Demolish & Build: Construction was never really in my future plans as a young bat, however, smashing stuff to pieces was always fun. I used to love it when my parents were renovating the house and we’d have old doors or cabinets in the garden, I and my brother would throw various things at them or smash them up with stuff, it was free labour for our parents and it was a great stress relief.
PKing in Runescape, getting shafted by a super lucky DDS spec? That’s it, where’s the hammer. That chest of drawers needs a good seeing to. Anyway enough about my strange childhood… When I got this game my mind was kind of cast back to that, a little bit of stress relief, let out the demons as it were. Well, in a way, yeah it was kind of entertaining to smash stuff up, but that’s kind of where the entertainment ended. I’ll dig a little deeper though don’t worry.
Demolish & Build starts with you getting railed off your boss, Ivan Getoworkov, for ‘slacking on company time’ after getting a blasting you get to work, smashing up part of a casino with your sledgehammer. Unfortunately, part of your contract wasn’t quite right and the boss is fuming with you destroying some ‘priceless’ statues, saying you’re in the wrong. Anyway, he fires you pretty sharpish, then almost immediately, in a really creepy kind of way, your buddy Joey Smith blows up your phone telling you he also stopped working for Ivan, offers you up a business proposition wires you over $13k and gets you a pick up truck to travel around in.
A few menial, repetitive tasks later. We had some money to buy some machinery, we were taking our first steps on our way to the top with Mr Smith who turns out to actually just be an investor for us, he helps build us up and at times gives us hints and tips where he can, but the entire purpose of Demolish & Build is to climb the ladder of the construction and demolition world, that ladder is long and rickety, but it’s achievable, will many people actually get there?
Who really knows. I personally didn’t have the patience for it, that’s coming someone who will gladly spend days breeding and training a perfect team for competitive battle on Pokémon, see the difference is it feels like there’s some kind of reward at the end of that, the fruits of my labour AND the ability to ruin kids hopes and dreams by sweeping them in an online battle. This, however, wasn’t very rewarding. Getting hold of my first bulldozer was pretty fun for about 10 minutes, then it sharp got boring… If you’re into simulation games who knows, you may actually get a kick out of this, but while I’m open to playing quite literally anything, this just isn’t for me.
Graphically, I can give or take it. It’s not dreadful but it’s also not good. Demolish & Build looks like something from the early 00’s but it doesn’t seem like this is a style choice, it just… It doesn’t seem like a very well made game I guess. The texture resolution is low, the draw distance is rough at best, you can see all the individual lines in the buildings you’re about to demolish like it was a Jenga tower waiting to topple.
The detail in the surrounding areas is super low and just boring. It just doesn’t look like it was made for this gen, or I suppose last gen at this point, at all. The thing is, you can look at some of my other reviews, graphics aren’t everything. I gave Monster Sanctuary rave reviews and that’s pixel art style, but when your gameplay is meh and the game looks even more meh, you’re just not going to get a very good experience overall.
I’ve played plenty of sims in my time, I’ve played plenty of good sims in my time. In fact, I’ve played plenty of BAD sims in my time too, but even those games have scratched an itch so to speak. Yeah unfortunately Demolish & Build is a bad sim that looks bad and doesn’t scratch any itches. While you know what your overall goal is, you don’t really have any milestones or anything and as such you don’t get a feeling of success at all, it’s not rewarding in the slightest.
Demolish & Build overall thoughts
Demolish & Build just confused me a lot and for a game about smashing stuff to pieces, I just don’t really know how to put it into words other than… “What the f***?!” I’m not gonna keep railing on Demolish & Build all day.. If you decide even after this review, if you can even call it that, you want to pick this game up, I can only really suggest you buy it on PC. It’s 71p on Steam right now (until January 5th 2021) but at least it LOOKS better on PC, it looks like it plays smoother on PC also, of course that’ll be tied to your system specs.
On Switch, I don’t care what price it is, just avoid Demolish & Build, don’t waste your money, even at 71p, not a single whole pound. This game is like a 1/10 on Switch if that. If I wanted to spend some money I’d clarify for you all whether buying the PC version is worth it, but even at this low price, I don’t think I could justify buying it after my experience with this port.
ANYWAY, that’s gonna do it for me. Don’t buy Demolish & Build on Switch, we’re still struggling during a pandemic so spend your money wisely, this would not be a wise purchase even at 71p, buy some instant noodles instead, at least they’re more well made. All the best for 2021 everyone, hope your 2021 is much better than 2020 has been!
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