Demolish & Build Classic – Review

There’s something mildly satisfying about destruction, maybe I should see a therapist, but being able to virtually rip down walls and buildings is exactly what I need in my life, then like a wrecking ball from the sky, Demolish and Build Classic appears, promising to give me the freedom to knock down wooden huts and brick buildings with various machines in an open world sandbox.

If this sounds a little familiar, you may have also played Demolish and Build back in 2020, created by the same team, it was a continuation of numerous PC titles, and allowed us to… well, knock down wooden huts and brick buildings.
I sunk many hours into what was a random on-sale purchase, as I worked tirelessly to break down plenty of walls, while building up my company, it was never a top-quality game in performance or content, it was a guilty pleasure and pretty unique, only really outplayed by the far better (and far more expensive) Construction Simulator.

Here we are in 2023, with Demolish & Build: Classic, which is a port of the Switch version which released earlier this year, it’s very similar to what came before, but there are a few differences to cover.

The game is in the name, you’ll demolish things from small concrete posts to shacks, right up to larger buildings, but to progress you’ll need to stick with the smaller jobs until you have enough funds to pick up new equipment required for the more advanced jobs.
You might have to refuel a machine or replace damaged parts, but it’s mostly streamlined management so you can get to the important stuff, which is mostly driving around to find a job, making sure you have the right equipment and then battling with the controls until you get the job done.

Unlike 2020’s offering, D&B Classic is much more of a lite offering, there’s not the same level of company management, instead opting for a slightly more open “Sandbox” presentation.

Graphically they look very, very similar, I even had to switch between the two games a few times to notice the slightly more detailed pickup truck, the equally sparse “town” and surrounding fields with a few trees popping out of the ground, but generally it looks like a lot of the same assets and textures where reused, even if they maybe got a slight spit and polish to try and tidy things up a little.
Using content from a previous game is perfectly fine, but “Classic” doesn’t seem to add anywhere near as much as it removes.

Comparing two similar games, three years apart, you’d expect to see plenty of changes, but a messy pixelated shadow under vehicles and a more modern starter sledgehammer where the only early, notable improvements in Demolish & Build Classic.
I fully appreciate a game wanting to provide a lite, easy to access model, but the original Demolish and Build, really wasn’t that complicated.
If you want deeper management options, there’s titles like the fantastic Construction Simulator, but I just don’t feel the appeal of really trying to invest into Classic, when I’ve already spent so much time with the original game and it’s fair to say, if you played Demolish and Build (2020) there’s really not enough here to warrant picking up a new game, that’s near identical and in many aspects, considerably worse.

Graphically there’s a thousand improvements that could have been made, better cars, better destruction physics and better textures throughout, maybe npc cars which don’t have opaque windows, or even some fancy lighting effects, but instead it feels like we’ve got the same game, thrown in a cement mixer and some parts that really helped gel things together, have been left behind.

The real saving grace is the price, at only £6.29, its good value, £10 cheaper than 2020’s title, but considering its age, the original Demolish and Build is regularly seen on sales at half price or less, so it’s difficult to recommend Classic, when there’s more game on offer, often at a similar price as long as you can put up with the few shortcomings a three-year-old game.

As much as I was looking forward to getting my hands on Demolish and Build Classic, it was unfortunately instant disappointment, rather than swinging your sledgehammer with the right trigger, (which feels natural to anyone who’s played a first person game) and using the same Right trigger for accelerating in vehicles, instead I was left with the awkward controls of using the X button to smash, (while using a rather light and twitchy control system on both sticks to aim ) – then in my trusty pickup truck, I was forced to hold up on my left analogue stick.
Having spent many, many hours on my Switch, Its a system I never would have enjoyed on the joycons, let alone a Pro controller, so I’m not sure why they opted for such a dreadful control scheme, but for that to carry over into the Xbox version, it just makes this port feel really cheap and lazy.

Another major downside is the overall performance, we’re not talking Starfield levels of detail, we’re not even seeing as much as we did in the three-year-old original, but presumably down to the limitations of the Nintendo Switch, (and the lazy port over to Xbox) we’re left with loading screens between every section of the map, all of which are considerably smaller than the old game and some significant framerate issues causing distinct stuttering, even when there’s not that much going off on screen.

All criticisms aside, there’s still some positives, destroying things is fun, some of the damage physics work well and there’s enough content to warrant the £6.29 price tag, but there’s just so little engagement and enjoyment that regular bugs and issues make Demolish and Build Classic difficult to recommend.

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