In Teardown, destruction becomes a fun art form where everything that was carefully constructed out of pixels eventually gets demolished with the help of your own creativity. Saber Interactive and Tuxedo Labs previously released the game on PC, but we’ve now been able to go hands on with the PlayStation 5 version, letting us embark on a journey filled with explosive heists, ingenious problem-solving, and a fully destructible world.
Teardown sets the stage with its carefully crafted playgrounds, where everything, from brick walls to entire buildings, is a canvas for your destructive escapades. As a sought-after demolitions expert, the campaign leads you through nine maps, weaving a tale of revenge, betrayal, and insurance fraud – in a surprisingly engaging tale for what feels like a bit of a sandbox formula on the surface. The objectives vary between scenarios, demanding your strategic prowess to navigate through alarm systems, security measures, and the labyrinthine maps. While the campaign’s pacing can falter a bit in the game’s earlier stages because new tools are drip-fed to you, the latter half introduces captivating twists, like attack helicopters and robots that create additional tension.
Your arsenal of tools evolves as you progress, from a simple sledgehammer to get crazy with to explosives and rocket launchers that cause massive damage. Each tool, with its limited uses, demands thoughtful consideration, transforming your destructive endeavors into engaging environmental puzzles. The game’s superb physics engine ensures that your meticulously planned mayhem unfolds with consistent and repeatable results, whether you’re blowing holes through walls or demolishing entire floors with well-placed explosives – so if you get a result that’s especially pleasing you can definitely do it again.
Beyond the structured campaign, Teardown also features a sandbox mode with limitless resources. Here, the game can turn into an endless playground of destruction, allowing you to appreciate the game’s detailed voxel environments in near infinite ways. In addition, Challenges are presented in various game modes that offer brief and entertaining diversions. Modes like Mayhem and Hunted inject an arcade-like feel for short term fun. In the longer term, the support for user-generated content should help, and this is where Teardown can rely on the strong community that it’s already built up on Steam.
Once you really get going with Teardown, the game’s incredibly reactive maps, physics and diverse toolset are a joy to play around with. The game also impresses with its stunning presentation. Using a voxel art style, the game leverages ray tracing for lighting, shadows, and reflections, resulting in a visually striking experience. The attention to detail even extends to flames and particle effects, which look very realistic despite the voxel style that’s being used.
In conclusion, Teardown is more than just a game; it’s a blend of destruction and creative freedom and its voxelized world invites player to unleash both, whether following the campaign’s twists or exploring the boundless possibilities of the sandbox. Despite initial pacing issues, Teardown’s later stages and mod content ensure there’s plenty of mayhem to keep you engaged.
Score: 8.0/10
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