Today, Teardown receives the second, and final part of its campaign, and along with it are
some new levels and items. The first half of this video will be light on spoilers, but
the second will cover all of the new content. I’ll warn you when it’s coming.
But yes, I was surprised to discover this was the final part of the campaign. I don’t
know why, I just imagined we’d get new missions in bite-sized chunks every couple of months.
But instead, here it all is in one go! I’d say it’s about the same length as the first
part was, making for a decent-lengthed campaign, should you tire of mindless sandbox destruction
and want some more focused challenges to figure out.
I remember reading a lot of comments from people the first time around, expressing disappointment
that the timed speedrun style of missions had been chosen to showcase this game and
its excellent voxel-based destruction. Those kinds of missions made up the bulk of the
first half of the game, but there were also a good number of other, one-off and more playful
kinds of missions as well, like the one with the lightning strike, the one where you had
to destroy that tower, the attack helicopter one and so on.
And I think this second part will satisfy most of you by containing more of these unique
missions, and fewer of the traditional timed speedrun sort. They’re still there- but
they’re now the minority. When this game was first released, everything needed to be
unlocked by grinding through the campaign, but it has received a few updates to make
the game more accessible. You can give yourself more time, health and ammo, you can instantly
unlock all the weapons and maps in the sandbox mode, and can even skip missions in the campaign.
Yup, ANY mission you don’t want to play can be skipped, simple as that. You can literally
beat the game without playing a single mission if you want to, which is great news for anybody
who might have beaten the game, but who is now horrified to discover that they have since
reformatted without remembering to back up their save files.
Everybody’s focused on the destruction and physics, but I also appreciate Teardown’s
many thoughtful little touches, like how your home hub developed slightly with every mission,
and how all the different missions and characters interacted with each other in ways you’d
appreciate if you bothered to follow the stories in the emails you received. It’s all these
things which made the campaign such an enjoyable thing to play through, and with this part
I’m happy to say your guy continues working on his house until finally becomes a home
to be proud of. The campaign definitely takes on a more wintery theme this time around and
many of the levels are coated in snow, or have weather effects of some kind. I know
already that some of you will make some great memories over Christmas as you play this game.
Some of the places you visit are very imaginative and atmospheric, and in the sandbox mode you
can freely change the weather and time of day from a number of presets. Don’t worry-
the new content isn’t all snow. And I think that’s about all I can say before moving
onto the semi-spoilers. Click off now if you don’t want to know anything else about it.
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In this second half of the video, I’ll conveniently reveal the contents of the… second half
of Teardown! When the game first came out, I think there
were 2 sandbox levels to play with. This has gradually been increased, and the 2 new levels
this part adds brings the grand total up to 8! The first of these 2 new locations is a
tropical island. Or several, connected by walkways and arches. I don’t know if it’s
actually bigger than the older levels, but it feels bigger, thanks to its emphasis on
verticality and because of how difficult it is to traverse, with cliffs everywhere. I
wish you got a grappling hook to make climbing these cliff faces easier, but sadly this isn’t
a thing in the vanilla game. What I like to do is to collapse those towers to make bridges
across key locations. It’s evident that a lot of love and effort has gone into creating
this map, and while the cliffs may be indestructible, there are enough precariously placed shacks
to keep you busy, and fans of Crysis will enjoy deforesting the island.
The other map is a HUGE mountain base. I’m intimidated by the size of this one- there
are countless different floors and if you fall, it can take some time before you find
a way up again. Like I said, a grappling hook would be great! This one plays a role in the
story, but I don’t feel it’s so suited for sandbox destruction, but if you want to
roleplay a villain in his secret lair then this is the place to do it. I can’t get
over how beautiful the stock lighting is. This view is spectacular and I find myself
wondering what could be around the next corner!
The game has got a number of new items! There are now enough of them that they need to be
split into 5 categories, which I’ll describe as harmless, construction, gun, explosion,
enhancement. The first new item is a ‘leaf blower’,
which… blows stuff away. It isn’t very powerful, and can’t be used to fan flames.
I think it’s probably to blow debris away when you’ve done a load of destruction and
can’t think of a better way of clearing it out of the way.
You get ‘cables’, which like planks, can connect things together in interesting ways,
paving the way for rope bridges and other things that I haven’t taken the time to
experiment with yet. You can also use these to attach stuff to vehicles. Fans of gmod
will think of a thousand uses for these. The hunting rifle is a powerful gun, with
a scope, that can fire through several layers at once. It isn’t infinitely powerful, mind-
it can still take several shots to pass through a large building. It’s good for triggering
explosives from a distance, or for taking out that voxel-support from half a map away.
Nitro-glycerine is a new explosive that sits patiently around, waiting for you to shoot
it or whatever. It’s the most powerful explosive there is, resulting in a sizeable crater that
surpasses what even the ‘bomb’ can create. You can string a load of these together to
bring a large building down in a single impressive explosion, or you can use them as make-shift
steps and risky bridges. I haven’t paid much attention to these in the short time
I’ve had access to them, but I know they’re going to become a sandbox favourite.
And finally you get 3 ‘enhancements’. One of them can be strapped to vehicles to
boost their speed. Another can be used as a short-lived rocket thruster to launch items
across the level. I’ll warn you now- this sequence made my graphics card spin up like
nothing I’ve ever heard before. And the third is an energy drink that gives
you greater mobility for a few seconds. But only a few seconds! Though these will become
a speedrunner’s favourite tool, and I’m sure will be used in some incredibly imaginative
ways.
And now I’ll cover my favourite new missions. I have to start with the robots. I hate them,
I’m terrified of them, but they’re really, really cool. They chase you about and the
level that introduces you to them is really well done. I’m not even going to spoil it
for you- you’ll get to it soon enough any way. But I will say, these things have excellent
pathfinding. And happen to be indestructible! I’m not going to lie- these things terrify
me as much as the butler from Tomb Raider 2. I dread it when a level has these things
hunting you down.
Next I’d like to mention this tornado level, where one will spawn in front of you every
10 seconds or so. It certainly makes travelling across the level difficult! I tried transporting
an item in a truck and think it might literally be impossible with these going off around
you constantly. Trying to beat this level is frustrating, but it’s fun just to mess
about with it and I hope it makes its way to the sandbox mode.
The game takes you to an island where you have very limited equipment. A staple in games,
and it leads to some interesting challenges like one where you must destroy a super yacht.
Not a problem normally, but when you’re armed with so little, you’ve got to get
resourceful with your environment, and to search for every supply crate you can find.
There is hunter-helicopter level on the island, at night, which makes for some very tense
dashes between huts. I don’t feel there’s any escape from it on this level, no matter
how sneaky you try to be. There’s one where you drive a surveillance
van and must get a clear line of sight with multiple antennas at the same time, meaning
you go about bashing holes in things and collapsing problem walls in a strategic fashion.
Lasers! You must get this laser beam to various points in the level, using massive angled
mirrors. This is a lot harder than it sounds, and it never seems to go where I want it to.
Also: it destroys everything it touches. A running theme through a chunk of the campaign
is the build-up to Christmas, and there’s a mission where you must steal festive stuff
from a shop. A shop that’s guarded by those scary robot things. Your home gets a lovely
Christmassy feel to it, it’s just a shame that when the campaign is done, it’s no
longer decorated like this. And there’s a fairground level where you
go about destroying signs. This is a long way through the campaign, and I expected it
to be harder than it was- but it was instead just a load of festive fun. I’ll leave my
improvised playthrough here as I conclude this video.
I can’t be objective about this game. I do think it’s very good, and with this update
has finally reached what could be called a ‘finished’ state. People who beat the
campaign and move on will be left satisfied, as will the people who have no interest in
that bit of the game, and who just want to install a load of mods and to destroy stuff
in sandbox mode. Both of these halves feel equally complete. Early on, there were questions
over both, but Teardown’s makers HAVE listened to the community, and have repeatedly made
this game more accessible, and more easily moddable!
If they stopped work on Teardown right now, no one could complain. There’s enough here
already to justify its asking price. But I’d be surprised if this was the last update it
received- the developers seem passionate about it, and Dennis uses it as his very own sandbox
to test new things with. If you’ve been following him on twitter these past few years,
you’ll know there’s a lot more he’s toyed with than what has made it to this version
of Teardown! I have had privileged access to this game.
I covered it before release -which was one of the best decisions I ever made- because
Dennis must have seen it as he then contacted me to give me early access to it, which was
a huge honour. I’ve seen it develop and grow, from tech demo into full game, I’ve
seen it squash the performance bugs and to improve its destruction. And I’ve tested
a number of the community mods for it, which have seriously enhanced the sandbox experience
for me! And a few days ago, Dennis contacted me again
to give me access to this edition of the game. So I thank him for that as well- I don’t
feel personally invested in many games, but Teardown is one of the few that I feel very
close to.