It's been a while since I've played a game that is a true sandbox like this and boy did I have a good time. Most games nowadays seem to pull you around by the hand telling you where to go and exactly how to accomplish goals. Teardown shatters this mold by giving you seemingly infinite options to experiment and find your own solutions to the problems presented. This design choice gives the player such a feeling of freedom and is so conducive to experimentation and creativity that it reminded me of being a kid just goofing around with friends in a video game finding our own fun while completely ignoring the main objectives of the game.
Most missions fall in to one of two categories:
a. Specific items are scattered around throughout the level, you have to steal them and bring them to the escape point. The catch is that upon picking up the first item an alarm starts that creates a fail state if you don't get all the items to the escape point by the time the clock runs out. This leads to planning out the fastest most efficient route possible by smashing holes in walls and setting up vehicles in the right spots to save time walking, building makeshift stairs, and whatever other ways you can figure out to shave off a few seconds. These are the puzzle levels, they are challenging yet fun and promote experimentation and creativity.
b. I call these the "fuck shit up" levels. In these levels you are tasked with causing some specific form of destruction and are given carte blanche to use whatever tools you have at your disposal to get the job done.
These two types of missions are balanced pretty well though, I would have liked to see more of the category b missions as towards the end the puzzle missions do start to become a little tedious. This issue starts when you begin to collect a massive arsenal of equipment like explosives, guns, boosters, sledgehammers, blowtorches, etc. In order to justify all this equipment the game cranks up the difficulty of the missions and can being to feel like a grind to get through. Towards the back half of part 1 the developers seemingly start to run out of fun ideas and just start making the maps more and more tedious to travel through by adding obstacles like omniscient immortal attack helicopters and flooding a whole area that makes traveling across the map take more time. This subtle change feels hostile and makes you keenly aware of the developers hand trying to hold you back from success compared to the beginning where you felt like you were in a fun sandbox that wanted you to succeed in a way that was uniquely your own by finding ways to bypass locked doors, gated fences, and barred windows to snatch up all the loot in the quickest way possible.
Thankfully after you finish part 1 (which I imagine was all that was available at launch) you get to play part 2 which adds a new island sandbox for missions, a few new interesting ideas for mission objectives, new obstacles like extreme weather and attack robots, and even some new tools to unlock. Part 2 seems to mostly fix the tedium of the back quarter of part 1 and becomes pretty fun again. The game really does peak in the first half of part 1 though. I honestly feel like once you unlock all the explosives, rocket launchers, and such you can just blow holes in everything so a lot of the magic is gone. Where the massive toolbox at your disposal becomes insanely fun however is when you start dabbling with mods.
At one point I downloaded a New York City replica map and caused mayhem with an arsenal of destructive tools. After over an hour of rampaging like a maniac I finally took a moment to look at all the havoc I had wrought and revel in my psychopathy. Something about this experience was magical and will stick with me for a while. No quest giver told me to destroy New York nor did I earn XP for doing it. I simply had C4 in my inventory and saw in my head that scene from the Last of Us with the collapsed skyscraper being held up by the other skyscraper and wanted to recreate it. And recreate it I did. It's this style of "get an idea and do it" type gameplay supported by awesome voxel physics that allows you to destroy stuff in such a creative way that really makes this game stand out. Along with the first half of part 1 of the campaign this is the most fun I had in the game.
Most missions fall in to one of two categories:
a. Specific items are scattered around throughout the level, you have to steal them and bring them to the escape point. The catch is that upon picking up the first item an alarm starts that creates a fail state if you don't get all the items to the escape point by the time the clock runs out. This leads to planning out the fastest most efficient route possible by smashing holes in walls and setting up vehicles in the right spots to save time walking, building makeshift stairs, and whatever other ways you can figure out to shave off a few seconds. These are the puzzle levels, they are challenging yet fun and promote experimentation and creativity.
b. I call these the "fuck shit up" levels. In these levels you are tasked with causing some specific form of destruction and are given carte blanche to use whatever tools you have at your disposal to get the job done.
These two types of missions are balanced pretty well though, I would have liked to see more of the category b missions as towards the end the puzzle missions do start to become a little tedious. This issue starts when you begin to collect a massive arsenal of equipment like explosives, guns, boosters, sledgehammers, blowtorches, etc. In order to justify all this equipment the game cranks up the difficulty of the missions and can being to feel like a grind to get through. Towards the back half of part 1 the developers seemingly start to run out of fun ideas and just start making the maps more and more tedious to travel through by adding obstacles like omniscient immortal attack helicopters and flooding a whole area that makes traveling across the map take more time. This subtle change feels hostile and makes you keenly aware of the developers hand trying to hold you back from success compared to the beginning where you felt like you were in a fun sandbox that wanted you to succeed in a way that was uniquely your own by finding ways to bypass locked doors, gated fences, and barred windows to snatch up all the loot in the quickest way possible.
Thankfully after you finish part 1 (which I imagine was all that was available at launch) you get to play part 2 which adds a new island sandbox for missions, a few new interesting ideas for mission objectives, new obstacles like extreme weather and attack robots, and even some new tools to unlock. Part 2 seems to mostly fix the tedium of the back quarter of part 1 and becomes pretty fun again. The game really does peak in the first half of part 1 though. I honestly feel like once you unlock all the explosives, rocket launchers, and such you can just blow holes in everything so a lot of the magic is gone. Where the massive toolbox at your disposal becomes insanely fun however is when you start dabbling with mods.
At one point I downloaded a New York City replica map and caused mayhem with an arsenal of destructive tools. After over an hour of rampaging like a maniac I finally took a moment to look at all the havoc I had wrought and revel in my psychopathy. Something about this experience was magical and will stick with me for a while. No quest giver told me to destroy New York nor did I earn XP for doing it. I simply had C4 in my inventory and saw in my head that scene from the Last of Us with the collapsed skyscraper being held up by the other skyscraper and wanted to recreate it. And recreate it I did. It's this style of "get an idea and do it" type gameplay supported by awesome voxel physics that allows you to destroy stuff in such a creative way that really makes this game stand out. Along with the first half of part 1 of the campaign this is the most fun I had in the game.