I have two passions in life: explosions and leaf blowers. But unfortunately, there are few works or activities that allow me to link the two. For example, the films of Michael Bay, although full of explosions, are totally devoid of these marvelous contraptions of human genius. And I did consider a career as a municipal employee, but the handling of explosives is not part of the prerogatives linked to the position in general. But a few weeks ago Teardown came out of early access, and since then, my two passions have finally been able to be linked, in this game of rare originality and quality.
Gender : Mass destruction and puzzle | Developer: Tuxedo Labs | Publisher: Tuxedo Labs | Platform : Steam | Recommended configuration: Intel Core i7, 4GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 | Price : 20€ | Languages : Audio and texts in English | Release date : April 21, 2022 | Lifetime : about twenty hours to do the campaign at 100%
Preview made on a commercial version.
A job like any other
Yes, after a few months of early access on Steam, the Tuxedo Labs game was finally released in 1.0. For those who haven’t been following, this is the perfect title for all lovers of masses, nitroglycerin, construction equipment and leaf blowers. In effect, Teardown puts the player in the boots of a boss of a demolition SME called Löckelle Teardown Service. In financial difficulty at the beginning of the adventure, the latter will be approached by a suspicious individual for a contract of dubious legality, but well paid. Lack of luck, the police find out, and this brave entrepreneur will then have to chain contracts for the police in order to avoid ending up in a cell. Of course, working for the condés doesn’t really pay the bills. At the same time, our hero will therefore continue to render several small services to a few characters who a priori have never consulted the civil code.
But, as much to be completely honest with you, the interest of the scenario of Teardown is limited. Everything is told to you via a series of emails that you can consult at your desk, in the level that serves as the game’s hub. color, or to a deep environmental narrative. No, this scenario is only a pretext to give you the opportunity to give free rein to your destructive impulses and your creativity, while heating up your gray matter. Indeed, breaking things, blowing things up, exploding widgets is good, but doing it intelligently is better.
Dynamite will win
Teardown is a voxel game with a fully destructible environment. In this world, everything (or almost) that protrudes from the ground can be reduced to nothing. Players must therefore shape the levels of the game with great blows of mass and explosive in order to solve a series of puzzles. Contracts typically take the following form: you have a mission to steal a series of objects, these are far from each other, and once you seize the first objective, you trigger an alarm and you have no more only 60 seconds to escape. Yes, in Teardownyour main enemy is time.
Before starting your larceny, it will therefore be necessary to locate the places, and to prepare your blow. “If I grab this painting first and knock down the north wall of the bathroom to get to the garden, I can take the jeep and dash to the garage, enter through a hole made at C4 and steal the drill in less than 15 seconds… Yes, but if I ransack the house with a backhoe loader, and I use a leaf blower to clear the debris, I can transform the living room into a departmental road, and do everything in a vehicle in 8 seconds …” These are the kind of dilemmas that Teardown laid.
Each sledgehammer, each piece of plastic placed, each shotgun cartridge fired should save you a few precious seconds. The ultimate goal is to develop a course optimized enough to seize all the objectives in the time allowed. And we must admit that the exercise is particularly pleasant and stimulating. The destruction is satisfying, it’s always a treat to prepare a path whether with a blowtorch or a digger. The challenge is also present, and some levels will put your neurons to work hard if you try to achieve all the secondary objectives. Teardown therefore manages to offer a rather unique experience, cathartic and malignant at the same time. And, icing on the cake, Tuxedo Labs also renews its concept and its levels enough to avoid falling into repetitiveness.
Constant renewal
Indeed, the mission objective described previously is really only the basic one, and variations are offered throughout the game. Sometimes you will have to steal vehicles, destroy entire buildings, hack terminals while doing chase by an attack helicopter, recover a series of objects while fighting against various climatic phenomena, etc. Another way that Teardown develops to renew its experience, it is the modification of its levels. The game’s forty missions take place in nine different levels with a particularly polished level design. It may seem light, but most of these will evolve throughout the adventure. You will discover them for example under the snow, at night, with new constructions, or even under water. In the second part of the game, hostile robots will also disrupt your plans. These once again allow you to vary the pleasures and contribute to the ambient chaos, sometimes to the great displeasure of your performance.
Handle with care
Modders… I love you
In addition to the campaign and sandbox mode, Teardown is completely open to modding and offers an editor. the Steam Workshop is already full of crazier creations the ones that others.
As raised in our preview, Teardown is a very beautiful game that has a particularly advanced physics engine to manage all the destruction of the environment. Of course, Tuxedo Labs’ title isn’t going to be kind to gamers’ machines, and toaster owners will sadly be sidelined. Even though performance was improved during the title’s early access period, once the C4 starts to go off the rails, the framerate starts to falter. As an example, on an RTX 2070 paired with an i7 7700K and 32GB of RAM, at 1440p it’s possible to maintain the sacrosanct 60 FPS without too much concern before the mayhem begins. But I did finish some missions under the 20 frames per second mark, after playing a little too much with a few sticks of nitroglycerine and my leaf blower.
It’s the bomb, baby
Teardown is a particularly unique and pleasant experience. Under its appearance as a game reserved for Michael Bay fans, it hides a clever and stimulating concept that should appeal to fans of puzzles and experimentation. The latter will be able to handle torches, explosives, construction machinery and leaf blowers to overcome the forty missions offered by the title in a creative way. The game also manages to sufficiently renew its experience throughout its campaign, and avoids the pitfall of repetitiveness. Only owners of small configs should beware, Teardown tending to blast performance pretty quickly.
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