Set in the year 2075, instead of a bright and peaceful future, human civilization is in a state of polluted, dilapidated ruin akin to post-World War II Europe. A corrupt mega-corporation, Grathius Inc., controls the world by force, using pacification squads to kill anyone who opposes them.
Flynn Haskell is the leader of a small band of resistance-fighters determined to rid the world of Grathius and their evil schemes. Later the player meets up with a female scientist Eve whom Flynn regards as the best helper he could get. Flynn, while exploring once, is captured and put into jail but successfully escapes with another resistance member named Duffy who also helps him in his next destination Urbia, as she is familiar with their resistance leader Tara.
The game's main plot revolves around a new technology developed by Grathius, nano-machinery based cloning, that allows the corporation to clone its fallen troops and gives them an unstoppable immortal army. As the game progresses, the player travels from San Francisco to Taiwan to Japan, recruiting new characters into the resistance and capturing Grathius cloning devices for their own personal use.
Devastation rises up against examples of the folloving:
- The Alleged Boss: Flynn Haskell leans towards type 3. The promo declares him as the resistance's leader but more often he ends up being told what to do (by Gus) or to shut up (by Tara). The only time he seems to possess any authority is the intro cinematic where he tells his people to flee their besieged hideout. Flynn at least thinks he's the leader throughout the entire game, and never loses his confident, sneering, domineering attitude.
- Artificial Brilliance: Credit where it's due, having friendly A.I. NPCs able to fight their way from the beginning to the end of the level independently (without needing to follow the player) was a major achievement back in 2003, where friendly A.I. was mostly at the level of Barney from Half-Life 1 or Superfly and Mikiko from Daikatana.
- Artificial Stupidity: The NPCs often get stuck running into walls. In combat they don't know any better than charge at their target. Your allies will often get in your way and the enemies have a tendency to cluster around any Exploding Barrels they see.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: The side-effect of Grathius' ReGen platform is the subject gradually losing free will until they're the corp's mere cannon fodder. When rerouting the device to work for the resistance group Tara manages to disable the subroutine responsible for the brainwashing.
- Cutscene Incompetence: After completing the second level or so Flynn is captured at a Grathius mook's minigun point. The minigun isn't even spinning.
- Die, Chair, Die!: While there's not too many of them, some pieces of furniture can be broken.
- Gatling Good: Played with the Cobra Cannon. It doesn't even fire that quickly and is up to debate whether it actually packs more punch than your generic machinegun.
- Guns Akimbo: The lesser, one-handed guns can be wielded and fired two at a time.
- Hollywood Hacking: The hacking in Devastation involves using a calculator-like device to download codes from communication terminals and then using said device to bypass electronic security gates.
- Just Train Wrong: Several times through the game you can find ridiculous small locomotives. There are similarily small flatbed cars in the Urbia dock area with a short piece of catenary hanging over them, which is also hanging dangerously low and generally doesn't look like a proper catenary at all. None of the rolling stock features any couplers while the locomotives do feature some oversized excuse of fenders. On top of that, the wheels don't even sit on the rails, which are as wide as the cars are.
- Killed Offscreen: After entering the freightliner's underdeck you hear a couple handgun shots and get a new objective to find one of your fellow co-fighters Eve. Once you step out on the deck again you find her sprawled on the deck dead. Fortunately it doesn't last..
- La Résistance: Flynn leads a ressistance group to oppose Grathius' regime.
- Lady Looks Like a Dude: Duffy, a former ranger, sports Boyish Short Hair, has toned body and so little bosom, you'd be forgiven for
mistaking her for a male. Not to Bifauxnen levels though. - Limited Loadout: The realistic setting literally puts a weight on every gun and you are limited by how much you can carry at a time. The arcade setting lets you carry all you want.
- MegaCorp: Grathius Inc. has brought down governments all over the globe and has their claws in everything from suplies to military and technology research.
- More Dakka: Devastation features extensive amount of fast-firing guns ranging from submachine pistols through assault rifles to a minigun.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Flynn's hairdo and general image is suspiciously similar to Eminem.
- Respawn Point: A device developed by Grathius Inc. is capable of bringing anyone Back from the Dead basically by some process akin to reversed disintegration, clothes and gear included. It plays a vital role both in story and gameplay. Disabling enemy ReGen platforms cuts their endless reinforcemets. Later the protagonist groum manages to hack the device to work for themselves turning any battle into a multiplayer match.
- Resurrective Immortality: Grathius ReGen platform enables them to deploy endless droves of mooks by nano-cloning them when they die. Later the resistance group manages to reroute the device to work for them, which basically makes them immortal and puts them on par with Grathius.
- Short-Range Shotgun: The game features two shotguns neither of which is useful beyond so far as 6 meters due to their ludicrous spread.
- Techno Babble: As Tara explains during the process of assembling a captured ReGen platform, it utilizes so called mimetic fluid containing nano-bots smaller than living sells to rebuild them from atoms. Everything be it strands of DNA, clothes or even firearms the killed person had on themselves. How does the device acquire the pattern by which it reconstructs the subject in question is never mentioned.
- Threatening Shark: Grathius has flooded the drydock in Urbia and threw in a couple sharks to prevent the resistance fighters from passing.
- Timed Mission: There are several, the most notable being the one, where you have to rescue Eve and Tara from being blown to bits by a timed detpack.
- Weak Turret Gun: Grathius deploys a few sentry guns in various areas. While they're more annoying then dangerous, they can take some punishment before going down.
- Weaponized Animal: Halfway through the game you get your hands on remote-mind-controlled suicide-bomber rats.
- Zeerust: Despite taking place in 2075 the ingame computers still use rather outdated interface akin to MS Dos. There's no trace of nowadays smart devices or touch screens. Security measures involve plain old gates with numeric keypads. No fingerprint or retinal scanners, not even magnetic keycards. Most tech in the game is rather ridiculously dated by today's standards.
