E3 06: Destroy All Humans 2 hands-on

Hide the cattle and cover your behind - the aliens are back. Apparently, his boss Pox has been shot down and captured by the Russians, so now the Furon warrior Cryptosporidium 137 has to conquer the Earth all over again - but this time, amid the free-love movement of the 1960s.

The biggest and best news about this spoofy, darkly comic actioner is that it has adopted a more free-form, open-world approach. The first game was actually very linear, and required you to solve each mission a certain way. Not so with the sequel, which enables you to take missions from multiple sources and solve them using a variety of ways (some of which are new). Your tasks will require you to wreak interstellar havoc in several different locations across the globe too.

Thus, you may find Crypto bodysnatching hippies in 1960s San Francisco, then blasting apart an Austin Powers-like version of London using his saucer's formidable weaponry. If he steps out and gets seen or - not that it's likely - overpowered, he can use a new, Mind Flash power to temporarily freeze the action and mind-wipe any humans within range. It takes human brains to power the Mind Flash, but it's obviously useful.

If the action gets too hectic, as can happen when you're in Japan during the reign of Godzilla, Crypto can fall back on his eight-weapon arsenal. Some of the new gear includes the Dislocator, a sort of force bounce that sends its targets careening all around the environment, and the Meteor Strike. This is a self-explanatory attack that's impressive even before you upgrade it to Meteor Shower or Meteor Storm.