Teardown Review on Xbox

Teardown is a destruction sim with real life physics in a voxel world. Destroy and build to your hearts content in this over the top demolition simulator.

The premise is you a poor demolition expert, who prepares the perfect heists, in this simulated and fully destructible voxel world. Tear down walls with vehicles or explosives to create shortcuts. Stack objects to reach higher. Use the environment to your advantage in the most creative way you can think of.

The game fully destructible arenas, challenges, sandbox mode, mods and a vast array of weapons to destroy the world around you.

Accessibility

With regards to accessibility, there very little in the way of options, even subtitles doesn’t have an option. There is the ability to re-map your controls which is helpful, and adjust the sensitivity but little else. One good element is to amend the alarm status which will give players more time, but in terms of fidelity, there is again no options. For those with motor, auditory and vision issues, this would be a hard game to play without some update in the future.

Gameplay

Not since the days of Red Faction: Guerrilla, have I been this excited in the opportunity to destroy the world around me in fun and exciting ways. The games physic-based fun was what in part, made is such a success, and its time to see if Teardowns version Improves upon that premise.

The game starts with you arriving at your run-down demolition warehouse (all fully destructible) and you receive an email from your mum stating that she can’t pay her bills. She knows someone who needs an off the book demolition job, and this starts you on your journey of working with a variety of shady individuals. This all then expands into a variety of revenge, betrayal, and insurance fraud missions from a number of individuals, including dodgy cops.

The 40 campaign levels themselves are not too difficult, if you think outside the box and allow your destructive nature to go wild. This means creating pathways, either by destruction or creation, to accomplish the tasks at hand. One mission might require you to dispose of some luxury cars or safes in a river, steal important documents from a security company, or even flatten a seafront condo to allow for new boat dock to be built. Each mission also comes with optional objectives, allowing you to earn a bit of extra money in the process. Combine this with the ability to steal valuable items along the way, and you should end up with a nice tidy sum once completed.

As you progress through the campaign, a variety of new tools become available at the homebase, allowing you to have multiple ways to complete the job at hand. Shotguns, blowtorches, planks of wood, and rocket launchers are just a small selection of what you’ll end up acquiring, and all can have their stats upgraded using the money you accumulated. As you progress, your warehouse also gets updated into a modern family home, which you can still destroy if you want, but it’s a nice bonus to all the destruction you are causing.

The campaign isn’t huge by any margin, but that’s not really the point, as once the campaign is done you also have a series of challenges you can try play out, each within a choice of multiple different sandbox environments for you to destroy. First is Hunted mode, which tasks you with picking up as many targets as possible while avoiding a tailing guard helicopter. Second is Mayhem, which is all about destroying as much as possible in one minute and getting the highest star rating to move to the next. Finally, there is Fetch, which is about getting to as many targets as possible, and escaping before timer runs out. Each brings a unique spin of the variety of maps available and are a joy to play in their own right.

Sandbox is also exactly that, allowing you to fully build and destroy to your hearts content and one of the best ways to see how the engine truly performs when things really go wild!! But it’s the rarely implemented on console, MOD system, that does wonders for the game. Yes, free mods are allowed in this game and they bring a whole level of new carnage with a variety of different weapons, customizable pet companions and tweaks that bring this game to whole another level! And from what I’m hearing, more is on its way.

Graphics

When it comes to the graphics of the game, the voxels make a convincing argument for ray tracing to be added in games. Its the games visuals and light sourcing that takes what some could be considered a tech demo to new heights. Fire is convincing with its slow creep on timber based voxels, and the way the volumetric smoke clouds react to the physical based elements and even wind realistically, still blows my mind every time I play. 

Light sources react to newly destroyed elements, producing shadows where none where before, water reflecting off rain-slicked pathways, looks gorgeous. When a building comes down in this game, you feel in and see it in every element that is destroyed and can’t help but produce a huge grin on my face.

Performance on this game is mostly perfect, and I say mostly as it really only gets abit choppy with slowdown, when huge amounts of destruction is taking place all at once. There are options to tweak the visual settings to allow for more performance over visuals, but id be remised if I didn’t say accept the odd slow-down and enjoy the quality in this instance.

Sound

When it comes to the soundtrack, the games music is mostly kept to the main menu, and gameplay general background, with its focus on the explosive action on screen. It’s a combination of lift music and piano scores to fill the quietness in between the action, regardless of the arena your in.

Voice acting doesn’t exist in the game with the story being told through emails instead. Weapons, explosions and general destruction sounds are perfect in their punchy delivery and alerting you when that fatal last hit will topple the structure in question.

My recommendation here, is a good quality soundbar to ensure the highest quality boom for your business of destruction.

Verdict

This leads me onto the rating of the game:-
Now I rate games in order of, avoid, on sale, great purchase and must own. My rating for Teardown is a "Great Purchase’’.

This maybe a bit of niche market, but if you are into your destructive physic based games, this is one you really wont want to miss. Support and free content is one that will keep you entertained for a number of months, maybe years, and is a must for those that want to push their console to its breaking point whilst enjoying the destruction it can bring.

The game is currently priced on Xbox at £24.99 or approx. $30 and depending on skill and patience would give you about 30+ hours worth of gameplay. Due to number of free mods, challenge modes and creative modes, this could easily be doubled.

Fundamentally this is a game that just brings a smile to my face and one that I’m super happy is on the console. More of these destruction type games are needed, and until more developers realise this, Teardown will keep us more than happy for the foreseeable future.