Go back in time with futuristic ray guns.

Originality has largely taken a back seat these days. Games are praised for ultra-lifelike graphics, fast-paced combat, and, in the case of Tomb Raider, a sexy heroine. No one ever takes the time to come up with something new. Well, except for Pandemic Studios, apparently - they created the Destroy All Humans! franchise, a game that turns a lot of established genre rules on their heads, particularly the notions that one has to play as a human fighting against invading alien hordes and that a game set in the '50s isn't fun. Where, Pandemic asks, is that written? You play as Crypto, a member of an alien race called the Furons. In a typical ridiculous B-movie explanation, the Furons DNA has gotten so mixed up due to radioactive experiments that they cannot reproduce. Cloning is the only way to propagate the race, but even that has its problems. The only way for the race to stay afloat is to find pure Furon DNA - and it just so happens the pathetic human race is chock-full of it. (The explanation for this is even more insanely unbelievable.) Like I said, it's ridiculous, but the game has some fun with it. It also takes great pleasure in lampooning everything about '50s America. Whether it's Irish cops or black-suited G-men, the threat of communist aliens or a casual nod to B-movies like Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space," Destroy All Humans, in using a bygone era as its setting, makes us laugh at it as well. It's also worth pointing out that the dialogue is just as funny and the cutscenes are ones you'll actually want to watch. Of course, funny and cool only goes a short distance. If the game sucks, no one will care. Thankfully, Pandemic has created a game that's fun to play, if not with the best gameplay ever. You have guns that shoot lightning, vaporize enemies, and yes, one that even performs an anal probe (not graphically), which, for some reason, causes people's heads to explode. Guess it must hurt. Anyway, you have mission objectives you have to complete in order to ensure the Furon invasion's success, but you also have to collect DNA from human brains. To do this, you can use your guns, or your character's PK abilities. With these you can lift people, cars, even tanks when you get strong enough, and throw them every which way. There's nothing quite as fun as tossing a tank into the river. You can also upgrade your weapons and PK abilities by spending the DNA you collect. Of course, no game about aliens in the 1950s would be complete without a flying saucer, and you get to fly one. You can "Death Ray" pesky humans to death, pick up cows and fling them around, or, if you've had a really bad day, raze an entire city. There's no end to the fun. Destroy All Humans! is the rare game that will entertain you for hours on end while simultaneously making you laugh yourself silly. People who grew up in the '50s will laugh at all the spoofing the game does - and those of us who didn't might laugh too - but at the end of the day, it's always fun to blow stuff up, whether you're a human or an alien.