at it. The saucer is a bit cooler this time around and once you get out of the first city you’ll have a blast bringing down some buildings. It’s too bad most of the missions are a miss.

Multiplayer: 6.0
A few multiplayer game modes are available to share with a friend and, for the most part, they’re somewhat entertaining for a short period of time before you both will get bored with the game modes.

Overall: 5.0
Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon for the Xbox 360 lacks the amusing destructive and fun missions of the first few games in the series. In fact, the game feels like it exhausted all its ideas and is recycling the weakest missions from past games. In other words, Path of the Furon is a lackluster game with not much to offer those who enjoyed Crypto’s earlier adventures.