As the owner of the failing Löckelle Teardown Services, you thought you were getting a simple job to teardown a house to make way for a mall, only to be hired by a criminal investigator to gather evidence on the person who originally hired you, along with other dubious jobs coming from other customers. A surprisingly complex plot for a, sadly, mediocre title that shows its hand too early.
At first, I was really enjoying Teardown; going to various locations to destroy buildings while looting valuables. Yeah, there were parts where I had to be careful, like not causing a fire, but those didn’t really bother me. What did end up hurting the game for me, personally, were the levels where I had to steal items that were tied into an alarm system that, when tripped, you get a 60 second time limit to finish the heist and escape. Granted, there is a sandbox mode, which allows you to play on maps you have already unlocked and, using gear you have already unlocked or using a mod which the Xbox version does allow via a menu, can let loose your destructive side. However, sometimes, when I finally was able to bring down a building, I didn’t feel any satisfaction. Yeah, it was cool seeing it crash down, but the amount of work you have to do just to bring it down (including finding that one small piece still attached to the building which is preventing it from falling)? It really just took the fun out of the total destruction, which is bad when the whole game is designed around it.
Even though I did enjoy the game for a bit and enjoyed causing chaos, it did get tedious after doing the same thing over and over and over and over again. Essentially it boils down to this: You spawn, you break stuff, You do your objective, and you escape. Yes, there are the aforementioned timed heists you do, but these really don’t help break up the monotony that soon sets in when playing the game. I will admit that the various tools you unlock to help teardown the various structures are fun to use, like the sledgehammer, various explosives, and firearms (including a meaty shotgun), and the spray can is useful in planning an escape route or if you want to let your “artistic” side shine through and, even though I did call it boring after a while, I did also love the destruction and the act of causing it. Just watching a building come crumbling down after a few well placed swings or explosive placements is nothing short of cathartic. It really reminds me of the Geo-Mod engine used in Red Faction, specifically Red Faction: Guerilla and I would love to see this used in more games. But, again, even the destruction got boring after a while, even with the other tools you can unlock to help and I think that’s this game’s biggest sin: It’s just boring. There’s nothing here, outside of heists, to really change up the gameplay loop of literal breaking and looting. What really doesn’t help is that there is no multiplayer and I feel that would’ve improved the gameplay monotony greatly, especially when it came to the heists. Being able to coordinate with your friends on a heist would’ve made some of the missions more fun and less annoying, especially the level where you have to drive cars into the water as that sixty second time limit really hurts it.
There are some things in the game I liked, the biggest has to be the graphics. I really dig the voxel graphics as it gives it this almost cartoon-like vibe that sorta fits with the chaos going on. If this game was using any other art style, I don’t believe the game would be as charming as it is and would come off more of a tech-demo than anything else. Outside of the graphics, I do think the destruction is fun, even though it does get boring after a while, and I love how the entire world is destructible, which really aids in traversal and puzzle solving. I do wish that you could use the destruction in aiding in the heists, like being able to wield a piece of a car that’s connected to an alarm off, so you don't have to worry about a timer (Apparently, you could do this, but a patch fixed this). Finally, there are two DLC’s, as of this review; Time Campers, which is basically a Back To The Future Part III parody, being set in the wild west and dealing with time travel, and Folkrace, with the later being a full-on destruction derby and, sadly, both suffer from the same issues as the base game, especially Folkrace which honestly made me mad. All I wanted to do was just do some races, but the DLC had to give you new heists to do to help get more money. I hate being negative by why couldn’t this DLC just be solely focused on racing and forgo the heists?
Look, I didn’t want to go into this game wanting to hate it as I like to give every game I play a chance to be fun. In fact, I remember hearing about this game a couple years back and I thought it looked fun! But, as they famously say, ‘Never Trust Trailers’, and this was one of those times I should’ve done just that. While there were some elements I did enjoy, it was just not enough to save this game for me and, honestly, not enough to make me want to recommend this game to anyone.
