Developer: Noble Muffins
Publisher: PlayWay S.A.
Platform: Switch, PC
Tested on: Switch
Demolish & Build 2018 – Review
When looking at Nintendo titles, it can easily be said that many of their original IPs have been handled with love and care. Even franchises that have been handed down to third party publishers, such as Ubisoft for Mario + Rabbids and Koei Tecmo for Hyrule Warriors, also guaranteed a quality gaming experience. The first time Nintendo opened the floodgates to allow a lot of shovelware on their console was when the Wii was released. The Wii U closed the gates once more, and it flopped. Now, the Switch once again allows everyone to throw their rubbish in the eShop and this brings us to a whole lot of garbage. When reading how Demolish & Build 2018 would work, it seems like a pretty fun game, just like a construction simulator, in reality however, it feels like it has been made twenty years ago.
Story
In the first few seconds, the story seems to be really interesting. It starts with your character working for an Eastern European contractor, Ivan Getoworkov. You do your job as instructed, yet there seems to be a little problem with communication. You were instructed to do a certain thing, yet the client said that this was not necessary. You get fired and get a phone call immediately from another ex-worker of Ivan. He forks over a wad of cash so you can buy and build an office so you and your newfound friend can become a construction company. You eventually become a rather successful company, earning cold hard cash. What is so baffling about this whole story is that a co-worker, who you have never seen, gives you a large amount of money after working with him on your first day and trusts you to get an office. Further story progression does not go that fast as there isn’t much to do; build your company, hire new people and become a famous contractor. The story is brought by simple chat dialogs at the bottom of the screen. The conversations are more like teenager text messages, rather than a properly written story.
Graphics
It’s a known fact that the hardware of the Switch isn’t the strongest. For this reason, most ‘Triple-A’ titles need to be adjusted to run smoothly on the Switch. Toning down the graphics to make this happen isn’t a bad move, making them look like twenty years ago is. The graphics look like you just plugged in your trusty PS2 again and started construction simulator 2K. The visuals are horrible, especially if it isn’t done intentionally. Some developers might create their game in homage to those older games, yet this isn’t the case. There are barely any details, the textures are bland, the gameplay is choppy, the animations are boring and to be honest, most PS2 games looked better than this. The drawing distance is nonexistent as you can only see a few meters in front of you. Just like the first Silent Hill game, there is a misty feel to it, but given the game’s environments and theme, it doesn’t make any sense.
Sound
As un-enjoyable the graphics are, the sound is too. All the sound effects are bland, generic assets, straight from the free sound library. There isn’t really any music playing while working, feeling a bit strange, as many construction sites often have a radio playing, be it the car radio or an old school stereo. Only when driving a vehicle there will be some music, or at random intervals, some casual background music will start to play out of nowhere. The game could have used some more music altogether and some polished sound effects, setting the mood properly, as this is supposed to be a simulator experience.
Gameplay
Demolish & Construct 2018 is a construction game where you have to take down buildings and build up new ones after clearing out the plot you wish to build on. You have a bunch of tools to your disposal but start with a basic sledgehammer and a wrench. The first job is to take down a few walls in a casino and remove the electric wiring. Destroying walls is pretty generic as you will notice where your first impact is, but it isn’t like in the Red Faction Guerrilla games where you have the complete freedom of destruction. However, if you hit a construction just right, it will crumble under its weight and fall apart. To spot these weak spots and objectives you can use your worker’s vision. This is a great assistant for newer players and can be disabled if you play hardcore mode. In hardcore mode, you can lose money if you demolish the wrong things, just like in real life. To nicely learn the game we tried it in the normal setting, here it does well guiding the player to their objective and the mini-tutorials are pretty helpful.
Controls in the game are pretty simple, you don’t need a lot of button inputs to navigate through the title, but overall responsiveness is quite bad. The game plays very slow and sluggish, makes the character move pretty static. When working on things it feels very static, not fluent at all and driving vehicles also reminds you of the first racing games that came out with how bricklike they handle.
If you want to invest to buy new tools such as hand tools and machinery so you can take on new jobs. In the beginning you will do small tasks to increase popularity, get revenue and work your way up from an unknown company to a multinational. Available missions are pretty unique, so it doesn’t start out boring, yet the long drives on what seems an empty desert does get tiring quite quickly.
These ideas behind Demolish & Construct might seem nice, but the overall performance of the game is that what greatly hinders it. First of all, the loading times are quite long, as it feels like the game crashes each time. Secondly, the game feels pretty sluggish as movement is very static and isn’t enjoyable at all. Therefore some jobs will take quite some time as the engine isn’t optimized for these kinds of interactions. Finally, you will have to search for things by feeling, because the draw distance is approximately five meters in front of you. Buildings and objectives pop in all the time, so your best bet is to follow the GPS.
Conclusion
While the idea behind the game is pretty good, the overall execution on the Switch isn’t. The graphics stem from the last decade and the sound is as generic as vanilla. The many diverse jobs that are available will keep the story interesting, as long as you can cope with the sluggish controls. The game might take you down memory lane, or at least let you break stuff and get paid for it. Overall we can’t recommend this title, except if it was on sale for a couple of cents, and if you simply like breaking stuff.
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[…] time ago we had a try with Build & Demolish 2018 for the Switch. If you have seen that review, you will know that the game wasn’t really optimized to run on that […]